Page Collaboration Hour Replay: GEO 2 - What CCOs Need to Know Now

Navigating the Shift from Traditional Search to AI-Driven Earned Media 

CCOs have an urgent need to transition from traditional search engine optimization (SEO) to prioritizing earned media with GEO. Greg Galant, CEO of Muck Rack, and Matt Dzugan, VP of Data and Intelligence at Muck Rack led a recent Page Collaboration Hour exploring how generative artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping corporate reputation within a fragmented digital landscape.  They presented a new study, “What is AI Reading?” which analyzes millions of prompts to reveal exactly what these new digital gatekeepers are reading and citing. As users increasingly rely on artificial intelligence for brand discovery before ever visiting a corporate website, the dialogue highlighted why communications teams must take ownership of this new frontier.

Key Takeaways

• Earned Media Beats Owned Media: Artificial intelligence systems prioritize third party validation to maintain their own credibility. While traditional search engines rank owned websites highly, artificial intelligence overwhelmingly favors earned media like journalism, organic Wikipedia entries and authoritative corporate blogs. Paid content, such as sponsored advisory articles, is rarely cited.
• The Most Recent Earned Media Wins: Digital models heavily favor the latest available information to avoid hallucinations and provide accurate answers. More than half of all cited content is published within the last 12 months. The most common publication date for a cited article is simply yesterday, meaning organizations must maintain a steady stream of earned media to remain relevant.
• Every AI Platform Cites Different Sources: Different artificial intelligence models display unique citation quirks. For example, ChatGPT heavily favors news outlets like Axios, while Claude prefers structured, data-heavy content. Navigating this requires leaders to test and identify which specific platforms and journalists hold the most influence over their distinct industry.
• Smart Brevity Increases Press Release Citations: Content structure directly impacts digital visibility. Spoon-feeding data to these digital agents increases the chances of being pulled into an answer. Press releases and owned materials are much more likely to be cited when they:
  •  Feature objective verifiable sentences
  • Use bullet points for structure
  • Include clear statistics

Prove It With Action

• Ask: Who is Getting Cited? Audit your current media relations strategy to see if you are pitching the journalists who actually influence artificial intelligence. Compare your traditional target list against the authors frequently cited by major digital models in your specific sector.
• Reformat your Press Releases: Empower your team to adopt a smart brevity format for all external materials. Focus on objective claims, statistical data and clear bullet points to make the information as easy to process as possible for artificial intelligence crawlers.
• Own GEO for your org: Align cross functional understanding by establishing the communications team as the clear owner of generative engine optimization. Ensure executives understand that this new frontier relies on earned media reputation rather than traditional technical marketing.

Strategic Resources

• AI's Impact on Communications Leadership: This report from the Scriptorium Initiative explores how leading organizations are leaving legacy PR structures behind to design an AI-native function focused on narrative architecture.
• AI Isn't a Stakeholder. Here's Why the Label Matters: Shahar Silbershatz offers an alternative framework that views AI platforms more like media channels than traditional stakeholders, and how to shape the content they pull from.  
• Generative Pulse AI Report: This research from Muck Rack provides leaders with a detailed breakdown of how artificial intelligence citations vary across different industries.
• The Presentation: Review the session slides to view the specific citation metrics and platform behaviors discussed by the speakers.