Quick Read
According to recent data from PR Newswire’s State of the Press Release Report, 49% of APAC communicators say that AI search has caused them to track new metrics, compared to just 5% in North America and 8% in the EMEIA region.
What’s even more revealing is this: only 9% of APAC teams have not changed their press release strategy yet. North America sits at 24%, and EMEIA at an even higher 32%. To frame this in another way, this means that 91% of communications professionals in our region are prioritising press release visibility.
Why? Because the rise of “zero-click search” experiences on major search engines has taken the communicator’s goal from clicks to citations. Research from Bain & Company found that around 80% of consumers now rely on zero-click results for at least 40% of their searches.
Websites used to rank highly on results pages by using traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tactics like keyword targeting, optimising website speed, and creating backlinks, to create credible, useful content to increase website traffic and brand discovery.
AEO, or ‘Answer Engine Optimisation,’ focuses on optimising for specific sections within the SERP, including featured snippets, FAQs, and “People Also Ask” accordions.
While AEO aims for clarity, GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, aims to make content trustworthy and discoverable for all AI-generated summaries on both the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and within citations on chatbots.
Essentially, AEO optimises for search, and GEO optimises for generative AI summaries. Good AEO also feeds into GEO performance.
This is because any question can be asked and answered via chatbots. It goes beyond creating content for discoverability, which is the focus of SEO, to providing the context needed for AI tools to accurately present information about your brand or product.
If AEO and GEO haven’t been prioritised, your brand reputation is inherently more at risk because answers will be created through what is given in alternative sources.
To optimise for both, media teams are prioritising earned media and the classic press release.
The format of a press release is exactly what Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity look for when they are trying to source reliable information.
It’s why PR Newswire was the twelfth most referenced domain by LLMs in Semrush’s most recent study on AI citations.
There are a few reasons for this trend.
It’s easy to find what you’re looking for in a press release.
Clear fields like the dateline, headline, and boilerplate are repeated and easily identified. They answer questions quickly in an F-shaped pattern for quick scanning, with key information placed at the top, left-hand side of the screen. It’s how both humans and AI digest information, and optimising for it makes discoverability much easier to achieve.
Information cited in an AI overview needs to be tied to a real individual or institution. Named spokespeople, identifiable organisations, and attributed quotes are all signals of credibility.
Official announcements, recognised institutions, and transparent contact information all contribute to source legitimacy. Signals that demonstrate accountability, like media contacts, organisational boilerplates, or links to primary documents, reinforce trustworthiness.
One of the metrics that LLMs use to determine the credibility of sources is domain authority.
This is a link-based, search engine ranking score that ranges from 1-100, used to estimate where a page will rank on SERPs. It’s based on several factors, including the number and quality of backlinks that a domain has, the quality of content it hosts, and user experience. PR Newswire's domain, for example, ticks these boxes with an authority score of 92, according to Moz's Domain Authority Checker.
When we look at mentions of the electricity, gas, water and waste industry versus the agriculture, forestry, and fishing industry over the span of one month, the latter features 13.5% fewer ‘Excellent’ scoring domain mentions within the below sample Instant Insights charts on the Streem platform. This suggests that higher-tier media outlets tend to report less on that sector.
(Streem Data: Mentions of the Electricity, Gas, Water & Waste Industry vs. the Agriculture, Forestry, & Fishing Industry on Online Sources from 28 Jan to 26 Feb, 2026)
While the press release format is a key piece of the GEO and AEO puzzle, it’s how well your press releases are distributed and amplified that can determine whether this strategy is successful.
This is why brands use a newswire. It’s the only channel where announcements like product launches, market entry, or crisis communications are treated as verified, structured news. It’s also the best shot that these announcements have at earning media.
Earned media essentially achieves two things for a press release:
It increases the visibility and the perceived importance of your announcement due to pick-up by other sources of authority.
Newly earned media then actually creates secondary authority signals that reinforce your credibility for LLMs.
What this means is that by using a press release, you increase your chances of gaining AI citations. Then, by distributing it effectively, you increase them again. For GEO purposes, earned media also provides domain diversity and editorial framing.
It's also why brands use media monitors to track the earned media metrics that have an impact.
To enhance PR and outreach efforts for GEO and AEO, media teams will have to adjust the KPIs in their repertoire and focus more intently on earned media quality. Some metrics to consider include:
Tracking these facets of your media coverage reveals the quality, rather than simply the quantity, of your earned media.
The higher the quality of your earned media, the easier it is for AI to ascertain the credibility of your messages. Essentially, better earned media equates to better coverage on AI summaries. It’s a cycle that reinforces your visibility each time it goes around the media landscape.
For media teams to earn visibility in the age of AEO and GEO, many will have to implement new ways to write, structure, distribute, and monitor content. So far, four strategies have won observable results.
To show up where most audiences are searching for answers, communicators will need to adjust to the new rules of SERP visibility.
LLMs prefer familiar structures for information and source attributions. The format of a press release checks both of these boxes, to the point that, on the list of top domains cited by ChatGPT last year, PR Newswire ranked above major sites like Forbes and Wikipedia.
Without well-targeted distribution lists, a press release will struggle to be picked up by media outlets. A lack of co-citations can also reduce the likelihood that information is qualified for AI summaries based on credibility.
A newswire addresses both of these risks. Not only are they more likely to catch the attention of journalists, but media teams can also leverage their reputable domains for LLM pick-up. This means that the visibility you’re gaining isn’t a one-day ad buy. It’s lasting credibility that goes on to impact other earned media campaigns down the line.
Mention volume does not always equate to earned media quality.
To track real impact, media teams need to monitor what gets picked up, adapted, shared, criticised, and amplified. Essentially, the relationship between distribution and monitoring looks like this: Push, Publish, Pickup, Proof.
To rank on search engines today, the priority has shifted from keyword optimisation to content type. Optimising all earned and owned content to align with the E-E-A-T framework is a long-term strategy that media teams should expedite now to get ahead. The reason why this framework is so important to adhere to is that it affects how webpages rank via both traditional SEO and these new processes of AEO and GEO.
The E-E-A-T framework has always been the code of law in the world of SEO, but AI has raised the stakes.
The acronym, coined by Google, stands for “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.” It’s a framework used to rate content that might appear on a SERP. The rating that a website earns contributes towards its ranking.
Now, that rating is also responsible for determining what AI overviews consider fact. For media teams in the APAC region, there is a sense of urgency to keep up.
PR Newswire, a Cision company, is a leading global provider of news distribution and earned media software and services. PR Newswire's services enable marketers, corporate communicators, and investor relations officers to identify key influencers, engage target audiences, craft and distribute strategic content, and measure meaningful impact. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific regions.
Streem delivers a complete media intelligence solution backed by trusted local experts. Featuring realtime media monitoring, in-depth analytics and reporting, social listening, and press release distribution, Streem supports over 1000+ corporate, government, and agency clients across Australia and New Zealand.