Digital PR Study: How can we influence brand visibility in AI search?

The way we work as digital PR professionals is evolving as AI results are being integrated into search. What’s more, there’s fast becoming a need to optimise for AI results in certain industries, or risk your website visibility in search results.

A recent study from Ahrefs found that up to 44% of searches for ‘science’-related queries generate AI results, double the baseline average of across all industries of 20.5%. Industries that followed this was 43% for ‘health’ searches, and 37% for ‘pets and animals’. If you’re a brand optimising organic channels related to these industries, you need an AI strategy in place.

The big question is how do we optimise for AI results? There are a number of studies with huge sample sizes (i.e Ahrefs: ‘An analysis of AI overview brand visibility‘, or SEMrush: ‘Do backlinks still matter in AI search?‘) which prove the relationship between digital PRs core goals of links (referring domains), brand authority, and brand mentions and visibility in AI Overviews.

Digging deeper into this, it’s up to us as digital PR experts and digital marketing professionals to develop the process how AI visibility is achieved. In this study, our Industry AI Visibility Index, we have sought to answer this, with the question:

‘How can we tailor our digital PR activity to create a direct route to positively impact AI visibility?’.

What do the experts think? Daniel Dracott, SEO and Content Manager at Away Resorts, says:

“The importance for Organic visibility in AI search for Away Resorts is twofold, accuracy of brand information giving our customers the most accurate and useful information about Away Resorts and our locations, for both holidays and ownership. Secondly, is making sure we’re being represented at top of funnel type search e.g. “best holiday parks in the UK”.

“We work with Distinctly to identify areas of opportunity to best represent our brand in AI search results and improve accuracy of brand information by using Peec.ai and Gumshoe. The Digital PR and content teams at Distinctly Digital are very proactive in identifying opportunities and building partnerships with publishers to promote Away Resorts.”

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Jump to:

• Identifying which AI channels are most likely to crawl news publications
• The opportunity for exposure in AI results: an industry-by-industry analysis
• Targeting publications to find a balance between PR value and AI value
• Data insights: Which publications should your industry target for maximum AI visibility?
• What are the technical features of robots.txts, and how might they impact this approach?
• Methodology

Key findings:

• On average, publications commonly appearing in UK searches allow two in three (69%) AI platforms to use and replicate their content.
• Claude has access to the highest percentage of news publications to reproduce in live searches by users on the platform.
• Access levels to news publications for AI crawlers remains high across the board, with Google Gemini and ChatGPT accessing three in four publications.
• Food and drink publications have the highest overall average publication ‘AI-open’ score of 96%
• This is followed by the average AI-open scores for the Home & Garden industry (87%), Beauty (87%), Education (85%), and both Law and Construction on 84%.
• Regional PR coverage ranks high in providing opportunity for visibility in Google and Claude AI results. Overall score for the niche gets skewed, however, by almost completely blocking other AI crawlers such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Apple.
• National publications allow a little under half (45%) of AI crawlers to access their content
• The publications with the highest AI-value to PR-value ratio include Independent.co.uk, SkySports.com, BBCgoodfood.com, and GBnews.com.

Identifying which AI channels are most likely to crawl news publications

Knowledge of which publications allow AI services to see and use their content in the first place should be the foundation to generating visibility in AI results with digital PR. If publications don’t allow AI crawlers on their website, coverage in these will provide little to no direct* benefit for AI visibility.

To empower our digital PR activity here at Distinctly, we analysed robots.txt’s of 452 publications across 19 news verticals in the UK. This led us to research 6,780 data crossover points between publications and AI LLM user agents. (see the full methodology here)

Which AI platforms are UK news publications most open to? These figures highlight which AI platforms we can most effectively target with digital PR activity, by focussing on the percentage of ‘AI-open’ news publications for each.

This shows us that, on average, Claude has access to the highest percentage of news publications to reproduce in live searches by users on the platform.

However, access levels to news publications for AI crawlers remains high across the board, with Google Gemini and ChatGPT accessing three in four publications. Diffbot, which is used by the DuckDuckGo search engine, can access four in five news publications.

What do the experts think? Lisa Hamilton, Director of Marketing at SFG20, says:

“For a brand like SFG20, that sets the industry standards that decision-makers actively seek out to manage compliance with FM regulations and reduce risk, visibility in AI-driven channels is becoming fundamental. When a facilities manager asks an AI tool for recommendations on cost-efficient maintenance or on software solutions to help them stay legally compliant, we need SFG20 to be the answer it gives. That means ensuring our expertise, authority and technical credibility are present wherever AI models are sourcing and validating information — not just where traditional search rankings would have taken us.

“The approach of targeting publications open to AI gave us a simple, practical, and measurable way to see if we were taking the right steps to appear in AI results. This is exactly the kind of thinking we look to agency partners to bring — not just to stay current, but to genuinely challenge how we approach brand visibility in a rapidly shifting landscape. In a sector where trust and accuracy are everything, getting ahead of how AI surfaces authoritative sources is high on our priority list.”

The opportunity for exposure in AI results: an industry-by-industry analysis

Beyond top level insights for all publications, we can dig deeper into the data to tailor our activity to AI-open publications within each sector. We look at the figures to reveal the sectors with the most AI-open publications, which can be capitalised on with strategic digital PR activity.

View the full interactive table here.

What does this mean? We know that digital PR activity plays a key role in generating brand exposure online and promoting visibility in AI results. Though if you’re undertaking PR activity with this goal, first you will want to know the relative opportunity for ‘direct impact’ through press coverage in your industry, and which AI platform is most open.

Overall findings:

• Food and drink publications have the highest overall average publication ‘AI-open’ score of 96%. All publications analysed in the sector allow Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Apple Intelligence to crawl and use their content.
• This is followed by the average AI-open scores for the Home & Garden industry (87%), Beauty (87%), Education (85%), and both Law and Construction on 84%.
• On average, publications commonly appearing in UK searches allow two in three (69%) AI platforms to use and replicate their content.
• On the other end of the scale, just under half (45%) of AI crawlers are able to access content from national publications, followed by a low of just below two in every five (37%) able to access regional publications.

What do the experts think? Amy Walton, Head of Content at Screaming Frog, says:

“Earned media fuels AI. But there’s a big misconception within the industry that more press mentions result in greater AI visibility. Instead, it’s a quality over quantity matter, securing the right mentions in the right places. These right places include news sites that welcome AI training and citation crawlers.

“I would encourage all digital PRs to know the “AI-friendly” publications most aligned with their target audience and identify the pages that LLMs cite the most often for core prompt set. A content and outreach strategy can then be reverse engineered to secure these highly valuable mentions. Extra attention should be paid to cited pages where your brand (or client) doesn’t appear, but competitors do.

“This is a fast-moving space, so keeping up to date is a priority. Media owners are in ongoing negotiations with AI firms, policymakers are being lobbied from both sides, and AI companies continue to refine their tools, policies and partnerships.”

Industry opportunity varies depending on which AI platform you want visibility from

The average publication ‘AI-openness’ figures across all AI crawlers provides a good overview, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. There’s nuance of which AI platform do you want to improve visibility on?

How does digital PR targeting change depending on the AI platform?

• Despite the low average score, Regional PR coverage provides good opportunity for visibility in Google and Claude AI results. This changes the narrative behind targetting regional press coverage, showing they play a role in AI visibility in key platforms.
• National publications are more likely to provide visibility in Claude (which is able to access 62% of publications) and Diffbot (62% – used by the DuckDuckGo search engine), compared to Google AI results (50%) or ChatGPT (42%). Knowledge of which national publications are open to AI is essential in an effective strategy.
• At least half of publications from each sector allows Google Gemini to crawl, use, and replicate their content for AI overview results, highlighting the general opportunity to impact Google AI overviews with effective digital PR activity. The only exception to this is Engineering and Manufacturing, in which only 40% of the publications allow Google AI crawlers.

What does this mean? Industry-level knowledge of which AI platforms sector publications are open to crawling is crucial to meet AI-related visibility KPIs for brands. Coverage in the right publications won’t only provide highly relevant PR exposure, but also highly relevant AI exposure as well.

Targetting publications to find a balance between PR value and AI value

Digital PR as an industry is no longer only targeting PR coverage for eyes to see, we’re now also targeting coverage for robots (or AI crawlers) to see. Finding the right balance between these will increase our campaign brand reach.

This leads us to consider what value each publication brings to acheive this balance, and a campaigns target KPI’s. We’ve split the value into three parts:

• The AI value – how open the publication is to the range of AI crawlers, and thereby the chance of direct exposure in AI results for coverage in the publication.
• The PR value – circulation figures showing the number of eyes on coverage (for the purpose of this report).
• The SEO value – coverage set to have a positive impact on rankings in search engine results, which can also have a positive indirect impact on AI results (though this is for another report).

We can become hyper-targeted with this approach, and it enables us to feedback to clients on which publications in each sector can provide high PR value, high AI value, or both!

With our research, we focus on mapping the AI value and PR value of the 452 publications in our study. We can start to feed this into our campaign strategy to target KPI results more effectively.

Which publications should your industry target for maximum AI visibility?

View and explore the full size ‘AI visibility index’ visual here.

What do the experts think? Charlie Russell, Founder & CEO of Synapse, says:

“There is no question journalists’ attention is being diverted away from SEO and onto GEO/AEO. Furthermore, we know that mentioning credible experts in a piece of content gives it a better chance of appearing in LLM search results, meaning PR is as valuable to the media as ever. Ironically though, AI has meant inboxes are no longer just inefficient, they’re downright dangerous. It’s great for democracy that anyone can reach a journalist, but the power of AI means that journalist inboxes are now full of mis-information from anyone that knows how to abuse AI tools.

“What does this mean for PR? For the trustworthy and professional operators, it’s a huge opportunity. Be ready to build relationships and to prove your validity and that of your experts. Have everything to hand or use a platform that can do this verification for you, such as Synapse. Longer term? Publishers will do their best to restrict access to journalist inboxes, so how do PRs make sure they don’t get caught up in that firewall? We are relying on the media and PR to work together, collaboratively.”

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Knowing the scope of opportunity within a sector and which publications to target begins to inform strategy-level decisions for the most effective digital PR campaigns.

Key findings:

• The publications with the highest AI-value to PR-value ratio include Independent.co.uk, SkySports.com, BBCgoodfood.com, and GBnews.com. Each of these publications are open to all AI crawlers to view, learn from, and reproduce material from their website. The websites also see some of the highest circulation figures, each with 40+ million circulation figures.
• The Standard.co.uk website sits just behind the leading pack, though at time of writing The Standard website is set to be taken over by The Independent on 1st March, raising questions on whether the website will be merged.
• The BBC provides little to no direct AI-value for any news articles placed in the online publication. But the PR value is huge and will provide exposure to a mass audience
• Regional publications block the highest percentage of AI crawlers, on average. As a sector needing to protect their intellectual property at an unstable time for local news, PR teams should be hyper targeted with where value is drawn from coverage.

What does this mean? We can use these insights to tailor media lists to focus on delivering impact on all important KPIs. High ‘AI-value’ publications will have the greatest direct impact on AI visibility. Mix this with delivering coverage in publications with high ‘PR-value’ to identify which publications should be the top targets within each sector.

What are the technical features of robots.txts, and how might they impact this approach?

This approach isn’t without it’s caveats. Trying to block crawlers using Robots.txt files is a request from the website admin to ignore their website, or sections of it. However, these can be ignored by AI crawlers who will bypass the request and crawl the information anyway.

Ultimitely, this means that some low ‘AI-value’ websites in our research who block the majority of crawlers may end up appearing in AI results.

What we do have with these insights is a good ‘North Star’. Knowing the publications which are totally open to AI crawlers, and also the publications which are resisting them, allows us to strategise how to optimise brand visibility for AI results with confidence.

What do the experts think? Vince Nero, Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream, says:

“Keep in mind that just because they block/allow AI bots to crawl doesn’t necessarily mean that will definitely be the case.

“Robots.txt files are essentially suggestions or requests to crawlers. Many publishers have reported AI technologies already circumventing these files. Secondarily, many of the same sites that block AI are entering licensing deals with the very tech they block, meaning they will still show up even if they are blocked.

“So, I’d always advise taking all of this kind of data directionally. Having data readily available like this definitely increases the likelihood of getting exposure in AI, but always test it yourself!”

We were admirers of the great study undertaken by the Screaming Frog team, ‘Out of Cite: Why Your PR Wins May Be Missing From AI Search’. However, this only focussed on the ‘top’ publications.

As we know the value of targeting relevant industry publications, we thought we could go a step further to explore whether industry-level publications can play a role in improving LLM visibility. To do this, we:

• We analysed 452 publications across 19 news verticals in the UK.
• Included nationals, regionals, as well as industry-specific such as beauty, food & drink, and travel.
• For each publication, we analysed whether common LLM and AI crawlers are allowed to see and use content hosted on the publication website. This information can be seen in each websites robots.txt file.
• This resulted in analysing 6,780 data crossover points between publications and LLM user agents — the key being whether the User Agent was ‘OK’ or ‘Blocked by robots.txt’, or any other negative outcome.

Source notes:

• Publications that appear in more than one category are judged to be equally relevant to each
• AI crawler robots.txt information pulled using Screaming Frog and custom Python
• Publication circulation figure data taken from Response Source