Explore additional AI-related insights in the November–December issue of Strategies & Tactics.
Artificial intelligence is the most disruptive innovation since the internet, but is being adopted twice as fast. Search engines are being steamrolled as web users shift to AI for answers, and organic website traffic is falling fast.
Search engine marketers are responding with a new practice called Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO. GEO refers to optimizing online content to help it appear or be cited by AI outputs like ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity.ai.
While GEO might sound like a black box at first, take a closer look. You’ll recognize the vast majority of GEO tactics as public relations basics.
Generative AI models process and synthesize information a lot like we humans do. They focus on trust signals like quality and authority, pull in context to make better sense of the information, take cues from how information is structured and decode the emotional undertones with sentiment analysis.
PR professionals expect our stakeholders and target audiences to process our content in much the same way.
Take media coverage as an example. It’s a powerful trust signal and a staple of the PR toolkit. AI platforms favor news sources too. In one analysis of over 75,000 AI Overviews, 21% included at least one citation from a news outlet. In another recent Muck Rack study, 27% of AI citations were from journalism reports.
The big shift here for PR experts to understand is that GEO is not about optimizing a single piece of content online for organic discovery. Those days are gone. To be relevant in the era of AI answer engines, a brand’s entire presence across the web has to be optimized.
To help navigate this shift, our agency has developed a helpful seven-letter acronym: CREATER. Each letter stands for a guiding principle to help optimize brands for AI discovery in a post-search engine world.
The CREATER rubric matches proven PR practices to AI discoverability:
C – Consistency
Consistent, clear messaging is a PR fundamental. Both journalists and AI engines notice and recall your brand’s story better when it’s unified across earned, owned, paid and shared sources. Conflicting messages can confuse both and lead to problems in your coverage and your AI citations.
R – Real
Journalists want to hear from real sources: employees, users, neighbors, eyewitnesses. So do AI platforms. They prioritize real user experiences and comments to form responses. Reddit is one leading AI source with its thousands of subreddits and upvoting system and so are TripAdvisor, Glassdoor, Capterra and other types of review sites.
E – Expertise
Expert sources matter to the media and to Google. So, make your experts and their expertise clear to LLMs as well as journalists. Emphasize credentials in bios for thought leadership content. Seek out expert comment in top-tier or niche trade media with clear attribution and connection to your brand.
A – Authority
Brands that produce original content that is quoted or referenced by other credible outlets, including media coverage, have what Google recognizes as authority. So, place original contributed articles and thought leadership content to build topical authority and publish helpful data sets and quotable insights to encourage sharing and establish your authority to AI.
T – Trustworthiness
Transparency, accuracy and quality are key elements that PR uses to build and maintain trust. AI platforms can process data from millions of sources in seconds, so, sloppy content, inconsistencies and past mistakes can undercut your credibility with audiences and with algorithms. Prioritize positive earned media and legit five-star reviews from trusted sites. You can’t outrank a reputational black eye in the AI age.
E – Experience
Demonstrate first-hand, real-world or personal knowledge on your brand’s topic or topics. Observational hot takes, Monday morning quarterbacking and weighing in on topics outside of your lane are not influential with either media or machines.
R – Recency
Just as reporters look for fresh news pegs, AI models reward recent and updated content. Regular press releases, timely op-eds and current blog posts are as important for AI recall as for human readers. Having an effective PR program is critical for sustaining AI answer engine visibility.
PR was built for this moment
GEO is not an entirely new or mystical discipline. It’s the same set of skills that good PR professionals have always used — relationship building, message discipline and cross-platform storytelling. Now we’re just applying them to a new and massively influential “audience surrogate.”
For a deeper dive, my agency published Rewriting the Rules of Search: PR’s Role in the AI Age. This white paper explores how generative AI is reshaping visibility and what PR leaders can do to adapt.
But the bottom line is this: Our profession already has the playbook.
Julie Wright is president of (W)right On Communications, the integrated public relations agency she founded in 1998. In 2024, her group was named PR Team of the Year by the PRSA San Diego/Imperial County Chapter. Find them online at wrightoncomm.com.
Illustration credit: bajimba
