Traditional search has evolved rapidly over the past few months as AI becomes further ingrained in our professional and personal lives. It is changing search behaviour and reshaping how we work by removing friction from our everyday workflows.
Increasingly, AI summaries are being used and interrogated by prospective customers and readers rather than traditional search, as AI can provide more personalised responses in a fraction of the time a traditional deep dive would take. This is changing how we search and, subsequently, how brands are discovered, interpreted and, importantly, trusted. This is already reflected in how buyers behave, with Forrester research showing that the vast majority of B2B buyers are now using GenAI tools during the purchasing process.
In this new environment, PR has three roles to play:
- Helping brands become discoverable by creating credible third-party signals that AI systems can surface.
- Making brands more believable by building validation through earned media, research and expert commentary.
- Ensuring brands remain human by putting real spokespeople, relationships and conversations at the centre of their reputation.
PR for GEO Makes Brands Discoverable
For communications and marketing teams, this creates a new frontier for establishing brands as leaders. AI search engines cite multiple sources as trusted, including Reddit, Wikipedia, wire platforms and earned media. Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) has emerged alongside SEO, and traditional PR remains as one of the best tools in your kit for building a GEO strategy.
Within marketing, there is a long-held understanding that messages need to be repeated multiple times before they land with the audience, and wire coverage is fantastic for continuing to build visibility for both your messaging and your offerings. Within PR, press releases are now drafted for both human and AI audiences, and wire platforms are beginning to offer reports that track both human and AI traffic. The volume of visits from AI is staggering. It is no coincidence that traditional referral traffic is evolving too, with some reports indicating a significant year-on-year decline as more users turn to AI-led discovery.
However, buyers and readers remain sceptical, and third-party validation continues to be a deciding factor when weighing up options.
PR Makes Brands Believable
If a buyer has hurriedly asked Copilot for the top five identity platforms to suit their company’s needs, and yours appears, they will still click the links to verify the LLM’s summary. Even with the rise of AI-generated answers, users will continue to click through and interrogate sources before making decisions. Seeing your brand validated through thought leadership covered by a respected journalist goes a long way. Visibility gets you surfaced, but validation is what builds belief.
What is often overlooked is where these systems are pulling from. A significant proportion of GenAI outputs are shaped by earned media, from press coverage and thought leadership to third-party rankings and reviews, reinforcing the continued importance of PR within this new search landscape.
Traditional thought leadership and real spokespeople now carry more weight than ever, as deepfakes and misinformation spread throughout the media landscape. Social engineering and phishing campaigns are also growing in alarming sophistication. Distrust is rising just as rapidly as trust can be destroyed.
When content can be generated endlessly, credibility becomes one of the few things that cannot be easily replicated. Traditional PR builds the thought leadership, messaging and trust that are invaluable in this landscape. At a time when marketing claims are increasingly treated with scepticism and distrust is at an all-time high, PR-led industry research from credible bodies provide trustworthy statistics around which campaigns can be built and which journalists can reference as trusted sources.
C8 Consulting’s research bureau supports this directly by developing robust, credible research that gives media and audiences something real to reference. It ensures that when your brand appears in AI summaries or search results, it is underpinned by defensible evidence.
PR Makes Brands Human
Traditional PR extends beyond static content to building relationships with journalists and editors that lead to face-to-face interactions. Briefings, interviews and podcasts put a face to a name and build trust by introducing your spokespeople, while providing journalists the opportunity to interrogate and validate what is being said.
Podcasts, which are typically paid-for opportunities, are an invaluable platform to consider when reviewing your marketing budget for the year. They are among the stickiest forms of content and offer the nuance and personality that AI-influenced content cannot. They help build familiarity with audiences and provide a platform for credible thought leadership that can be referenced across earned media and AI-driven search.
Where PR and GEO Goes Next
GEO strategies ensure your brand is present within AI-driven discovery, structuring content so that it can be surfaced and understood by new search environments. Traditional PR ensures that when it is surfaced, it is trusted. One gets you seen. The other gets you believed.
If you are looking to strengthen how your brand shows up and stands up in an AI-driven search landscape, from research-led campaigns to GEO-informed PR strategies, do get in touch.