Is AI recommending your brand

Evolve your earned media and content strategies to establish impactful, lasting AI search visibility

Consumers and businesses are turning to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other AI tools for countless routine purchase decisions -- which eye cream to buy, where to stay on vacation, the best public relations firm to hire, the top employee benefits providers and more. AI is becoming a research partner and "recommender." The question for companies and brands is no longer solely where they rank in online search results - it's also whether they appear in AI-generated answers and how prominently.

As AI search engine usage grows, brands must prioritize AI Engine Optimization - also called AEO or GEO - or risk becoming invisible to customers (or less visible than competitors) and losing out on sales. AI visibility refers to the percentage of times your brand or company name is referenced across AI search engine answers. It's also closely tied to revenue and sales based on how often you appear when purchase-decision prompts are asked by people who are ready to buy - like, "I'm looking to buy new running shoes - which brand provides the best arch support?" In fact, 40-55% of consumers are using AI search to make purchasing decisions.

How does it work?

While traditional search optimizes for rankings, AI optimizes for recommendation probability. With AI recommendations often concentrated among just a few brands, if yours isn't included, potential customers may never discover you during their research and your competitors' advantage is compounded. Even if you're performing well in Google rankings, without the right AI cues - structured, factual and consistent content, and third-party authority like news stories - you may be omitted entirely from AI-generated answers, including the AI overviews now generated via Google search.

Why earned media matters more than ever

Like humans, AI systems are designed to identify and synthesize information from sources they deem authoritative and credible, underscoring the continued importance of earned media and showing up in news stories. In fact, MuckRack found that 99% of links cited by AI currently come from non-paid media, with the largest share deriving from true journalistic sources at 27%. This is followed by corporate blogs/content (24%); aggregators/encyclopedic sources, e.g. Wikipedia (17.4%); owned media like your website (13.7%); social media/UGC, e.g. Reddit (2.9); and press releases (<2%). Paid and advertorial content account for roughly .3% of all AI search result citations.

With more than 50% of all consumers using AI-powered search today, and AI users demonstrating greater engagement than those using traditional search, it's time to adjust your earned media and content strategies accordingly.

Get started with these 4 steps

1. Measure your AI visibility baseline: First things first: audit how, where and when your brand is showing up in relevant AI prompts and queries relative to your competitors. For consumer brands, ChatGPT is typically most important, but if you primarily market to other businesses, Claude and Gemini may be higher priorities. Linhart can help assess your share of voice across AI platforms, evaluate the quality of visibility (sentiment) and identify any competitive gaps where your brand is being overlooked.
2. Evolve your earned media strategy: Not all media are created equal when it comes to AI influence. An initial AI audit will reveal the outlets and reporters most frequently cited in AI-generated results, allowing your PR firm to target both with story and interview offers most likely to generate a win. Once you start appearing in the most influential spots, your AI search results will improve. These insights can also inform your approach to messaging, thought leadership and spokesperson prep that contribute to long-term visibility and authority. For instance, if your competitors are included in articles cited in response to a specific topical prompt where you'd also like to appear, e.g. "most reliable used cars, you may consider expanding your message set accordingly - and even training brand ambassadors to deliver the messaging -so you can earn new coverage opportunities and help close the gap. ‍
3. Optimize your content strategy: An AI audit also will uncover a list of influential domains, revealing entire channels where you may be losing ground to competitors - like owned blogs and podcasts - or areas where your content will require restructuring so that it more effectively engages AI answer engines. For example, AI search engines like consistent formatting across websites and recent or regularly updated content too. Linhart can help you identify these issues and gaps, prioritize and then optimize content for AI systems to more easily interpret and reference.
4. Train your team: If your team isn't familiar with how AI systems evaluate content, sources and expertise, it's time to change that. Creating a playbook that gets updated regularly as AI search continues to adjust and change will help create meaningful, lasting visibility in a discovery and purchase decision ecosystem that will increasingly favor AI search.

The organizations that understand how AI systems find, evaluate and recommend products, services, companies, brands - and more! - will be better positioned to influence customer decisions tomorrow.

The first step is understanding where your brand stands today. Contact us at [email protected] to learn more about AI visibility audits and assessments, AI-focused earned media programs and AI-adjusted content optimization strategies.