Can PR Help Your Business Appear in ChatGPT and AI Search? What We Know in 2026
By Jordan Baker, Founder of Fair Public Relations and former UK national journalist
Over the past year, I have become increasingly interested in a question I never expected to spend quite so much time thinking about:
Can public relations help a business appear in ChatGPT and other forms of AI search?
I should make something clear from the outset. I am a PR professional and former journalist. I am not an AI engineer or search scientist, and I am not going to pretend that I know the secret formula ChatGPT, Google, Gemini or any other AI system uses to decide which businesses to recommend.
Nobody outside those systems should claim to have a magic formula.
What I can talk about is PR.
I have spent more than a decade helping businesses, founders and experts create a stronger public profile through earned media. And over the past year, I have watched the way prospective clients discover PR agencies begin to change.
Fair Public Relations historically relied heavily on referrals, repeat business and people who already knew our work. We were relatively late to taking SEO seriously.
Around autumn 2025, we began becoming much more purposeful about our website. We started writing detailed articles, building FAQs, improving structured information, creating pages around the different audiences and sectors we support and generally making it easier to understand exactly what we do.
Then prospective clients started saying something unexpected:
"I found you on ChatGPT."
At first it was interesting.
Then it started happening regularly.
As we worked more seriously on our website and wider online presence, we began seeing several enquiries a day that specifically referenced ChatGPT, while our overall enquiries grew into the tens per week. Eventually, we stopped running Meta advertising because the organic and AI-led enquiries we were receiving were proving far more interesting to us commercially.
The enquiries also often felt different.
Someone who has actively asked an AI system to find a PR agency matching their business, location, requirements and budget can be much further through the buying process than somebody who happens to see an advert while scrolling through social media.
That was when I started looking much more closely at the relationship between PR and AI discovery.
What does it actually mean to "appear in ChatGPT"?
Before talking about PR, it is useful to separate several things that are frequently bundled together as "AI visibility".
A business can be cited by an AI system because its website has been used as a source.
It can be mentioned, where its name appears in the answer.
It can be recommended, where somebody asks for suitable providers and the AI actively suggests that business as an option.
And it can simply be understood accurately, where the AI correctly identifies what the business does, who it serves, where it operates and what makes it different.
Those are not the same outcome.
For a business trying to attract customers, being recommended may be commercially far more interesting than simply having one of its pages cited.
Recent Semrush research illustrates that distinction. Its June 2026 study analysed 3,981 domain appearances across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Google AI Mode. It found that 61.7% were what the researchers called "ghost citations", where a page was cited as a source but the brand itself was not named in the answer.
That is important.
You could theoretically win an AI citation without the prospective customer ever becoming particularly aware of your company.
This is why I think businesses need to look beyond the question:
"Did ChatGPT cite my website?"
The better commercial question may be:
"When somebody is looking for a business like mine, does the AI understand me well enough to consider recommending me?"
Can PR help you appear in ChatGPT?
My answer is yes, I think good PR can help.
But that needs a very large caveat.
PR cannot guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend your business.
It cannot guarantee Google AI visibility.
It cannot guarantee a citation.
It cannot guarantee a particular position in an AI-generated list.
And I would be extremely wary of any PR or marketing provider promising those things.
OpenAI itself says there is no way to guarantee top placement in ChatGPT Search. It says any public website can potentially appear, and publishers that want their content available for summaries and snippets should make sure they are not blocking its OAI-SearchBot.
So what can PR do?
PR can help create a much stronger public record of your business, your people and your expertise.
And I think that distinction is crucial.
Your website says what you claim. PR creates third-party evidence.
Anybody can publish the following sentence on their website:
"We are one of the UK's leading experts in X."
That does not make it true.
A company controls its own website. It chooses its own language. It can describe itself almost however it likes, subject to advertising laws and other regulations.
Earned media is different.
When an independent journalist decides that your founder is useful enough to interview, your research is interesting enough to report, your product is relevant enough to include or your expert is credible enough to quote, another organisation has made an editorial decision about your relevance.
That distinction has always been valuable in PR.
I think it becomes particularly interesting in a world where AI systems are retrieving and synthesising information from many different sources.
PR can create independent pages that connect:
your name with your profession
your business with your sector
your founder with their expertise
your product with its category
your research with a subject
your company with a particular geographic market
Again, I am not saying that each mention becomes an individual "ChatGPT ranking factor". We do not know that.
The more defensible point is that good PR creates more credible public information about what you actually do.
Current research gives PR professionals a reason to pay attention
There is now some interesting industry research around the sources AI systems cite.
Muck Rack's May 2026 "What Is AI Reading?" analysis looked at more than 25 million links cited across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini in 17 industries. In Muck Rack's classification, 84% of citations came from earned media, while journalism accounted for 27% of cited sources. Paid and advertorial content represented 0.3%.
That is a striking finding for anyone working in PR.
But it needs to be treated responsibly.
Muck Rack is a company operating in the PR and media industry. This is its own study, not OpenAI, Google or Anthropic announcing that earned media is an official ranking factor.
Nor does correlation prove that getting one article published will cause an AI system to recommend your company.
What it does show is that editorial and other earned sources represent a substantial part of the information being cited in the dataset Muck Rack analysed.
For PR professionals, that is certainly worth paying attention to.
An unlinked press mention is not worthless
For years, digital PR became increasingly focused on one question:
Did we get a backlink?
Backlinks can be extremely useful.
I would rather have a credible press mention with an editorial backlink than the same mention without one, all else being equal.
One of our campaigns for cleaning business One Less Thing generated 38 published articles during its first 12 months, 35 of which contained editorial backlinks. During that period, the newly launched site's Moz Domain Authority increased from 0 to 19. Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor, and we cannot attribute every change to PR, but the campaign demonstrates how genuine editorial coverage can contribute to a substantially stronger online footprint.
However, I would happily accept a strong unlinked media mention any day of the week.
An article can still contain your name, your company, your job title, your industry, your expertise and your opinion without linking to your website.
That creates another publicly available document associating those things together.
We should not make the leap of claiming that an unlinked brand mention is a confirmed AI ranking signal.
But I think it is increasingly difficult to justify viewing an independent online mention as worthless simply because the journalist did not provide a backlink.
Repeated expert commentary can build a public record of expertise
This is one area where traditional PR and AI discovery fit together particularly naturally.
Suppose you are a clinical psychologist.
If your own website says you are an expert in mental health and relationships, that is useful information.
If independent publications repeatedly quote you explaining mental health, relationships and human behaviour, there is now a much larger public record supporting that positioning.
We saw this with Cambridge Therapy Centre.
Over six months, we positioned founder and Clinical Psychologist Christine Schneider as a media expert across psychology, mental health, relationships, wellbeing and human behaviour. The campaign generated more than 30 published media opportunities across outlets including The Independent, Daily Mail, Yahoo, MSN, Dazed, SheerLuxe and specialist publications.
From a PR perspective, that repeated coverage tells journalists and prospective clients that other editors have already considered the expert credible and interesting enough to use.
From an AI perspective, I would describe the benefit more cautiously.
It creates a clearer body of online information associating that person with those subjects.
That is the bit we can confidently influence through PR.
Features and profiles can create particularly rich context
A full article about an expert or business can be extremely useful because it contains far more information than a one-line quotation.
A profile might explain someone's background, qualifications, company, expertise, history, ideas and point of view all in one place.
Those opportunities are also considerably harder to earn.
Most expert PR campaigns will therefore include a mixture of deeper features and shorter commentary opportunities.
I would not ignore the smaller pieces.
Ten relevant expert comments across credible publications can create a very useful public footprint, particularly when those comments consistently relate to the subjects that person genuinely knows.
The important word there is consistently.
If somebody comments on leadership on Monday, cryptocurrency on Tuesday, skincare on Wednesday and divorce law on Thursday, that is not particularly coherent positioning.
PR works better when we have a clear idea of what the person should become known for.
Positioning comes before AI visibility
This is one of the strongest lessons I have learned from working on our own website.
Before you worry about GEO, AEO, ChatGPT or anything else, answer some much more basic questions.
Who are you?
Who are your customers?
What are you particularly good at?
What evidence supports that?
What do you want people to associate with your name?
What can you genuinely speak about with authority?
At Fair PR, this is why positioning is an important part of the onboarding process. We want to understand the client's credibility, audience, areas of expertise and what makes them distinctive before we start trying to create media opportunities.
If your own positioning is confused, it is difficult to expect journalists, customers, Google or an AI system to understand you clearly.
There is nothing wrong with refining that position over time either.
One thing I have found surprisingly useful is simply asking AI systems what they think a business does.
I have repeatedly asked questions about Fair PR, looked at what the system understands correctly, noticed where information appears to be missing or outdated, and then gone back to our public marketing to see whether we have actually explained that point properly.
AI should not dictate your brand strategy.
But it can be an interesting mirror.
Clear information often beats vague marketing language
One of the biggest changes we have made to Fair PR's website is specificity.
We now have dedicated pages explaining the different audiences we serve, the sectors where we have experience, the locations we support, the work we have done and what our service costs.
That is better than saying:
"We help ambitious brands unlock their potential through innovative communication solutions."
Language like that may sound impressive in a marketing meeting, but it contains very little usable information.
Compare it with:
Fair PR works with founders, experts, B2B businesses, B2C brands and professional services firms.
Or:
Our Standard PR service costs £597 per month.
Those are facts.
A prospective customer can use them.
So can a search engine.
And so can an AI system trying to answer a specific question.
Transparent pricing has been particularly interesting
Pricing has become one of the clearest examples in our own AI testing.
Fair PR publishes its monthly Standard PR price.
That is deliberate.
"Affordable" is subjective. One agency may call £4,000 per month affordable. Another person may have a £500 budget.
An actual price gives everybody something concrete.
In our informal ChatGPT testing, we have repeatedly seen Fair PR become more prominent when a user adds a specific budget to a broader request.
For example, a broad request for a London PR agency for an executive coach initially produced several agencies. Once the hypothetical customer specified a budget below £1,000 per month, Fair PR became the strongest recommendation.
A request for PR support for a private medical centre in London initially favoured specialist healthcare agencies. Once the user added an under-£1,000 monthly budget, Fair entered the top three.
That makes sense.
The first question is primarily about specialism.
The second introduces another important buying constraint: price.
The business that is most suitable can therefore change.
What our informal AI recommendation tests have shown us
I want to be very careful with these examples.
This is not controlled scientific research.
AI answers can change. They may differ by model, location, conversation, date, search behaviour and wording.
I do not believe one screenshot proves anything.
What I find useful is looking for patterns.
I actually find the occasions where Fair does not come first reassuring.
Good AI visibility should not mean being recommended indiscriminately.
If a multinational has a £10 million annual communications budget and needs global public affairs, investor relations and crisis communications, Fair PR should not be its number-one recommendation.
That would mean the system had misunderstood us.
The objective should be to appear more consistently when we are genuinely a sensible fit.
I am much more interested in the quality of AI visibility than the quantity.
One prompt does not equal "ranking number one on ChatGPT"
This is another area where businesses need to be cautious.
AI answers are conversational and contextual.
A user may start broadly, refine the request, add a location, specify a budget and then ask for a comparison.
The brands appearing at each stage can change.
Semrush's July 2026 analysis of 50,000 brands across 1,094 subject areas reinforces this. It found that only 15.2% of the categories it tested had what the researchers defined as a clear brand owner. The research also found substantial variation between related prompts within the same topic.
That is why I would never see Fair appearing first for one query and advertise:
"Fair PR is number one on ChatGPT."
It would be meaningless.
A more sensible question is whether a brand appears repeatedly across the collection of questions genuine prospective customers are likely to ask.
PR for AI visibility should still look like PR
This may be the most important point in this entire article.
If a client came to me tomorrow and said:
"I want PR because I want ChatGPT to know who I am."
I would not suddenly invent a completely new PR methodology.
I would say that stronger PR may help build the online evidence around them, but we also need to make sure their own website and public profiles clearly support the same positioning.
Then we would do PR.
If they have a genuinely interesting story, we might pitch the story.
If they possess useful professional expertise, we might build an expert commentary campaign.
If the founder has an interesting background or point of view, founder PR might be appropriate.
If the company has useful original data, we might create a data-led campaign.
If it has a consumer product, product PR may be relevant.
If there are appropriate paid contributor or partnership opportunities, those can sometimes supplement the earned work.
The principles have not changed.
The difference is that, if AI visibility is an objective, I would place particularly strong value on creating useful online evidence around the subjects the client wants to become known for.
Earned media should remain the foundation
I do not believe every paid or partnered media opportunity is bad.
They can have a place.
If somebody is starting almost completely from zero, a reputable contributor opportunity, partnership or clearly identified sponsored placement may help create some initial material about who they are and what they think.
But businesses need to be honest about what those placements are.
Paying for an article is not the same thing as a journalist independently deciding to cover you.
A publisher may say contributors are "vetted", but businesses should not assume that the same editorial process applies to a paid contribution as to independently earned journalism.
My own preference would normally be for earned media to make up the substantial majority of a PR programme.
The goal is not simply to manufacture as many URLs as possible.
It is to build credible authority.
This is one reason Muck Rack's finding that paid and advertorial sources accounted for only 0.3% of citations in its May dataset is interesting, although again, that is one industry study and should not be treated as an official ranking rule.
Data-led PR could become even more useful
Original research has always been useful in PR because it gives a journalist something new.
That becomes particularly interesting when people are increasingly asking AI systems factual questions.
Businesses may have access to useful information through original surveys, anonymised customer data, pricing research, market analysis or their own proprietary datasets.
Good data-led PR does not mean commissioning a meaningless survey simply to create a sensational headline.
The data should be useful, responsibly gathered and explained properly.
But if a business becomes the original source of interesting information, and journalists then report that information, it can create a much larger online footprint around both the data and the organisation behind it.
That feels increasingly valuable.
Founder PR can reinforce company authority
For founder-led businesses, the distinction between the founder's reputation and the company's reputation can be relatively small.
Fair PR itself is an example.
AI descriptions of our business frequently refer to me as the founder, so it makes sense for the information available about me to support what Fair PR claims about its expertise.
That is why I have my own media expert profile on our website.
It is also why we conduct PR for ourselves in much the same way we do for clients.
In August 2026, I was quoted by the Daily Mail providing PR commentary around Meghan Markle and her As Ever brand. The following day, London Daily News published an article describing me directly as a PR expert and sharing my advice for small businesses looking for media coverage.
Those articles do not magically create an AI ranking.
What they do create is independent, searchable evidence that I am actually being used by journalists to talk about the subject Fair PR says I know.
For a founder-led business, that relationship can be extremely useful.
Build an authority trail, not a pile of marketing claims
I have started thinking about this as an authority trail.
An authority trail is the collection of public evidence that allows somebody researching a person or business to understand who they are, what they know and what they have genuinely done.
That might include the company's own website, detailed case studies, expert profiles, independent press coverage, professional biographies, original research, interviews, external profiles, reviews and articles written under the person's own name.
No single item establishes authority on its own.
Together, they create a much richer picture.
That is what I think businesses should be trying to build.
Not because there is a secret "authority trail" field inside ChatGPT.
Because it is simply much easier for anyone researching you to understand and verify your credibility when the evidence exists.
That includes prospective customers.
It includes journalists.
It includes Google.
And it potentially includes AI systems retrieving information from the web.
Case studies are considerably better than saying "we're great"
This is another area where our own website has changed enormously.
Historically, we were not particularly good at talking about our work.
We had spent more than a decade running campaigns, but much of that experience was hidden.
Now we have detailed case studies showing the client, challenge, strategy, media activity and outcome.
That is useful commercially, but it also creates much richer information around what Fair PR actually does.
A page saying:
"We are experienced in cleaning PR"
is a claim.
A case study explaining how One Less Thing generated 38 published articles, 35 editorial backlinks and strengthened the external authority of a new website provides evidence.
The same principle applies to almost any business.
If you claim to be good at something, show the work.
Media coverage databases can turn claims into evidence
We have taken the same approach with our Media Coverage section.
Rather than simply saying we have secured media coverage for clients, we publish an expanding searchable record of individual articles.
That means someone researching Fair PR can move from a sector page to a case study and then into individual examples of actual published work.
For humans, it is useful proof.
For search engines, it creates a connected body of information.
For AI retrieval, it potentially gives systems much more public material from which to understand the relationships between the agency, its clients, its experts, the subjects they discuss and the publications where that work appeared.
I increasingly believe that this kind of evidence-first marketing is preferable to endlessly producing more promotional copy.
Your own website still matters enormously
It would be a mistake to read all of this and conclude:
"Great. I'll just do PR and ignore my website."
That is not my view at all.
The two need to work together.
If media coverage describes you as an executive coach, your LinkedIn calls you a leadership consultant, your website says business mentor and an old directory profile describes you as a life coach, there is unnecessarily conflicting information available about you.
I am not claiming that AI systems apply some secret "consistency score".
The simpler point is that clearer public information is easier to understand than contradictory public information.
This is why our own AI visibility work has actually made us more careful marketers.
We have become more explicit about who we help, what we offer, what it costs, where we operate, which sectors we have experience in and what we cannot promise.
Writing for AI and writing for humans have turned out to be surprisingly similar.
Both benefit from clarity.
Do you need special technical GEO tricks?
There are some technical basics worth understanding, but I would resist the idea that a special file or piece of code can replace good content, good SEO and genuine authority.
OpenAI says public websites can appear in ChatGPT Search and advises publishers who want their content included in search summaries and snippets not to block OAI-SearchBot. It also says ChatGPT Search may rewrite a user's question into more targeted searches when looking for current information.
Google is even more explicit about avoiding unnecessary GEO mythology.
Its current guidance says the established fundamentals of SEO still apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google says there are no additional technical requirements for those AI features, no special AI schema is required and site owners do not need to create new machine-readable AI text files to appear in them.
That does not mean structured data is pointless.
We use it ourselves because making information machine-readable and ensuring it accurately reflects the visible page is sensible website hygiene.
It means businesses should be sceptical of anyone presenting one technical tweak as the magic door into AI recommendations.
SEO and PR increasingly overlap
I do not see GEO as something that replaces SEO.
Nor do I see PR as a replacement for either.
The three increasingly overlap.
Google's official guidance says its generative AI search features are rooted in its existing Search ranking and quality systems and that normal SEO best practices remain relevant.
Meanwhile, PR can help create third-party coverage, brand mentions, editorial links, expert associations and original information elsewhere on the web.
Your own site still needs to be technically accessible, useful and clear.
Your wider online footprint should support the same positioning.
And your PR should create genuine reasons for independent sources to talk about you.
There is no need to choose one.
How should businesses measure PR-led AI visibility?
I would not measure this by checking one prompt every morning.
Nor would I celebrate one citation as proof that a campaign has worked.
The most useful measurements are commercial and directional.
Are AI systems mentioning the business more often across relevant questions?
Are they describing the business accurately?
Are they recommending it when the potential customer is genuinely a good fit?
Do the same competitors repeatedly appear alongside it?
Are prospective customers saying they discovered the business through ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI or another system?
And most importantly, are those people becoming good enquiries?
Google has also begun rolling out dedicated Search Console reporting for visibility in its generative AI Search experiences, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, although the initial rollout is to a subset of sites.
For us, however, one of the strongest signals has been considerably simpler:
customers telling us where they found us.
I often notice enquiries increasing before I investigate what has changed in AI recommendations.
That real-world outcome matters far more to me than collecting screenshots.
What PR cannot promise about AI search
This deserves to be extremely clear.
A PR agency cannot responsibly promise that it will make you number one in ChatGPT.
It cannot guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend you.
It cannot guarantee a citation.
It cannot guarantee that Google AI Overviews will include you.
It cannot guarantee that a press article will be used by an AI system.
It cannot guarantee backlinks from earned journalism.
It cannot guarantee that somebody who sees you in an AI answer will click, enquire or buy.
OpenAI itself says top placement cannot be guaranteed. Google likewise says meeting its requirements and best practices does not guarantee crawling, indexing or inclusion.
If somebody guarantees an outcome that the platforms themselves do not guarantee, ask difficult questions.
What PR can legitimately do
PR can give your business more opportunities to be discussed online by third parties.
It can help establish clear associations between genuine experts and their subjects.
It can turn credible professional knowledge into journalist-friendly commentary.
It can create feature opportunities.
It can support founder visibility.
It can generate original research and data-led stories.
It can help products, services and businesses earn editorial attention where relevant.
It can increase the number of independent online documents describing your business.
And sometimes it can produce editorial backlinks as a secondary benefit.
Those are tangible PR activities.
They were valuable before ChatGPT became a discovery channel.
I believe they may become even more valuable as AI-generated answers play a larger role in how people research businesses.
Do not manufacture authority for AI
There is an obvious danger here.
As marketers become more interested in AI visibility, some will inevitably try to create authority artificially.
We are already seeing businesses flood the web with low-value AI content, manufactured expertise, questionable contributor pieces and generic "expert" profiles.
I think that is the wrong direction.
I recently wrote separately about why fake expertise and lazy AI-generated PR are damaging media trust. Journalists increasingly have to verify whether sources, credentials and comments are genuine.
If the aim of AI visibility is to make a business appear more credible, manufacturing false credibility is a particularly strange strategy.
Good PR should make genuine expertise easier to discover.
It should not invent expertise that does not exist.
Is PR becoming more important because of AI search?
I think so.
There is only so much you can say about yourself.
At some point, independent evidence matters.
That has always been one of the fundamental strengths of earned media.
The difference today is that the audience for those independent mentions may no longer be limited to the people who read the publication when the article first appears.
A useful piece of journalism remains online.
It can appear in traditional search.
It can be shared.
It can be found by future journalists.
It can support prospective-client research.
And it may also become one of the sources available to AI systems trying to understand a person, business, product or industry.
That potentially extends the useful life of good PR considerably.
Frequently asked questions
Can PR help my business appear in ChatGPT?
PR may help create a stronger online footprint around your business through earned media, expert commentary, features, brand mentions, original research and editorial links. These can provide additional third-party information about the business. However, PR cannot guarantee that ChatGPT will mention, cite or recommend you.
Can a PR agency guarantee ChatGPT visibility?
No. OpenAI itself says there is no way to guarantee top placement in ChatGPT Search. Any agency promising guaranteed ChatGPT rankings or recommendations should be treated cautiously.
Is being cited by ChatGPT the same as being recommended?
No. A citation means a page has been used or surfaced as a source. A recommendation means the AI has actively included the business as a possible solution to the user's question. Semrush research has also found that many citations do not result in the brand being named in the answer itself.
Does earned media help with AI search?
There is emerging evidence that earned media is frequently cited by AI systems. Muck Rack's May 2026 study classified 84% of the citations in its dataset as earned media. That does not prove an individual press article will improve an individual company's AI visibility, but it suggests earned sources are an important part of the information environment AI systems use.
Does an unlinked press mention still have value?
Yes. An unlinked article can still provide visibility, credibility and a public association between a business, expert and subject. A backlink may offer additional SEO value, but an independent mention is not necessarily worthless simply because it contains no link.
Can expert commentary help with AI visibility?
Expert commentary can create repeated online references connecting a person with their genuine expertise. There is no guarantee those references will cause an AI system to recommend that person, but they can contribute to a clearer public record of what the expert knows and where journalists have used their insight.
Is a national newspaper better than a trade publication?
Not necessarily. A national publication may offer enormous reach and prestige, while a specialist trade title can have a smaller but highly relevant audience. From a PR perspective, relevance can sometimes matter more than raw readership. There is not enough evidence to claim that AI systems universally prefer one type of publication over the other.
Do backlinks help with AI search?
Backlinks remain important within traditional SEO, but the precise role individual links play in AI-generated recommendations varies by system and is not publicly defined. PR should not be pursued solely as a backlink-generation exercise.
What is GEO?
GEO normally refers to Generative Engine Optimisation, the emerging practice of improving how a brand, person or website appears in AI-generated answers. It overlaps with SEO, content, PR, brand positioning and technical website work rather than replacing them.
Is SEO still important for AI search?
Yes. Google explicitly says existing SEO best practices remain foundational for its generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Do I need special schema for AI search?
Google says there is no special schema.org structured data required for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Existing structured data should accurately match the visible content of a page.
Do I need an AI-specific text file?
Google says businesses do not need to create new machine-readable AI text files to appear in its generative AI Search features. Different AI providers may have different crawling and retrieval systems, so technical requirements should always be checked against the relevant platform's current official guidance.
How quickly can a new business appear in ChatGPT?
There is no fixed timeline. ChatGPT Search can retrieve current web information rather than relying solely on what a model learned during training, so a business does not necessarily have to wait for a future model-training cycle before current public information can be discovered. OpenAI says public websites can potentially appear in ChatGPT Search when their content is accessible.
Should I create hundreds of pages for AI search?
I would not. Pages should exist because they provide genuinely useful, distinct information. Google's current guidance continues to emphasise useful, original, people-first content rather than special content created simply to manipulate generative AI results.
Can paid articles help with AI visibility?
Paid or partnered content can be part of a wider marketing strategy and may help create an initial online footprint. However, it should be clearly distinguished from earned editorial coverage. Muck Rack's May 2026 dataset found paid and advertorial sources represented a very small share of the citations it analysed.
What should I do if I want PR to support AI visibility?
Start with clear positioning. Make sure your website and public profiles accurately explain who you are, what you do and what you want to become known for. Then build genuine PR activity around the stories, expertise, research, products or people journalists may actually find useful. The objective should be to create credible online mentions around the subjects that matter to your business, not to manufacture content purely for an algorithm.
PR for AI search is still good PR
My biggest conclusion from all of this is surprisingly reassuring.
PR for AI search should not really look like a new type of PR.
It should look like good PR.
Be clear about what you do.
Have genuine expertise.
Decide what you want to become known for.
Make your own website accurate and useful.
Give journalists credible stories, comments, data and people.
Build meaningful third-party coverage.
Publish the evidence behind your claims.
Keep your public information consistent.
And do not promise outcomes you cannot control.
AI search gives businesses another reason to care about their wider public reputation online.
But the underlying principle has not changed.
Credibility is much stronger when other people can see the evidence for themselves.
And that is something good PR has always helped to build.
Could PR help strengthen your visibility in AI search?
Fair Public Relations helps founders, experts, B2B businesses, B2C brands and professional services firms build credible online authority through earned media.
Through Standard PR, we can help clarify what you want to become known for, identify journalist-friendly stories and expertise, develop commentary and thought leadership, and build a stronger body of independent online coverage over time.
PR cannot guarantee that ChatGPT, Google AI or another AI system will cite or recommend your business. What it can do is create more credible third-party mentions around the people, subjects and services you genuinely want to be associated with.
Get in touch
Written by Jordan Baker
Founder of Fair Public Relations and former UK national journalist
Jordan Baker is the founder of Fair Public Relations and a former UK national journalist with more than a decade of PR experience. He writes about public relations, journalist outreach, founder visibility, expert positioning and earned media.
View Jordan Baker’s media expert profile
