The longstanding benefit of a well-thought-out PR program is expanded brand awareness. If your program is doing the right things, more people will recognize your brand and be familiar with what you’re in business to do.
This is what sometimes gets the work we do labeled as a “nice to have”. In today’s highly competitive sea of sameness, the work that communications professionals do on behalf of a brand should be rooted in the goals of the business. Maybe the goal is a new market or vertical penetration? Maybe a higher-level narrative that changes the way a market is viewed or goes about solving business problems? Or even to set the business up for a future corporate milestone (funding, M&A, etc.)
Historically, the traditional way we’ve measured PR’s impact through KPIs are focused on message pull-through, share of voice, and media impressions. There are times when the PR program success is based on its connection to new revenue—and if that is the case you’ve been setting yourself up for failure. But today, that narrative is shifting as PR is at the center of one of marketing’s most urgent conversations: Answer Engine Optimization—one that expands brand awareness AND has a closer connection to revenue growth.
What is Answer Engine Optimization?
If you haven’t heard about it, you will see it everywhere because it is quickly becoming marketing’s hottest topic. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), also referred to as Generative AI Optimization, AI Optimization, or many other unofficial nicknames, is the evolving practice of influencing how brands appear in AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. While the terminology has not been formally coined, the question on everyone’s mind is the same: How do we optimize for AI?
AI can feel other worldly, but the good news is that it’s not as complicated as it sounds. AI tools crawl, scan, and index content across the internet, but differently than Google. Instead of relying heavily on backlinks or keyword density, answer engines prioritize credibility and context. That’s where PR comes in. Answer engines prioritize high-authority third-party sources (like news articles and analyst reports), brand-owned assets with clearly defined messaging (like About pages and press releases), and structured content such as FAQs and attributed quotes.
What outlets are important to AI search?
Everyone agrees: to win in AI search, your brand needs to be quoted by credible sources but few are digging into the nitty gritty of which outlets actually move the needle.
Here’s what we know: AI tools don’t treat all media equally. They prioritize content from domains with high authority, wide distribution, and consistent citation across the web. This is supported by datasets like OpenWebText and OpenWebText2 (used to train models like GPT-3 and GPT-4), which disproportionately feature URLs from high domain authority (DA) sites. That’s great news for PR agencies that consistently land placements in national business press, high-traffic tech outlets, and frequently cited news organizations.
According to Ziff Davis, outlets like CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Reuters dominate these high-authority training sets. These are the brands that show up over and over in AI-generated answers because the models are trained to trust them.
Let’s take a look at a few examples of outlets with exceptionally high DA:
- (DA 95) CNN, The New York Times
- (DA 94) The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, USA Today, HuffPost, Business Insider, Reuters
- (DA 93) CNBC, Yahoo Finance,
- (DA 92) The Associated Press
While PR pros have long known the importance of these top-tier media outlets, it is now more crucial than ever to incorporate Tier 1 into the media strategy for AI visibility. Tools like Moz and SEMrush allow you to view domain authority and sort your coverage reports accordingly.
A modern PR strategy: the relationship between AI and PR going forward
As PR experts, we’ve long understood that industry trade coverage often drives the most qualified leads. However, as discussed above, answer engines don’t weigh outlets based on niche relevance. This doesn’t mean we abandon trade press. Far from it. But it does mean PR teams need to educate clients on the evolving value of media coverage: some outlets will help build reputation and drive pipeline, while others will directly influence how AI presents your brand to future buyers.
A modern earned media strategy must balance both. It’s not either/or it’s both/and. We need to secure placements that land with real buyers and shape how AI tools summarize your company to the 95% of the market that’s still researching for a solution. That may require rethinking tiering models, refreshing your press target lists, and even revisiting what a “top-tier” win looks like in an AI-first world.
Answer Engine Optimization Can Show More Value
Whether your program is based on brand awareness or more top of funnel activity, AI Optimization allows you to now show more real traction and growth from your PR program. Brands today want to show up when the early-stage research begins from the customer side, and they want to be able to attribute where new leads are coming from. As the importance of AI search grows, being included in more third-party sources is critical to continuing to show the value your communications program is driving for the business and helping it meet its goals.
