In short:
- AI is reshaping search behaviour: Click-through rates from Google have dropped by 30% due to AI summaries giving answers directly, leading to a rise in “zero-click” searches.
- Visibility now depends on credibility in AI summaries: LLMs like ChatGPT prioritise trusted, editorial sources and well-structured content, making traditional SEO less effective on its own.
- Earned Visibility™ is the new approach: Brands need integrated PR and content strategies that blend media coverage, credible mentions, and AI-optimised owned content to appear in AI-generated results.
It’s getting pretty tricky to ignore AI, with its summaries now firmly cemented at the top of Google search results, surfacing information on brands, and diminishing clicks through to websites.
Last week, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) revealed that click-through rates to websites from Google search results have fallen by 30 percent in the last year, making traditional keyword research and SEO a less powerful metric when it comes to your brand’s visibility.
This ‘zero-click’ age is showing no signs of slowing, and the way we’re getting our information is changing drastically. For example, Google announced it is currently testing and rolling out its new software AI Mode in the US, a more conversational way to search, allowing users to ask multi-part questions and follow-ups.
What does this mean for your rankings?
Basically, the days of counting your ranking in search engine results or your hits of media coverage are over. Thanks to Large Language Model (LLM) tools, your credibility lies in whether an AI summary deems your content worthy of being included in these spaces.
Just when we thought measurement in SEO was hard enough, appearing in the answers of search summaries and ChatGPT answers has become a KPI in its own right. It’s now less about rankings and more about earning visibility.
From speaking with journalists, tech experts, data scientists, and using LLM tools ourselves, we’ve collated three ways you can stay relevant in this new world of search.
Let’s get into our top three ways of how to appear in AI overviews
1. Prioritise earned coverage
Last week, the CIPR revealed that editorial media is responsible for 61 percent of LLM answers. This is game-changing. It means your brand’s visibility is more reliant than ever on what others are saying about you. Hello PR!
ChatGPT has licensing agreements with the likes of News Corp, the Guardian, and the Financial Times, so it’s more important than ever to gain credible news coverage. Citations in these publications enable you to appear in AI Summaries, and ultimately, stay relevant.
But this doesn’t mean just ‘doing more’ traditional PR and media relations, as we’re also seeing news outlets adapt to the way people get their information. For example, The Independent has launched its own AI-powered tool, Bulletin, which creates news summaries to save users from scrolling through news articles.
With news outlets changing, your press releases should be optimised to be AI-friendly. They not only need to be engaging for journalists, but also designed to be surfaced by AI.
Think about the key questions your audience will be asking, and ensure these answers are clearly outlined in your release. If you can get this information in credible news outlets, it’s a surefire way to get mentioned in AI summaries.
2. Optimise your website for AI search results
Although fewer people are clicking through to your website, AI tools are certainly looking there to populate answers. In fact, AI summaries use owned content in 44 percent of their citations, so you need to make sure your brand website is crawlable for these algorithms.
This means that instead of using traditional SEO and keyword research to gain higher rankings on Google, invest time and energy in optimising your website for LLMs. When producing content, keep this question at the forefront of your mind: What will my audience be using this for?
Make sure you have the questions and answers to what people will be searching for threaded throughout your content. For example:
- Create up-to-date FAQ sections
- Look at long-tail keywords and phrases for your topic
- Draft pages and posts in Q&A formats instead of long-form web content
- Use headings and subheadings to structure your data
LLMs are working faster than search engine algorithms, so structured data rather than lengthy bodies of text is essential.
3. Get familiar with Earned Visibility™
In the words of Neil Patel during SXSW London, every brand will now need a “search everything optimisation strategy”. For years, PRs and marketers have focused on SEO for improved website rankings, and media coverage for credibility, but this is increasingly becoming one and the same.
Earned Visibility, launched in partnership with our digital performance agency Noble Performs, is the new framework for this age of search. It centres around high-quality stories that resonate across the right mix of channels, built to be picked up and surfaced by AI, and then shared by your audience.
Now more than ever, your communication strategy has to be integrated and multi-channel. Think media coverage, influencer reviews, white paper reports, expert mentions, influential social content, and ensuring eyeballs on more ‘traditional content that matters’ like news, and social posts.
Curious to find out more about Earned Visibility?
If you want to stay ahead, sign up for our fortnightly EV update – short, simple, to-the-point, tips on what’s going on in the space and what you need to prioritise today.
If you’d like to talk to us in more detail about how to appear in AI search results, we’d be happy to talk you through how you can best harness PR to protect your brand’s share of voice and discoverability in a new age of AI search.