Search is changing, and so is the way audiences discover brands, so it’s important we keep track of how this is working.
During a recent Cision AI webinar, one message stood out above all others – AI-powered search isn’t a future trend, it’s already influencing how people find, evaluate and trust organisations.
For PR professionals, that presents both a challenge and a significant opportunity, with AI becoming the new front door to information.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly changing online behaviour and ChatGPT is reaching around 700 million weekly users. AI-powered search is becoming an increasingly important way for people to research brands, products and services and it needs to be taken seriously.
Industry forecasts suggest that by 2028, AI could become a primary destination for information discovery, with AI-driven search continuing to grow significantly over the next few years. For communications teams, this means if your brand isn’t visible in AI-generated responses, you’re missing an emerging audience.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that AI models simply search the internet in the same way as traditional search engines, but AI-generated responses are heavily influenced by trusted, authoritative sources. Coverage in high-quality news publications plays a particularly important role in this, alongside credible online content and conversations taking place across social media.
This reinforces that earned media matters more than ever and its impact extends beyond reputation and SEO, it also helps shape how AI understands and recommends brands.
The webinar highlighted that AI visibility shouldn’t be viewed in isolation and brands need to understand how traditional media, online publications, owned content and social conversations work together to influence AI-generated responses.
Rather than focusing on one channel, communications strategies should consider the complete digital footprint that AI systems are likely to reference, and this creates a valuable opportunity for PR teams to strengthen their role within the wider marketing strategy by demonstrating how earned media contributes to discoverability in AI search.
Understanding the prompts that matter was another key takeaway and these generally fall into ‘branded prompts’, where users search specifically for your organisation or products, and ‘unbranded prompts’, where users ask broader questions such as ‘Which companies specialise in crisis communications?’
Understanding where your brand appears and doesn’t appear provides valuable insight into your visibility and competitive position. The fundamentals of good PR haven’t changed and building strong relationships with journalists, securing coverage in trusted publications and creating authoritative content remain essential. The difference is that these activities are now influencing not only human audiences, but also the AI systems increasingly shaping how information is discovered.
If you’re looking for support with reaching your audiences in the right places, please get in touch.
ENDS