What is GEO in PR? AI visibility for earned media

GEO in PR (generative engine optimization for public relations) is the practice of earning third-party coverage, citations, and expert commentary that AI systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews draw on when they answer a question about your category. These platforms have completely rewritten the search blueprint for many companies. For decades, Google prioritized keywords and backlinks, but those tactics are no longer enough.

GEO is AI visibility for earned media: getting your expertise, stories, and points of view into the credible third-party sources that AI systems pay attention to. 

Why brands are asking now

Your next customer no longer types a keyword and scans ten links. They ask an AI assistant which vendors to shortlist, what a category is, or whether a company is credible, then read a single synthesized answer. If your brand isn't in that answer, or is described wrongly, you may never get a second chance to be considered.

This is the shift behind the acronyms. GEO (generative engine optimization), AEO (answer engine optimization), LLMO, AI SEO, practitioners use them interchangeably, and there is no settled definition. We call the outcome what it is: AI visibility. And the evidence on how to get it points squarely at PR.

What actually gets a brand cited

Three findings shape everything we do:

• AI answers are built from earned, not paid, sources. Muck Rack's analysis of more than a million AI citations found that roughly 95% of cited links come from non-paid sources, and earned media alone accounts for about a quarter of all citations large language models generate.
• Being mentioned matters more than being linked. Muck Rack and Ahrefs research suggests that branded mentions across the web are roughly three times as influential as backlinks in determining which brands an LLM cites — the reverse of the old SEO math.
• Credible quotes and data move the needle. The original Princeton GEO study (Aggarwal et al.) found that adding quotations from credible sources raised a source's share of an AI answer by about 41%, statistics by about 31%, and citations by about 28%.

In other words: the inputs LLMs trust are the outputs good PR has always produced — coverage in respected publications, expert commentary, original data, and a consistent story told by third parties. GEO didn't invent a new discipline. It made earned media the infrastructure layer of AI search.

What GEO PR is not

Because the term is new and the demand is real, it attracts false promises. Be wary of anyone who:

• Guarantees placement in AI answers. No one can. AI systems are probabilistic, retrain constantly, and weight sources differently. Anyone promising a guaranteed citation is selling something else.
• Sells schema markup and FAQ blocks as the whole solution. Structured data helps machines parse your own site. It does nothing about the third-party sources that make up the bulk of what AI cites.
• Pushes press-release volume. Wire syndication of the same announcement is a weak, expensive signal. LLMs are trained on authority, not repetition.
• Reports "AI visibility" as a vanity number. A share-of-voice chart with no baseline, no prompt set, and no competitor comparison tells you nothing.

SlicedBrand’s GEO philosophy

As a boutique technology PR agency, we focus on the stories and expertise that shape how your company is viewed in your industry.

As discovery shifts from traditional search to LLMs, credibility is becoming a bigger part of how brands get found. AI platforms increasingly draw on organic, third-party sources, rather than simply what a brand says about itself. The more your expertise is reflected across credible sources, the stronger the picture of your authority becomes.

The goal is to build lasting visibility, not just generate headlines. It’s to create a body of credible third-party coverage that grows over time, so that when a potential customer, investor, or AI search engine looks for expertise in your category, they find a clear, authoritative picture of who you are and what you know. That visibility helps keep your company top of mind while strengthening your reputation over time.

We work with technology companies across verticals where expertise and credibility matter, including AI, sustainability, healthtech, cybersecurity, fintech, creator economy, and many more.

That’s where PR becomes a GEO strategy, getting your expertise into the sources AI is already paying attention to. Learn more about PR's impact on GEO from our Founder and CEO.

BY THE NUMBERS

94%
of B2B buyers use AI in their buying process
AI is becoming a key part of how B2B buyers research, compare, and evaluate vendors. With 94% using AI during the buying process, according to Forrester, brands need to be visible and credible wherever those conversations happen.

51%

of B2B software buyers now start their research with an AI chatbot
AI chatbots have overtaken Google as the starting point for software research, according to G2's 2026 research of 1,000+ B2B software buyers.

85%
of buyers think more highly of a vendor when AI recommends it
That makes appearing in AI-generated recommendations more than a visibility metric, it can influence brand perception.

1,000+
tech companies served
From startups to global enterprises, SlicedBrand has helped more than 1,000 technology companies tell their stories and build recognition.

20+
years of tech PR experience
Two decades of experience building brands, developing media relationships, and creating stories that get technology companies noticed

Why use a PR firm for GEO

GEO is about more than being found. It’s about building the credibility to be recommended by AI-powered search, and that’s where PR makes the difference.

At SlicedBrand, we help companies turn their expertise, stories, and points of view into media presence that can influence how AI systems understand and surface the brand. Through strategic media coverage, thought leadership, expert commentary, and targeted storytelling, we build the third-party authority that strengthens a company’s visibility and credibility beyond traditional search.

The advantage of working with a PR firm is having experts who have the skills to tell your stories and the right connections to help your company accomplish its goals. SlicedBrand takes the time to understand what makes your company relevant, then builds a PR strategy around the topics and conversations where you want to be seen. For companies looking to strengthen their visibility in AI searches, PR isn’t an add-on, it’s an important part of your strategy.

What to expect

PR is a long-term investment in visibility and authority. Building the right narrative, earning credibility with relevant media, and establishing a consistent presence in the conversations that matter takes time. That’s why six months is the minimum for a PR engagement, but the companies most successful in PR have consistent ongoing engagements well beyond that.

The first month is about becoming part of your team and getting the strategy, narrative, and media foundations right. From there, outreach begins. Each credible mention builds authority, adds context around your brand, and creates more opportunities to develop the story. Over time, that accumulated visibility can strengthen how AI platforms understand and surface your company.

Don’t think in terms of a 30-day campaign. The goal isn’t to generate an immediate spike in coverage; it’s to build a body of credible, relevant media that compounds over time.

Why SlicedBrand?

Decades of tech PR experience

SlicedBrand is a global boutique technology PR agency with an award-winning senior team and more than 20 years of experience in technology communications.

Trusted by over 1,000 tech companies

Our team has helped more than a thousand technology companies tell their stories, from startups to major enterprises.

Strong media relationships

We've spent decades developing relationships with journalists and influencers across technology, business, mainstream media, broadcast, podcasts, and more.

Storytelling first

Technology is often complicated. Our job is to find the simple, memorable story, the angle that makes journalists, audiences, and industry decision-makers care.

Earned media

We focus on organic media exposure. Our goal is not simply to publish content about your company, but to build genuine credibility around it.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between GEO, AEO, and SEO? SEO optimizes a website to rank in search results. AEO structures content so that search engines can extract a direct answer (e.g., featured snippets, AI Overviews). GEO aims to have a brand cited or reflected inside answers generated by AI systems such as ChatGPT and Perplexity. In practice, the terms overlap significantly and are used interchangeably; what matters is whether AI names your brand accurately when it counts.

Is GEO just a new name for PR? GEO and PR work together to achieve results, but they are not the same. PR has always been about building credibility. GEO applies a similar idea to a new environment: AI search. Instead of optimizing primarily for rankings and clicks, GEO focuses on making sure AI systems can find and reference your company. The overlap is earned media. The articles, interviews, and expert commentary that build a company’s reputation can also become part of the information AI uses to understand and recommend brands.

Can you guarantee my company will appear in ChatGPT answers? No, and no trustworthy agency can. AI systems are probabilistic and change constantly. What we can do is measurably increase the authority signals those systems rely on and show you the movement against a fixed set of prompts.

How do you measure AI visibility? We look at things that matter: where you’re being mentioned, how often, what’s being said about you, and whether the right sources are starting to recognize your company as an authority. We track AI visibility alongside the earned media that drives it, examining coverage quality and relevance, the outlets citing your company, the topics and keywords you’re associated with, and how that presence evolves over time. 

Which industries does this work best for? Any category where buyers research vendors before talking to them, which is most of B2B and much of consumer tech. It matters most where the trade press is specialist and thin, because a handful of authoritative placements can shift what AI engines say about an entire category. That describes the verticals we focus on: medtech, climate tech, longevity biotech, the creator economy, and pet tech.

How is this different from what SlicedBrand already does? With the rise of AI, it’s important to stay up to date on the latest developments. With GEO, we extend our thinking to AI engines, identifying the sources they rely on, understanding how they surface brands, and ensuring our earned media strategy supports visibility there, too.

Glossary: 

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): The practice of improving how a brand, company, or piece of content is understood, mentioned, and cited by AI-generated search and answer systems.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): The practice of structuring and creating content so that search and answer engines can easily understand it and use it to provide direct answers to people's questions.

AI Citation: An AI citation is a source reference that an AI system provides to show where information in its answer came from.

Share of voice in AI: measures how much attention a brand receives in AI-generated answers compared with other brands being considered for the same questions.

Llms.txt: is a proposed plain-text file that provides AI systems with a concise description of a website and links to information that may be useful when understanding or working with that site.

Earned media: coverage that a company receives from independent third parties rather than paying to place the coverage as advertising.

Entity: a distinct person, organization, place, product, concept, or other identifiable thing that search engines and AI systems can recognize as a specific “thing.”

AI Overviews: Google's AI-generated summaries that can appear at the top of certain Google Search results and provide a synthesized answer to a user's query.

Perplexity: an AI-powered answer and search platform that combines conversational responses with web search and source citations.

Citation share: the proportion of relevant citations in a defined set of AI-generated answers that are associated with a particular company, brand, or source.

Let's tell your story. Get in touch with us today.