By Emily Keogh, Founder, Palm
In the past decade, the search landscape has evolved faster than most marketers anticipated.
What once revolved around traditional SEO tactics and keyword optimisation now sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, editorial credibility and earned media. That shift is redefining how brands are found, trusted and recommended in 2026.
Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews are front and centre of how users seek information, make decisions and discover brands online. And as this usage accelerates, one insight from the 2025 October BrightonSEO conference rang out more clearly than any algorithm update: digital PR is now the foundation of visibility in an AI-driven search landscape.
Search Evolution in the AI Era
Traditional search has always rewarded relevance, links and optimisation. But AI search is different. LLMs don’t simply scan content; they interpret patterns of trust, authority and consistency across the web. These systems don’t prioritise self-published content: they prioritise what others say about you. Research presented at BrightonSEO found that the overwhelming majority of AI citations now come from earned media coverage rather than owned content.
This change matters because AI systems are trained to look for consensus across reputable sources. A mention in a respected national newspaper, trade magazine or specialist blog does more than build awareness; it builds the kind of third-party authority that these models interpret as “trustworthy”.
You might still optimise your site for keywords, but if nobody outside your own channels ever talks about you, AI has no independent context to recommend your brand when someone asks a question like “Where can I find boutique hotels in the UK?”.
Earned Media as a Data Signal
Earned media now fuels what we might call “machine-readable brand equity”, the signals that AI uses to decide if your business is credible enough to include in an answer. These signals include:
- Coverage in reputable publications
- Expert quotes and commentary
- Contextual mentions alongside relevant topics
- Consistent narrative output across trusted third-party sites
When these signals accumulate, they generate what AI interprets as expertise. And crucially, that expertise gets surfaced in responses, summaries and citations – even before a user clicks through to a website.
We are now seeing what many in the industry are calling the “great decoupling” between visibility and clicks: AI systems deliver answers instantly, meaning that impressions and discoverability increasingly happen before any traffic reaches a brand’s site.
From Reactive PR to Predictive Thought Leadership
Just as in traditional PR output, where the objective should be not just to react but to lead the media agenda, brands that win in this AI era aren’t just responding to the news, they are anticipating it. They’re creating insights, data-led commentary and thought leadership that shape narratives before they become mainstream topics.
In the industry, we call this “news-hacking” – it is about earning first-mover authority on emerging trends and signals. It means using data, expertise and foresight to generate stories that AI will treat as original and relevant, giving your brand an advantage in how it’s surfaced in future queries.
Brands that invest in digital PR now are not simply building coverage; they are shaping the data that drives their online presence. In a landscape where AI increasingly mediates consumer decision-making, those brand signals become a core component of visibility, reputation and trust.
