Leverage digital PR to unlock AI search visibility

Annabelle says: “As we move into 2026, it's clear that AI search strategy needs to become a core focus for us as SEOs.

We know that the search landscape is evolving really, really fast. While, currently, AI only makes up a small percentage of the search landscape, it's growing – and it's growing quickly. One of the biggest unlocks/most powerful levers in this new era is digital PR (and I'm not just saying that because I'm a little biased).

While general industry consensus suggests that platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and Wikipedia are the most heavily cited by AI systems (which is not untrue), what my peers and I are increasingly noticing across the industry is that features in high-quality, topic-relevant, authoritative publications are having a significant impact on AI-driven search visibility.

I'm noticing a really clear trend through my work with clients: AI systems are prioritising credible and relevant media placements, and those are being served more and more frequently in AI-generated responses. This is a really big opportunity for brands to tackle the new world of AI search.

If you want to future-proof your SEO strategy, it's key that you invest in digital PR that earns mentions and backlinks from trusted voices in your niche. It's not only going to build more broad brand authority, but position your content, brand, and products to be surfaced by AI – which might very well become the dominant mode of search.”

Is digital PR a key element in how brands should develop AI search strategies?

“Absolutely. What I'm seeing more and more is that, while some of the sources we might expect are being pulled through as citations by AI – things like Reddit, Quora, or YouTube – high-value publications are increasingly being used as citation sources for AI search results.

Essentially, if your business relies on being seen as a go-to source within your space (which pretty much every business does), this strategy is going to be essential. Digital PR is going to be essential to visibility in AI search.”

How do you know where the consumer demand is, in order to reach them at the right point?

“There are a number of different tactics and techniques that you can use to gain an understanding of that.

Obviously, when you're building out a strategy for a client, you need to start with their personas and any proprietary data that they have on their consumers. Then there are other tools that you can use, and tools that I use in my day-to-day job and am lucky enough to have access to in the agency I work for.

Search data is obviously a really key indicator of consumer demand, as is social search data. Most of us look at that on maybe a monthly basis, but we at MediaVision are lucky enough to be able to see that on a weekly basis because of the proprietary technology that we've built. Where we get our understanding of our audience is that search data.

Logically (and most SEOs would agree with this), if you are trying to target people on search channels, you need to understand what they're searching for in order to understand them. Beginning with search data is the key point for understanding your consumer.”

Is beginning with search data the way that successful digital PR is done at the moment?

“In my experience, yes. Digital PR can go down a couple of different routes, but I do think that the most effective digital PR does start with search data. That is ultimately going to drive your SEO goals – which is a big part of what digital PR is.

Digital PR aims to drive both brand and non-brand search. The only way that you're going to effectively do that is to begin with the search data. Unless you understand what it is that consumers are searching for – and how, therefore, to target that – you cannot build an effective digital PR strategy.”

What does an SEO need to know about digital PR, and at what stage is it too creative or different from what an SEO should be doing?

“It's a constant debate. I've worked in a number of different agencies, and in-house as well, and there always seems to be this misunderstanding, on both sides, between digital PR and SEO.

SEO teams sometimes feel that digital PR can be a bit too head-in-the-clouds and creative, and digital PR thinks that SEO doesn't really understand the value of what they do – but actually, the two teams need to be as integrated as possible.

The reason that clients buy digital PR is to drive visibility, both in terms of their brand and in terms of non-brand (so, products and categories). If digital PR doesn't align with SEO data, then it's not going to achieve a client's goals, at the end of the day. It needs to be a real balance.

Obviously, being creative is what gets your story featured in the media. That's what gets you links and mentions of high quality. However, that creativity needs to be in line with the goal that you are driving, such as the key product or category that you are targeting. Your creative idea, your creative campaign, needs to be aligned with that.”

Are there any types of digital PR campaigns that are particularly successful in AI search engines?

“Definitely. I would say that there are a couple of different types. The main one, or the most effective, is probably ‘Best of’ lists. That tends to come from a reactive PR approach or a proactive PR approach, in terms of things like gifting.

Essentially, a ‘Best of’ list is a breakdown of the top products or brands within a certain category. A good example of this, for a client that we had recently, was a list in Who What Wear of ‘Best Summer Work Dresses’. I know the heatwave seems like it was a long time ago, but we did have one recently, and we got a lot of press over the dresses that our clients had that were both appropriate for work and cool and breezy to wear.

What we noticed was that those lists of ‘Best of X Dresses’ actually drove visibility for two of our clients across AI platforms. The citation that was being pulled in (I think it was on ChatGPT and Perplexity) was that Who What Wear list of ‘Best of Summer Work Dresses’.

If you searched ‘summer work dresses ‘in either of those platforms, our client was being pulled in. The reason they were being pulled in (and we could see this using ChatGPT Path, but we were also using a variety of other tools, including Ahrefs and Waikay) was that ‘Best of Summer Work Dresses’ article.

More and more, what we're seeing for our clients and their competitors is that those ‘Best of’ lists are currently the best tactic to get featured in AI search results. I would also say that we've seen product reviews and product features pulling through, in order to drive those search results. It's important not to exclude those.

To go back to your question about the balance between creativity and data with digital PR and SEO, when it comes to AI search and utilising digital PR to drive visibility there, I would recommend that digital PRs lean more towards the data than the creative. You really need to understand what it is your consumers are searching for and when, in order to drive the right PR – which is essentially product and ‘Best of’-led.

It’s not super creative, but more product and data around product-led is ultimately going to drive visibility in AI search results.”

How do you determine the best place to publish to be picked up by an AI search result?

“Ultimately, what you need to focus on is high-quality publishers. When I talk about AI-cited domains, what I'm talking about is what we would normally refer to, from an SEO perspective, as high-quality referring domains, which ultimately translates to high-quality online publishers in your industry.

The way that you would determine which publishers are best for your client, or what you're trying to achieve for that client, is twofold. The first thing is relevance. Are they relevant to the topic that your client wants to surface for? Are they relevant to the products that your client sells? Are they relevant to their brand?

I work with a lot of fashion clients, so it's relatively clear what publishers might be relevant for them. Whatever industry your client is in, you need to make sure that the relevance of the publications you are going after with your digital PR really aligns with their brand and their products.

Then, of course, digital PR metrics. Authority: the authority of those publishers. What is their Domain Rating? We tell clients to aim for between 50 and 100. Where we tend to land is with an average DR of 75 to 80, sometimes more, but that's the quality of publisher that you should be going after – or the quality of AI-cited domain, in this case.”

To be more authoritative, should you try to make your own domain AI-cited, or should you focus on domains that are already AI-cited?

“I don't think it's not worthwhile, but I do think it's going to be difficult. In the same way that many of the highest-authority domains online are publishers (and it's difficult to compete with those), that difficulty, when it comes to competition, is still going to be there.

The wonderful trick with digital PR is that you can influence your own Domain Rating and, therefore, your visibility more broadly. You are not necessarily competing with publishers, but you're drawing on their authority in order to influence your own.”

Should you aim to have your message appear within AI search and have people consume your content there, or attempt to drive people back to your own site?

“Everything is in its infancy. However, in terms of that user journey, what I can see at the moment is that consumers tend to go from AI to either the publication or domain cited by AI, or back to Google.

At the moment, there isn't really the function (unless you can compete with those top-tier publishers) to drive users directly to your site. That might evolve in the future. What's more likely to evolve is a shopping function on AI, similar to Google Shopping, for your products.

Right now, I don't know that it's possible for the main goal to be to drive people to your site, because brands aren’t necessarily going to be able to compete with the other domains cited by AI quite yet.”

Annabelle, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“My key takeaway is ultimately that what we need to be focussing on (and, yes, AI is a key part of this) is meeting users where they are and on the platforms that they are searching. Google is still the biggest one, but there are others that we now need to consider, including AI.

SEOs who adapt now are going to have a very significant first-mover advantage, whereas if you leave it too late, then you're not going to be able to drive the same results as your competitors.”

Annabelle Sacher is Head of Digital PR at MediaVision. Find out more over at WeAreMediaVision.com.