“How do I appear in AI?” is quickly becoming the defining question for modern marketing leaders, especially in B2B. It is no longer enough to have a strong website, a confident brand and a solid sales narrative. If buyers are starting their journey in AI tools, your visibility in those answers is now as critical as your visibility in search engines or media.  

Recent research offers a stark reality check for businesses. Following the analysis of one million AI prompts, 85.5 percent of AI citations come from earned media.  

That single statistic should stop every marketer and comms lead in their tracks. AI is not magically discovering your brand, it is reading, ranking and recycling what trusted, third party sources have already said about you, among other things.  According to Muck Rack’s latest findings, if your brand is not showing up in credible media, it is highly unlikely to show up in AI search either.

When you strip away the buzzwords, that means one thing. PR has become the backbone of AI visibility. 

AI is reshaping how buyers decide 

The way buyers discover and shortlist is shifting faster than most brands are prepared for. Around 35 percent of consumers now start their buying journey with an AI search rather than a traditional search engine or a visit to a supplier’s website. In practice, that means a growing share of your potential customers are asking an AI assistant for recommendations, comparisons and options before they ever think about searching for you directly. 

This does not simply “influence” buying behaviour, it changes it completely. Instead of trawling through pages of results and manually comparing options, buyers are presented with a refined shortlist shaped by the sources and signals AI considers most trustworthy.  

Visibility is designed, not accidental 

One of the most telling insights from recent AI visibility analysis is the impact of multi-platform presence. Brands that appear on four or more third party platforms are 2.8 times more likely to be cited in tools such as ChatGPT. That is not a small way to level-up, it is a huge step change. AI improvement is looking for consistent patterns across multiple credible sources, not isolated mentions or one off bursts of activity. 

Those platforms typically include high authority media outlets, sector specific trade publications, respected industry analysts and trusted directories or review sites, and even credible awards. When your brand shows up across this ecosystem with coherent messaging and clear proof points, AI can confidently use you as an example, a reference or a recommended option. 

Yet nearly half of brands (47%) have no GEO strategy and no structured PR approach sitting behind it. They may invest in sporadic campaigns, occasional press releases or generic content, but they are not deliberately building the footprint AI needs in order to recognise them as a serious player in a specific market or category. 

This visibility is not accidental, it is engineered through a credible communications strategy, executed consistently, and reinforced by coverage that carries weight with your customers and with the systems they increasingly rely on. 

PR has moved from “awareness” to AI engine 

For years, PR was framed as a route to brand awareness, reputation building and credibility, and although those roles are still vital, they now sit within a wider, more strategic responsibility. PR has become a significant engine that powers your presence in AI search. 

When high authority publications and analysts write about your brand, they are not just influencing your target audiences, they are feeding structured, trusted information into the sources AI tools prioritise. That commentary helps AI understand who you are, what you do, which sectors you serve and how others rate your performance. 

The brands that will win in this new reality are those that recognise PR as a core lever to their profile building. They are the ones investing in a clear GEO strategy, targeted sector narratives, and an ongoing drumbeat of coverage that aligns tightly with how they want to be understood regardless of if the thing listening is a human or a machine.  

Practical moves to boost AI visibility 

So what do you do if you read the stats and realise your brand is largely missing from AI answers today? 

• Start by auditing which brands AI already surfaces in your space and which sources it cites when asked specific questions. 

• Map those sources against your existing presence so you can see where you are strong, where you are absent and where you are misrepresented. 

• Build a PR plan that deliberately targets the outlets, analysts and platforms shaping those answers, with content that makes your positioning, capabilities and proof points unmissable. 

• Ensure your GEO strategy is explicit, so AI can clearly link your organisation to the regions, markets and prompts you actually serve. 

If you don’t know where to start, we do. Get in touch at hello@pearl-comms.com.  

Be present where decisions are made 

Ultimately, this is no longer just about “getting your name out there.” It is about being present at the moments when decisions are shaped and made. If your brand is absent from AI search, then it is absent from a growing portion of the decision-making journey. 

Now is the time to sharpen your PR strategy so it supports all the ways your customers find you, judge you and compare you.  

If those signals are missing, AI will not invent them for you. It will simply move on to the brands that have already done the work. 

Get in touch if you need help making your PR work for AI search.