Muck Rack How Ai Search Is Changing Pr And Seo Linkedin

PR & Comms Strategy with an Eye on AI | Co-Founder at Notably BREAKING: Muck Rack analyzed the citations for a MILLION realistic user prompts into LLMs and if you’re a PR pro, you NEED to know the results and implications: BACKGROUND: Per Patrick C.’s WSJ article... [desktop] search traffic went to LLMs last month, that’s more than QUADRUPLE what it was in Jan 2024. And this trend will only accelerate. BACK TO MUCK RACK’S FINDINGS: • 37% of results cited content NOT owned by the company/product in the search • 27% cited news sites/journalistic publications • 2% cited social media/marketing content and only 1%... WHAT THIS MEANS: Brands have spent the last decade buying their way into "earned-looking" content.

Native advertising. Sponsored posts. Advertorials pretending to be editorial. And then AI came along and said: "Yeah, we're not citing any of that." Meanwhile, outlets that have never “sold out their editorial souls” such as Reuters, AP., FT, etc., are the ones AI... One more wild stat, per the report: 96% of what AI cites falls squarely in PR territory. Not marketing.

Not advertising. PR. THE NEW REALITY: The brands winning in AI search will be the ones who earn their citations through genuine third-party validation… NOT those who buy them through increasingly “sophisticated” paid placements. We're not just seeing a new type of SEO; we're seeing the revenge of EARNED PR and REAL journalism. And if you ask me, it's about damn time. PR & Comms Strategy with an Eye on AI | Co-Founder at Notably

Content Marketing Director | Brand Strategy Leader | Digital Strategist The irony is this is happening just as media outlets are collapsing because of…AI (among other economic forces). I’ve been kicking around ideas about how smart companies should invest in credible, independent publications. It might save both journalism and B2B marketing. Generative AI is changing how people discover and trust brands. It’s no longer about who ranks first, it’s about who gets cited.

This is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and it’s powered by PR. Join Muck Rack CEO and cofounder Greg Galant, along with Sarah Evans (Zen Media) and Michael Brito (Zeno Group) on July 21 at 2:30pm ET for a live conversation on how PR is shaping... What you’ll learn: ✔️ How LLMs surface earned media in AI answers ✔️ Why PR-led signals are beating SEO ✔️ How to turn thought leadership into generative visibility ✔️ How to measure your brand’s... Digital OG. Global Head of Analytics @Zeno Group + TEDx Speaker + Adjunct Professor + U.S. Marine | @Britopian

Appreciate the opportunity. Looking forward to learning and sharing what I know. I've tried registering multiple times but never get an email. Will this be recorded? I can't make it, but really interested in hearing these insights!! Muck Rack’s new findings expose a growing divide between AI search behavior and traditional SEO tactics

For a while, it looked like AI search and Google’s AI Overviews might spell the end of traditional PR. With algorithms generating answers directly, who needs third-party validation or earned media anymore? But new data from Muck Rack tells a different story. It turns out, AI is doing the opposite of killing PR, it’s putting it front and center. The study reveals that AI-generated responses favor third-party editorial coverage and largely ignore the paid and “sponsored-looking” content marketers have relied on for over a decade. For PR and comms professionals, the implications are massive.

As traditional SEO practices intersect with AI-driven tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews, it’s clear that a new kind of credibility is taking center stage: genuine, earned media coverage. This article explores Muck Rack’s findings, why PR is suddenly leading the visibility race, and what marketers need to do about it. Here’s a table of contents for quick access: July 23, 2025 06:45 ET | Source: Muck Rack Muck Rack Miami, July 23, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a groundbreaking study analyzing millions of AI-cited links from hundreds of thousands of prompts, Muck Rack, the leading provider of the award-winning PR software, has revealed... The research, titled “What is AI Reading?” set out to answer a fundamental question: Does media coverage materially affect what AI says?

The answer, unequivocally, is yes. “This study is an eye-opener for PR and communications teams aiming to understand how media mentions influence AI-generated content,” said Greg Galant, cofounder and CEO of Muck Rack. “Until now, we’ve had theories and early signals—but now we’ve got solid evidence that earned media directly influences AI-generated output. This changes the stakes for PR. The way businesses are represented by AI now ties directly to the media coverage they earn.” Citations actively influence AI output: Controlled prompt testing showed that when citations are enabled, LLM (large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini) outputs meaningfully change.

Earned media doesn’t just show up—it affects what is said. This proves that cited content is not decorative. It materially grounds outputs in real-time, dynamic inputs. Earned media is a foundational input: More than 95% of citations come from unpaid media sources and 85% of those come from earned sources, while another quarter are from journalistic sources. Half of total AI responses included at least one earned media citation. These figures highlight the critical role that earned media strategies play in GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization) visibility.What Determines Whether a Brand is CitedThree key variables drive citation inclusion:

For a while, it looked like AI search and Google’s AI Overviews might spell the end of traditional PR. With algorithms generating answers directly, who needs third-party validation or earned media anymore? But new data from Muck Rack tells a different story. It turns out, AI is doing the opposite of killing PR, it’s putting it front and center. The study reveals that AI-generated responses favor third-party editorial coverage and largely ignore the paid and “sponsored-looking” content marketers have relied on for over a decade. For PR and comms professionals, the implications are massive.

As traditional SEO practices intersect with AI-driven tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews, it’s clear that a new kind of credibility is taking center stage: genuine, earned media coverage. This article explores Muck Rack’s findings, why PR is suddenly leading the visibility race, and what marketers need to do about it. Here’s a table of contents for quick access: Muck Rack examined how AI tools cite sources in response to over one million user prompts. The results reinforce what many PR insiders have suspected: AI models prefer credible editorial content over marketing materials. In 2024 artificial intelligence investment and innovation exploded with $240 billion in total United States market capital spent.

While the numbers and new advancements were impressive, 2025 is set to continue that growth trend with the largest tech companies expected to spend north of $300 billion on new technologies and datacenter buildouts. In the PR and marketing world, 2024 brought a rapid integration of these technologies into team workflows, helping streamline media relations, research, writing, data collection and more. To better understand AI’s real-world impact on PR pros, Muck Rack released a State of AI in PR Report, which dove into how teams are (and are not) using AI, the ethics of using... As an agency owner with more than 25 years of experience creating and running PR and content programs for B2B tech brands, here’s what stood out in the report to me, what feels a... Muck Rack’s report highlights that three out of four PR pros use generative AI at work, nearly triple the amount compared to 2023. Yet, 55% of agencies still lack clear guidelines on how AI should (or shouldn’t) be used.

We saw employees embrace AI tools early on (and encouraged it), which is why we implemented an AI Guidelines Policy in early 2023. We want employees to use these tools to enhance the work they do, but also make it clear that AI-generated content is NOT a replacement for doing actual work. Some key elements to consider in a policy include general usage principles, acceptable use of specific AI tools, a “do-not use” list (and why), best practices for prompts, and an approved tools list. One of the most common AI use cases shown in the report is brainstorming. When it comes to ideation, looking at a blank page can be intimidating and using AI can help spark ideas. That’s fantastic, but don’t let AI be a crutch for all of your creative ideas.

Building and learning your own creative process and applying that to PR is incredibly valuable. Encourage your teams to find a balance. On the flip side, it’s surprising that only 21% of PR pros use AI for journalist research. When used properly, AI can help find previous coverage from reporters, identify their interests, and recognize patterns in their articles. And tools like Muck Rack, Cision, Propel and others are rapidly rolling out tools that apply AI to media relations workflows, trends and research. Teams can lean into these features, while still validating the results.

Each week we'll gather headlines and tips to keep you current with how generative AI affects PR and the world at large. If you have ideas on how to improve the newsletter, let us know! What Muck Rack’s AI Report Tells Us About the Future of PR A new Muck Rack report confirms what many PR pros have suspected for months: Media coverage is even more valuable as more people turn to generative AI to search for information. Muck Rack analyzed more than a million links cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude across hundreds of thousands of queries and found that more than 95% of AI-cited links are non-paid sources, and more... The bots may be artificial, but their trust in news is very real and it’s driving more than citations.

Google is still the web traffic king — it sent 191 billion referrals to the top 1,000 websites last month, according to data from Similarweb — but referrals from AI tools grew 357% year... Traditional media relations has always prized top-tier coverage. That’s still valuable, but AI models are now elevating trade publications, too. In finance, Claude cited unique sources in 90% of its top 10 domains. In health care, Gemini led the pack with 50% of its top citations coming from niche-specific outlets. The industry insiders PR teams have long pitched are now shaping what AI models surface as authoritative.

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