AI is steadily disrupting all corners of our industry – from multimedia production, to content development and digital marketing. Including SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, that has been quickly repurposed to new indexation systems that completely skip web traffic in favor of AI-based answers and queries.
Julie Wright, President of (W)right Communications, Inc., an award-winning integrated strategic communications and public relations firm in San Diego and Seattle, recently wrote in PRSay about GEO – Generative Engine Optimization.
In the article, Julie argues that, instead of looking at GEO from the outside, PR professionals actually have the opportunity to tackle this challenge directly by leaning into PR fundamentals.
We talked with Julie to learn more about how GEO will affect PR agencies and clients’ brand reputation efforts in the near future.
IPRN: Julie, how should agencies adjust their reporting metrics if organic traffic continues to decline?
Julie Wright: Organic website traffic still matters but now so does AI visibility. So, PR agencies need to provide two additional reports for their clients:
- AI referral traffic as a subsection of traditional organic web traffic reports, and
- AI visibility reporting which shows which AI queries are producing citations or mentions for their clients.
To learn how to create an AI referral report in Google Analytics, download (W)right On Communications’ white paper, “Rewriting the Rules of Search.”
For AI visibility reporting tools, see Ubersuggest, Otterly.AI and similar tools that track the content that AI chatbots are summarizing and citing. It’s important to identify the AI queries your client cares about and that make sense to track before you set up one of these tools.
An opportunity for PR agencies to add value is guiding clients in their messaging and positioning to ensure that they are aligned with what their stakeholders might search in AI queries. There’s no sense producing or placing content that answers questions that no one is asking.
IPRN: In that case, how can PR professionals effectively influence the “real” sources you mention without compromising authenticity?
Julie Wright: Influence in the AI era is still earned and not engineered. This kind of work includes:
- Developing executives and subject-matter experts who are genuinely useful to journalists, analysts and industry editors
- Investing in original thinking, proprietary data and informed point-of-view—not recycled commentary
- Respecting editorial independence and resisting the urge to over-control language or outcomes
- Showing up consistently, even when there is no immediate announcement or campaign
Authenticity is not a limiting factor but an advantage. AI systems are trained to recognize patterns of credibility. Brands that appear only when they have something to sell or that rely on thin thought leadership will be filtered out by humans and machines alike.
IPRN: Does that mean that the permanence of a potential “reputational black eye” requires a rethinking of traditional crisis PR strategies?
Julie Wright: Yes, absolutely. AI systems retain, summarize and resurface historical information indefinitely. So, the notion that a crisis “blows over” is increasingly outdated. Even after news cycles move on, incidents can remain discoverable through AI answers, background summaries and automated reputation checks.
It’s still too early in the evolution of AI answer engines to understand how persistent their memories might be, but we do know for sure that brands can put out strong, AI-discoverable information to help feed AI’s inputs to generate a more nuanced output.
Early crisis responses must be accurate and values-aligned because they are likely to become part of the permanent record that AI systems learn from. If you get that wrong, the resulting media coverage may bury and drown out your efforts to reframe the narrative.
Your own published content should also very clearly document corrective actions, leadership changes, policy updates and any third-party validation, ideally in an FAQ format that AI models can readily consume.
IPRN: So in short, should Media Relations now be viewed as a technical SEO necessity rather than solely a brand-building activity?
Julie Wright: Media relations has become both a core pillar of PR and SEO programs. Think of Large Language Models, or LLMs, that underly all generative AI platforms as a new category of media. As you’re producing content, consider how it’s packaged for humans and for robots.
Landing media coverage may generate a specific number of impressions, but if that media coverage becomes a major AI citation source, the AI views may dwarf the actual media views. (Actually, that’s why I’m concerned about the future of journalism and wrote about the potential for “newstinction” – the end of journalism’s business model – recently.)
Media relations is increasingly becoming information infrastructure and not just storytelling.
Being quoted, cited or profiled in quality media outlets online directly influences whether a brand appears, or not, in AI-generated responses. Even if the media coverage is not directly cited in an AI answer, it may well have influenced what was summarized or cited because news outlets are an important validator. This is why journalistic sources have been found in 27% of AI citations in one study last year.
If you want to know more about Julie’s perspective and how (W)right on Communications is implementing their CREATER rubric to match proven PR practices to AI discoverability, check her Opinion Article here: Why GEO Is Just PR by Another Name – PRsay
IPRN