By Jason Brandt, CMO at PRophet
The Shift from Traditional SEO to AI Search
Search engine optimization (SEO) has been the holy grail for brands seeking visibility in traditional search engine results. Fine-tuned keywords, metadata, and backlinks have long been the bread and butter for higher Google rankings but now over 65% of all internet searches flow through AI search engines or Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Perplexity.
Traditional SEO tricks and tags have been replaced by copy that communicates trust, credibility, and narrative — all delivered by authoritative third-party voices – or earned media.
Rethinking Search Behavior in the Age of AI
How can brands pivot to this new reality after spending so much time and money on SEO?
AI search engines don’t “search” the web — they interpret it
Traditional search engines return a ranked list of citations based on domain relevance and authority score. AI search engines, however, generate answers by synthesizing data from multiple sources into a single, coherent response. That synthesis increasingly favors one source: earned media — articles, reviews, and expert mentions published by trusted, third-party outlets. It is estimated up to 90% of all brand success in search now comes from earned media.
When an AI engine like Perplexity or ChatGPT receive a query like, “What is the best electric SUV under $60,000,” it doesn’t pull results from branded blog content or internal webpages; it pulls aggregated opinions and facts from tier-one publishers like The Verge, Wired, TechCrunch, or Car and Driver. These are earned media hits, not owned assets.
Why? Because these sources are vetted, trustworthy, and editorially reviewed by journalists. In a world where AI models aim to provide the “most likely useful” answer, third-party credibility trumps branded promotion every time. In fact, earned media are now the new PDP (product detail page), where AI models search first.
How AI Models Are Trained and Why That Matters
Unlike Googlebot, which spiders websites and indexes content via crawlers, modern AI models ingest and train on datasets curated with publisher partnerships. OpenAI has publicly disclosed licensing deals with publishers like The Associated Press, Axel Springer (Politico, Business Insider) and Condé Nast (The New Yorker, Vogue, GQ) . Perplexity has similar arrangements with Reuters and others.
Traditional SEO Tactics Are No Longer Enough
Tried and true SEO tactics are basically ignored by traditional search
Cold, I know. Maximized use of keywords, optimized headers, backlink pyramids — these tactics no longer matter when no one is clicking through a list of links anymore. Generative AI search bypasses the link altogether and delivers the answer directly.
Curated, long-form, cited and linked AI search results may not always be 100% credible, but they are organized, prioritized, aggregated and cited, making it easy for the casual user to get what they need without doing the harder work of shopping links themselves.
Why Earned Media Outranks Owned Content
Earned media enters AI engines via:
- Content licensing & partnerships: publishers license their content to OpenAI, Anthropic, or Perplexity, giving models structured, high-trust input data to train or reference against.
- Model training or Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): during training or real-time search queries, the models prioritize information from these sources as accurate and authoritative.
Then, earned media comes through in:
- Answer generation: when users ask a question, the model constructs a response using the most relevant, reliable information available — and heavily favors earned media from licensed or indexed partners.
- Citation & visibility: many AI search tools cite sources directly — and those citations increasingly come from earned media, putting those brands in the spotlight for millions of users.
Owned content isn’t enough. If your brand isn’t part of the earned media ecosystem — if you’re not showing up in Forbes, TechCrunch, or Fast Company — you’re nearly invisible in AI search.
What Marketers Should Do Next
1. Prioritize tier-one PR placements
Forget press release spam. Focus on meaningful, newsworthy stories that are likely to get picked up by trusted outlets with syndication reach. Create better pitches that will capture the attention of tier one publications, then create custom lists of outlets and editors that will be more likely to run your story.
2. Invest in media intelligence
Use tools like PRophet Media Intelligence to track where you’re mentioned, what sentiment surrounds those mentions, and which stories are picked up by publishers with AI partnerships. Daily intelligence is the only way to know where you sit compared to competition and what branded key words are more likely to be noticed by the outlets interested in what you have to say.
3. Predict what gets covered
Platforms like PRophet Earn use predictive AI to help you test pitches and content ideas before you send them — so you know what journalists (and AI) are most likely to respond to. We create custom data sets, not just basic media lists, which get you more placements. More placements ensure better GEO success.
Final Thoughts
Earned media is the backbone of AI discovery. Brands who need to stack the deck with earned media placements: we can help you beat the odds. Learn how PRophet helps brands predict, place, and amplify earned media that AI engines can’t ignore.
