From ‘page one’ to ‘only one’: How AI search is rewriting PR rules

The fight for visibility has moved. Has your PR strategy?

When people talk about the death of SEO, they’re usually trying to sell you something. But this time, the shift is real and it’s happening quickly.

We’re entering the era of AI-powered search, where tools like ChatGPT, Google’s SGE, Perplexity and Gemini don’t just show you a list of links. They give you the answer. A single, neatly packaged, machine-written response with no need to click at all.

For brands, that’s a visibility earthquake. For PR, it’s an opportunity.

From “page one” to “only one”

For the past two decades, marketers fought to land clients on page one of Google. But AI changes the rules. When ChatGPT answers a user query with a summary, or Google SGE drops an AI Overview at the top of a results page, there’s no list. There’s just the answer. And your brand either appears in it or it doesn’t.

That answer is built using training data and trusted sources. Which means media coverage, credible content, and expert commentary are more important than ever. In other words, classic PR is suddenly mission critical to AI visibility.

We’re moving from link building to trust building. From optimising websites to building authority. PR isn’t a bolt-on anymore. It’s the visibility engine.

Why PR needs to step up

For all the hand-wringing about AI replacing jobs, this moment actually expands PR’s value. Clients don’t just need coverage. They need citable, high-authority content in sources that AI trusts. They need brand messaging that works not just for humans, but for algorithms that paraphrase, condense, and recombine.

This doesn’t mean we all become technical SEO consultants. It means we get smarter about the influence our work has on AI search. Here’s what that looks like:

  • Media targeting with AI in mind: understanding which publishers frequently surface in AI responses (think nationals, academic, and specialist press)
  • Pitching for citation, not just coverage: making sure expert voices and data points are structured to be picked up, quoted, and reused
  • Aligning owned and earned content: coordinating internal content and external placements so that your clients’ messaging becomes part of the data AI sees

We can’t wait for the brief

Here’s the issue though. Most clients don’t yet know this is a problem. But they will. Soon.

If you work in PR and your agency isn’t already thinking about AI visibility, you’re behind. This is our moment to lead and to own the space between human trust and machine logic. To be the ones in the room who know how to get brands cited by the future of search.

AI won’t kill PR. But it will kill the agencies who wait to be asked.

We help brands appear in AI-generated answers on platforms like ChatGPT, Google SGE and Gemini. Working alongside SEO teams. If you want to discuss pivoting your SEO strategy, get in touch.

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