Digital PR has spent years being marketed primarily as a way to get backlinks.
The standard pitch was straightforward. Create something interesting, send it to journalists, earn coverage, get links from authoritative websites, and improve your Google rankings. Sometimes that worked extremely well. Sometimes “digital PR” became little more than mass email outreach designed to manufacture links.
AI search is giving the discipline another reason to matter.
When ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Mode, and other systems answer questions about companies, they do not rely exclusively on what those companies say about themselves. They frequently draw from journalism, review sites, industry publications, community discussions, directories, research, and other independent sources.
That has led to a new claim in marketing circles: PR is the new SEO.
There is useful evidence behind that idea. There is also quite a bit of exaggeration.
The better conclusion is that digital PR, SEO, and GEO are starting to overlap because all three depend on something businesses have always needed: credible evidence elsewhere on the internet that supports what they say about themselves.
Imagine you own a custom home building company.
Your website says you are one of the leading luxury builders in your market. That is useful information, but it is also self-published marketing.
Now imagine that the company has also won a regional building award, been featured in an architecture publication, appeared on the website of a respected architecture firm, been interviewed about high-performance construction, and accumulated detailed customer reviews describing the types of homes it builds.
Those sources are fundamentally different.
They provide independent evidence about the company.
If someone asks an AI system to recommend experienced luxury builders in the area, that independent evidence may become extremely useful. The AI does not necessarily need to accept the company’s own marketing claim when other sources can confirm, qualify, or contradict it.
This is where PR starts intersecting with GEO.
One statistic is appearing increasingly often in conversations about AI search.
Muck Rack’s May 2026 Generative Pulse study analyzed more than 25 million links used by ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini across 17 industries. It reported that 84% of citations came from sources categorized as earned media, while paid or advertorial sources represented only 0.3%. Journalism accounted for 27% of all cited links.
That is a significant dataset.
It is also easy to misrepresent.
“Earned media” in this research does not mean that 84% of AI citations come from newspaper articles secured by PR agencies. The category is much broader. It essentially includes third-party sources that are neither the company’s owned website nor paid advertising, which can include forums, review platforms, aggregators, directories, community sites, wikis, publishers, and journalism.
That distinction matters.
The data supports the idea that third-party information has a major role in generative search. It does not prove that hiring a traditional PR agency will suddenly increase your ChatGPT recommendations.
Journalism itself accounted for 27% of citations in the Muck Rack study. That is still substantial, but it tells a more accurate story.
Traditional SEO has historically placed enormous emphasis on backlinks.
A link from another website can help Google discover content, understand relationships between pages, and assess authority. Good backlinks remain valuable.
But AI visibility research is starting to suggest that the existence of the brand across the web may deserve more attention than SEO has historically given it.
Ahrefs analyzed 75,000 brands and compared numerous signals with brand visibility in Google AI Overviews. Branded web mentions had the strongest correlation in the study at 0.664. The number of backlinks showed a substantially weaker correlation of 0.218, while referring domains came in at 0.295.
That does not mean mentions cause AI visibility.
Large, established companies naturally receive more press, more searches, more backlinks, more discussion, and more AI visibility. Correlation cannot tell us which variable causes another.
Still, I think the difference is strategically useful.
For years, an SEO campaign might look at an article mentioning a client but failing to link to the client’s website and call it a missed backlink.
From an AI-search perspective, the mention itself may still have value.
It creates another public association between an entity, a topic, a location, a service, or an area of expertise.
That changes how I think about successful outreach.
Not all mentions are equally useful.
Suppose a local publication includes your architecture firm in a sentence saying:
“Several businesses attended the event, including Smith Architecture.”
Technically, that is a brand mention.
Now compare it with an article explaining that Smith Architecture specializes in adaptive reuse projects in Oregon and quoting one of its principals discussing the challenges of converting historic commercial buildings.
Both pages mention the firm.
The second one establishes considerably more context.
If a search engine or AI system is trying to answer a question about experienced adaptive-reuse architects in Oregon, the second source contains information that could actually help answer the question.
That is why I would not reduce digital PR to accumulating raw mention counts any more than I would reduce traditional SEO to collecting raw backlink counts.
The context matters.
What does the article associate your business with? Is the source relevant? Does it contain factual information? Does it establish expertise? Is the business clearly identifiable? Would a potential customer consider the source credible?
Those questions create a better digital PR strategy than “How many placements did we get?”
Good digital PR should begin with positioning rather than outreach.
Ask what the company should be known for.
If you are an architecture firm, perhaps it is sustainable commercial design, adaptive reuse, multifamily housing, historic renovation, or modern residential work.
If you are a contractor, it could be complex hillside construction, luxury remodeling, custom homes, or historic restoration.
If you are an interior designer, perhaps it is hospitality design, residential renovations, historic homes, or highly specific aesthetic expertise.
If you are a winery, it might be estate-grown Pinot Noir, regenerative farming, an unusual vineyard site, or a specific regional story.
Once that is clear, you can evaluate third-party opportunities based on whether they reinforce those associations.
A random backlink from a high-authority website may look attractive in an SEO tool.
A relevant feature that clearly associates your company with what you want to be hired for may be more valuable commercially, reputationally, and potentially for AI visibility.
Small businesses sometimes hear “PR” and assume they need to appear in The New York Times.
They usually do not.
A credible third-party footprint can come from many places.
A local architecture project might be featured by the city, a neighborhood publication, an architecture organization, a contractor, a photographer, or a materials supplier. A custom home builder might appear in a regional homes publication, building association awards, an architect’s portfolio, or a local business journal. A tourism company might be mentioned by a destination organization, hotel, travel writer, winery, or local event.
Those sources may be much more relevant to the customer than broad national media.
They also create connections between the company and the exact categories, locations, and entities that define the business.
I would generally rather earn ten legitimate mentions across the ecosystem surrounding a business than obtain one hundred irrelevant placements solely because the domains have high authority scores.
One of the strongest forms of digital PR is creating information that did not exist before.
That does not necessarily require an enormous national study.
A Portland architecture firm could analyze permitting trends related to accessory dwelling units. A landscape company could study residential water use or native planting patterns. A tourism operator could analyze seasonal visitor behavior. An interior design firm could survey homeowners about renovation priorities.
The important part is that the business contributes something original.
Original data gives journalists, bloggers, industry publications, and other websites a reason to reference the company beyond “this company exists.”
It can also create a citation-worthy source on the business’s own domain.
That combination is particularly powerful.
The company publishes the primary evidence. Third parties discuss the evidence. Those discussions generate additional mentions and sometimes links. Search engines and AI systems can encounter the same idea through multiple independent sources.
The objective should never be manufacturing artificial consensus.
It should be producing something genuinely worth discussing.
You do not always need to create a study.
Sometimes expertise itself is enough.
Journalists, newsletter writers, podcasters, trade publications, and industry blogs regularly need people who can explain a topic clearly.
An architect can comment on changes in residential design.
A builder can explain construction costs or permitting issues.
An interior designer can discuss material choices or renovation trends.
A winery owner can talk about harvest conditions.
A tour operator can discuss changing travel patterns.
If the business has legitimate experience, those contributions create another category of high-quality public evidence.
They also tend to produce better brand associations than generic press releases because the company is appearing in context as an expert.
This is another distinction worth making.
Publishing a press release through a distribution service can be useful when the business actually has news. It may help journalists discover an announcement, create an accessible public record, and distribute information efficiently.
But paying to distribute a press release is not equivalent to a journalist deciding the story is worth covering.
Muck Rack’s research makes that difference fairly visible. Paid and advertorial material accounted for only 0.3% of the AI citations in its May dataset, while journalism represented 27%.
I would therefore be skeptical of GEO services that promise dozens or hundreds of syndicated press-release placements as an AI-visibility strategy.
Distribution is not endorsement.
A press release can start a PR process.
It should not be confused with the outcome.
None of this means owned content becomes irrelevant.
Suppose an article calls your company a leader in passive-house construction, but the phrase “passive house” barely appears anywhere on your website.
That creates an information gap.
A third party has established an association your own site does not adequately explain.
The strongest visibility strategies allow owned and earned information to reinforce each other.
Your website should clearly state your services, expertise, location, team, credentials, projects, and other important facts. Third-party sources can then validate or expand on those claims.
This matters for customers too.
Someone might discover your business through an article, podcast, association, ChatGPT recommendation, or Google result. Eventually, many of them will reach your website.
When they do, the story should make sense.
This is where digital PR can become much more strategic for GEO.
Start with the questions that could realistically influence a customer.
“Who are the best architecture firms in Eugene for commercial projects?”
“Which Portland interior designers specialize in historic homes?”
“Who builds high-end custom homes around Bend?”
“What are the best private wine tours from Eugene?”
Then look at the sources influencing those answers.
Which publications appear?
Which directories?
Which professional organizations?
Which review sites?
Which blogs or newsletters?
Which competitors are repeatedly mentioned?
Which experts are quoted?
The point is not to reverse-engineer one ChatGPT answer and immediately pitch every source it cited.
AI results vary, and every engine can retrieve different evidence.
The objective is to understand the information ecosystem around the category.
Once you understand that ecosystem, PR becomes much more targeted.
AI citations can be surprisingly unstable.
Different systems use different retrieval methods. Even the same AI platform may use different sources when the wording of a question changes or when the query is repeated.
Muck Rack found meaningful differences between ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini in both how often they cite sources and how many sources they use when they do. ChatGPT included citations in 96% of responses in its dataset and averaged five citations, Gemini cited in 82% and averaged eight, while Claude cited in 55% but averaged thirteen sources when citations appeared.
That makes optimizing for one individual citation a fragile strategy.
You are better off building a broader, credible information footprint around the business.
If multiple relevant websites independently establish what your company does and why it matters, you are less dependent on one publication remaining the favored source for one particular prompt.
This is the standard I would use before investing in any GEO tactic.
Would the activity still be worthwhile if ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow?
A good feature in a respected local publication can introduce customers.
An industry award creates trust.
An architect’s project page can send referral traffic to a builder.
A podcast interview can build reputation.
A useful research study can attract links, searches, and media attention.
A professional association listing can create credibility and qualified referrals.
Those things have real marketing value independent of AI.
If they also improve the evidence AI systems use to understand and recommend the company, that is an additional benefit.
This is substantially safer than creating strange content solely because someone claims an LLM prefers a particular format.
For most small and midsized service businesses, I would not begin by sending hundreds of pitches.
I would begin by auditing the existing evidence around the company.
Search the brand. Look at which third-party pages appear. Check major competitors. Test relevant AI recommendation queries across several engines. Look at where those systems are finding information. Identify outdated, weak, missing, or inaccurate descriptions of the company.
Then find the gaps.
Maybe competitors are repeatedly featured in a local publication you have never contacted. Maybe the company has completed excellent projects that nobody outside its own website has documented. Maybe its principal has thirty years of expertise but has never contributed commentary anywhere. Maybe there is an obvious industry dataset the company could create.
Those are PR opportunities rooted in something real.
From there, the goal is consistent reputation building rather than a one-month backlink campaign.
I do not think PR is literally replacing SEO.
Google still needs crawlable websites, strong content, internal linking, technical accessibility, useful pages, and many of the same signals SEO has worked with for years.
AI systems still use websites.
Backlinks still matter.
Local search still matters.
But the walls between SEO, PR, brand marketing, reviews, reputation management, and GEO are getting thinner.
A customer searching for a company can encounter all of those signals within minutes. An AI system attempting to recommend one can retrieve from many of the same sources.
That makes online visibility a broader problem than rankings.
The businesses that become easiest to recommend are likely to be the ones with a coherent story across the internet: their website clearly explains what they do, customers support it, relevant third parties mention it, projects demonstrate it, publications recognize it, and search results reinforce it.
There is no single piece of schema markup that creates that.
There is no press-release distribution package that creates it.
It is reputation.
Digital PR is increasingly useful because it helps build that reputation in places your company does not control.
Belorado GEO helps businesses understand how that entire ecosystem affects their visibility across Google Search, Maps, ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI-powered discovery platforms. We identify where the evidence around a business is weak, where competitors are being recommended instead, and what changes are actually worth making.
If you want to understand what the internet currently says about your company, get a free visibility audit.
