What is GEO and why does it matter for PR?
Rewired delivers compelling communications campaigns for clients in a range of sectors, from retail and leisure to finance, real estate, and hospitality. Across our diverse portfolio, we maintain a sharp and steady focus on the latest trends, technologies, and industry insights - helping us to remain ahead of the curve and deliver the best services for our clients.
In today’s PR landscape, the emergence of AI is fast-paced and constantly evolving, with generative platforms redefining the ways in which brands are searched, discovered, and discussed – so it’s increasingly important to get up-to-speed to ensure your brand is visible in the responses you need it to be in.
Why AI means its time to rethink PR strategies
In PR, the desire to uncover ‘what’s new’ is a major driving force behind breaking news headlines, interview exclusives, and cover features, but it’s also an important question for how the discipline itself continues to evolve and change.
Designed to get people talking about specific products and services, the most effective PR campaigns should cut through the noise, increase visibility, and tell an authentic brand story.
Today, the way that audiences discover those brands is changing at pace – and this has a direct impact on the services PR agencies deliver for clients.
Generative AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, are no longer peripheral research tools. These models are becoming primary gateways to information, recommendations, and decision-making. Most importantly, the shift in search behaviour is not simply a fleeting trend, but a representation of how the mechanics behind brand visibility is changing.
How AI is shaping today’s behaviours
While traditional PR plays a critical role in communicating a brand’s story and protecting its reputation, the influence of AI platforms on a brand’s online visibility is growing stronger.
Generative platforms are being described as the new intermediaries of trust - directly influencing the way a brand is mentioned, cited, recommended, or talked about. This has a significant impact on how a user responds and interacts with that brand.
Recent research shows that:
Gen-AI search has a 3 - 6 x higher conversion rate than traditional search (source: SEMrush)
28% of Gen-Z start their searches on ChatGPT, and 47% say they’ve discovered a new product or brand via the AI platform (source: Adobe)
89% of B2B buyers are using Gen-AI in at least one step of their decision-making process (source: Forrester)
Regardless of sector, to ensure your organisation is best interpreted and represented by AI systems, it’s critical to understand Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and its relationship with PR.
By adopting a GEO-driven PR strategy as part of a wider communications plan, clients can continue to achieve positive cut-through both on and offline.
What is GEO?
GEO is the process of ensuring that a brand’s expertise, positioning, and authority are reflected in the responses generated by large language models (LLMs) and other AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews.
It reflects the growing trend of online audiences prioritising AI-generated responses to search enquiries, rather than scanning pages of web links on traditional search engines.
As of October 2025, ChatGPT ranks as the most popular AI application worldwide, with more than 769million monthly active users. In 2025 alone, global downloads of AI applications reached 3.8billion, up from 1.49billion in 2024 - highlighting the rapid adoption of AI tools.
With the volume of AI users rising at an exponential rate, so too has the number of people using LLMs as their preferred search tool.
As a result, the reputation of brands, products, and services are being increasingly shaped by content generated by LLMs. It has never been more important understand how this information is created and presented, to best protect your company and ensure the right messages are reaching the audiences that matter that you.
Where does SEO fit into this?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the practice of improving visibility and rankings of websites and web pages within search engine results pages (SERPs), such as Google.
In contrast, GEO focuses on inclusion within AI-generated answers – optimising how a brand is described, referenced, or cited when an AI platform synthesises information in response to a user query.
We believe that two are complementary disciplines - SEO will position your brand as a top answer, while GEO will put your brand in the answer. A recent analysis of 25,000 real user queries found that websites ranking #1 in Google have a 25% chance of being cited in AI Overviews too, with citation probability declining as traditional rankings drop. This highlights the continued importance of data-driven digital PR strategies that are built on solid SEO foundations.
Rewired combines digital PR tactics, strategic communications, and technical awareness to ensure our clients best maintain their brand voice, visibility, and reputation online. By executing both SEO and GEO strategies, and ensuring they work in tandem, clients can benefit from improved rankings in the SERPs as well as more prominent visibility on AI platforms.
Why should I care about GEO as a PR strategy?
For brands looking to drive online sales, influence perceptions, or establish leadership in competitive markets, appearing in AI-generated search results is becoming increasingly important. But to have AI visibility, your brand needs appear on the right platforms to enable LLMs can scrape high quality content and deliver the right message for your target audience. That’s where PR comes in.
Just as Google views trust as a signal of authority, up to 72% of content generated about brands on ChatGPT and other LLMs is driven by editorial media. This means that PR professionals have a vital role to play in securing high quality, authoritative and relevant earned media coverage for brands, which will then be sourced and cited by generative AI platforms.
By strengthening the volume of coverage on sources that AI platforms draw upon when generating responses, brands can ensure they are accurately and strategically represented – which is when strategic PR agency support becomes central to AI visibility.
How can PR support GEO?
Rewired has proven expertise in digital PR and strategic communications across both consumer and B2B sectors. This depth of knowledge helps to ensure our clients are discoverable in the places most likely to be cited by AI platforms.
The answers returned by these generative tools are informed by authoritative content, editorial credibility, and narrative consistency. Therefore, the key pillars of strategic PR activity – from in-depth thought leadership and expert commentary, to the structure of press releases and owned web content – all contribute to the signals that influence how AI describes a brand.
By adhering to Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) framework, we ensure all digital coverage is high quality, genuinely newsworthy, and relevant to our clients’ target audiences. By securing earned editorial coverage and producing authoritative content across owned channels, we can positively influence AI-generated responses in relation to the clients and brands we support.
Importantly, this work is not confined to one sector. In retail, AI-mediated recommendation tools increasingly influence product selection and conversion behaviour. In leisure and tourism, AI-generated itineraries can shape ticket sales long before a user reaches an online booking platform. While in corporate communications, AI systems summarise industry reputation and positioning based on available authoritative sources, as time-poor decision makers look for informative summaries that directly respond to their needs.
Across all sectors, our role is to ensure that when AI tools interpret the landscape, our clients’ narratives are represented accurately, positively, and strategically.
AI and the future of PR - what’s next?
With a myriad of tools and technologies entering and influencing the PR industry, it’s clear that generative AI is leading a step-change in both search visibility and reputation management.
In our view, GEO does not replace SEO, nor does AI replace PR. Rather, AI and PR are converging.
As LLMs sourcing their answers from editorial media, expert commentary, and high authority content, PR has become uniquely placed to help form the content that feeds AI search responses. In turn, PR agencies are able to provide this critical service, tailoring content and message to different audiences, and ultimately influencing the way brands are referenced and presented by AI models.
By proactively responding to the opportunities created by AI, as well as understanding its challenges, Rewired is working in partnership with its clients to help shape the answers that audiences see to build greater visibility, awareness, and loyalty for their brands.
If you’d like to find out Rewired’s PR strategies can support AI visibility for your brand, get in touch.