For twenty years, being found meant being on the first page of Google. That era is ending. Your next customer is increasingly likely to ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI overview who they should trust, and to act on whatever name comes back.
This is the biggest shift in how businesses get discovered since search itself. And it changes what PR is for. The job is no longer only to get you seen by people, it's to make you the brand the machines put forward when someone asks for a recommendation.
The conversation has changed
People don't search the way they used to. Instead of typing three keywords and scanning ten blue links, they have a conversation: “I need a PR agency that gets tech start-ups, who's good?” The AI doesn't return a list. It returns an answer. A recommendation.
And recommendations convert. By some measures, around 60% of AI-generated recommendations turn into a sale or an enquiry, because a suggestion from a trusted machine lands the way a suggestion from a trusted friend does.
Why AI recommends some brands and not others
An AI assembles its answer from your footprint across the entire web, the coverage you've earned, the places you're mentioned, the consistency of your story. It is, in effect, judging your reputation at scale. Three things decide whether it puts you forward:
Trust and authority. Earned, third-party coverage is still the strongest signal there is. A feature in a respected title tells both humans and machines that someone credible vouched for you.
Authorship. AI increasingly weights content written by real, named, identifiable experts over anonymous copy. Who is behind your words matters.
Footprint and consistency. If your story is different on your website, your social profiles and your press coverage, the machine's confidence drops, and it recommends someone else. Worse, if it can't find enough about you, it may simply make something up.
The new PR playbook
The good news for anyone who's done PR properly: this is the work we've always done. It just matters more, and a few tactics now punch above their weight.
Keep earning genuine coverage, it remains the backbone. Put a real, named author behind your thought leadership. Make your messaging coherent everywhere it appears. Lean into the formats AI favours: video is disproportionately influential, a meaningful share of AI recommendations cite YouTube, and a book, however short, remains one of the highest-trust signals you can create.
Where to start
Audit your footprint as an AI sees it: ask ChatGPT about your company and your competitors, and read the answer honestly. Fix the inconsistencies. Earn authoritative coverage in the places your buyers, and the models, already trust. And put your name to your expertise, out loud and often.
PR was always about reputation. What's changed is who's listening, and increasingly, it's a machine deciding whether to say your name. Start building the footprint now, while the rules still reward those who move first.
Alison founded Adia PR to help founders, disruptors and thought leaders be seen, heard and believed, now leading the agency's work on PR for the age of AI.
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