Earned media impact on AEO: why PR is suddenly a search strategy

If your team is still measuring search success mainly by clicks, you’re not alone. But you are missing out on a big piece of the full story.

Search is turning into summaries. Discovery is turning into recommendations. If your brand isn’t showing up in the answer, you’re not in the conversation.

That’s the core promise of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): making your brand easy for AI-powered search experiences to understand, trust, cite and recommend across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and voice assistants.

Now here’s the twist more marketing leaders need to hear: a big part of AEO is not on your site.

It’s earned media.

The earned media impact on AEO is measurable …and BIG

Muck Rack’s Generative Pulse research analyzed over 1,000,000 links cited by web-enabled AI models and the results are hard to ignore.

Non-paid coverage accounts for about 94% of links cited by AI.  And 82% of links cited come from earned media like journalism and third-party coverage.  That means the sources AI trusts most are not ads; they’re credible sources.

A few more data points worth bookmarking:

• About 25% of AI citations come from journalistic sources.
• AI prefers fresh sources. More than half of citations were published in the last 12 months and the highest citation rate occurs within seven days of publication.
• Press release citations are rising fast, up five times from 0.2% in July to 1% in December.

One more detail that matters for strategy: Muck Rack found that for a given brand, most AI citations come from only 20 outlets.  In other words, you don’t need “all the coverage.” You need the right coverage.

Why this changes the PR conversation for all industries

Historically, a lot of companies treated PR as optional. Nice to have. A “maybe next quarter” line item.

The earned media impact on AEO is turning that into a business case, especially in industries where trust, authority and risk management are fundamentals, not buzzwords.

Banking and Finance: trust signals that AI already leans on

In Muck Rack’s industry trends, Bankrate and NerdWallet show up in top finance and insurance citations across each model tested.  If you’re trying to win discovery queries like “best business checking account” or “how to compare refinancing options,” earned media in authoritative finance outlets helps your brand get pulled into the answer, not buried under it.

What this can look like:

• Executive commentary that gets quoted in reputable finance reporting
• Data-driven stories that become reference points for broader coverage
• Thought leadership that clarifies categories where customers ask AI for comparisons and recommendations

Manufacturing: niche authority is no longer niche

For industry-specific queries, niche outlets are still important.  That’s a big deal for manufacturers because a lot of high-intent AI queries are technical and specific: materials, compliance, supply chain resilience, automation decisions and safety.

The win here is visibility where buyers are asking AI “who should we talk to” questions. Earn coverage in the right vertical publications and trade outlets and you increase the odds AI can confidently cite and summarize your expertise.

Healthcare: credibility is the entry fee

In healthcare, Muck Rack’s findings show top cited sources are predominantly NGO or government organizations, with one major exception where Gemini includes YouTube as a primary source.

For healthcare brands, authority is everything. Earned media that reinforces clinical credibility, patient trust and safety standards supports AEO because it aligns with what AI systems tend to cite for healthcare topics.

PR is not replacing SEO. It’s powering AEO alongside it

AEO works best when content, PR and digital are aligned.

We also need to be honest about what’s changing inside search.

• AI Overviews appeared in over 11% of Google queries as of May 2025
• Impressions rose 49% year over year
• Click-through rate dropped 30%
• AI platforms drove over 1.1 billion referral visits in June 2025, up 357% year over year.

So yes, your technical SEO still matters. Your content still matters. But if your AEO plan doesn’t include earned media, you’re building the house while skipping the foundation.

Here’s how we talk about it with clients: we focus on what we can control, like clarity, structure, proof, authority and technical signals.  Then we build the credibility layer that AI actually cites, which is where PR and earned media come in.

What to do next if you want the earned media impact on AEO to work for you

Start simple. Get intentional. Then get consistent.

1. Start with intent: Ask yourself: what question is the buyer actually asking and what would a great one-paragraph answer look like?
2. Write for people and machines: Use a conversational tone, active voice, short paragraphs and clear subheads. Put one to two sentence answers directly under headers that relate to common queries.
3. Make it easy to cite: Split content into themed sections and use credible examples, outcomes, named experts and reputable citations.
4. Strengthen understanding signals: Look for schema opportunities and make entity details clear, including full names, specific services and clear locations.

Then it’s time to bring PR into play with a smarter target list. Remember, Muck Rack found only about 2% overlap between the journalists most PR pros pitch and the journalists AI cites most for a brand. That’s a signal that the playing field changed and your pitching strategy should change with it. A top-notch PR team will know this.

Whatever your industry, from banking and finance to manufacturing and healthcare, if you haven’t historically invested in PR, the impact earned media has on AEO is more than enough reason to revisit that decision with fresh eyes and better data.

Reach out to our team today to discuss ideas for incorporating earned media into your marketing strategy to maximize your brand visibility.