Before there was a search bar, there was a neighbor leaning over the fence.
Need a mechanic? A pediatrician? A decent steakhouse? You asked someone you trusted, and they gave you a name. Maybe they had been there themselves. Maybe a friend had. Either way, the recommendation carried weight because it came from someone other than the business.
Search engines spent decades finding digital ways to approximate that trust. Google famously treated links from other websites as signals of authority, helping determine which sources deserved to rise to the top of a search.
Now, generative AI is changing the conversation again.
Instead of searching “Volvo mechanic near me” and sorting through a page of results, someone can ask an AI platform to recommend the most reliable vintage Volvo specialist nearby and explain why.
People aren’t just asking search engines where to look anymore. They’re increasingly asking AI what to choose.
For brands, that raises a much bigger question: What makes your name part of the answer?
Your Brand Isn’t the Only Voice That Counts.
Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is focused on improving a brand’s visibility in answers generated by AI platforms. And while the technology behind those answers is complex, one principle should sound very familiar to anyone in public relations: What others say about you matters.
A brand can fill its website with claims about being experienced, innovative, trusted or the best in the business. That’s useful owned content, but it’s still the brand talking about itself.
Earned media brings something different to the table.
A reporter has asked questions, claims have been scrutinized and an editor has decided the story is worth publishing. A respected outlet has put its own credibility behind the information it shares.
And we now have data showing just how prominently those independent sources appear in generative search.
Muck Rack’s May 2026 What Is AI Reading? report analyzed more than 25 million links cited in responses from ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini across 17 industries. Earned media accounted for 84% of all AI citations, while paid and advertorial content represented just 0.3%.
For communications leaders, those numbers put data behind something PR professionals have understood for a long time: Credibility is stronger when someone else establishes it for you.
The gatekeeper changed. The people worth impressing didn’t.
Earned Media’s New Role in the PESO Model.
At Ghidotti, we’ve never viewed paid, earned, shared and owned media as competitors. Each part of the PESO model has a job to do, and the strongest communications strategies put them to work together.
Paid expands reach; shared creates conversation; owned gives brands a platform to tell their stories directly. Earned adds something brands can’t simply publish or purchase: independent credibility.
GEO doesn’t make the rest of the PESO model obsolete, nor does it mean traditional SEO no longer matters. It gives brands another reason to put earned media closer to the center of an integrated communications strategy.
A strong placement can reach an outlet’s audience today, become content worth sharing across a brand’s channels tomorrow, and contribute to the broader body of credible information AI tools may encounter later.
One story can travel much farther than its original publication.
The Advantage Was Always There.
For public relations professionals, GEO puts new value on skills that have been central to the work all along.
Landing a meaningful story requires knowing which reporter to call, which angle will resonate and when a story is actually worth telling. It means understanding a client’s business well enough to recognize the expertise, ideas and moments that deserve attention. And it means building relationships with journalists based on credibility rather than treating media coverage as a transaction.
Authority is built over time, story by story and relationship by relationship.
What GEO changes is how far that authority can reach.
A strong piece of earned coverage still has to resonate with a reporter, and ultimately, matter to the people who read it. Its influence, however, may no longer stop with those readers. The same story can help inform AI-generated answers when someone asks what company to hire, which expert to trust, or what organization is leading its field.
That gives brands a new reason to invest in something public relations has always been built to create: credibility worth repeating.