Why GEO Should Be Part of Your Public Affairs Strategy

Much of the commentary around Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) over the past year has reached the same conclusion: the interface has changed, but the fundamentals of visibility have not.

There is a clear basis for this argument. Search engines and AI models still rely on many of the same signals, from authority and structured data to domain trust and high-quality backlinks. In many ways, the tactics that earned visibility five years ago continue to play a significant role in determining which brands get referenced in AI-generated answers today.

That's a fair point. But it doesn't tell the whole story.

The Comfort of the Known Paradigms

For fifteen years or more, search engine optimisation lived comfortably inside the marketing department. It was an acquisition lever - a tactical discipline focused on ranking keywords, capturing share of mind, and driving traffic to owned websites.

When generative search arrived, it was natural to map it onto SEO. The language was familiar, the underlying technologies overlapped, and the teams responsible for digital visibility were already in place. Generative search has become just a new line item for the digital marketing budget.

It is an understandable way to frame the shift. It is also incomplete.

Because generative search is not simply about ranking higher or being easier to find. It reflects a fundamental change in how information reaches people.

Standard search engines were indexers of web pages. When someone searched for a company or something they wanted to know more about, Google served a list of links. They then clicked, evaluated individual sources, and formed their own opinion.

Today, when a consumer, a lawmaker, an ESG analyst, or an enterprise client, queries about a corporation or a topic of interest, the engine does not present options to explore. It executes a real-time, cross-domain audit. It collapses regulatory filings, litigation disclosures, consumer campaigns, and third-party commentary into a single answer. The result is an increasingly zero-click experience, where users get what they need without ever visiting the individual sources behind the answer.

The shift is not from SEO to GEO. It is from direct communication to AI-mediated communication.

Earned Media Is Becoming Part of the AI Infrastructure

The rules of optimisation may look familiar, but the surface area of reputation has changed fundamentally.

You are no longer simply competing for a position on a search page. You are competing to shape how AI understands your organisation - and increasingly, what it tells others about you.

And AI is far more likely to build that understanding from what others say about you than from what you say about yourself. Across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, 84 percent of all AI citations come from earned media. Paid and advertorial content account for less than one percent. That is a clear signal of what these systems consider credible enough to reference and share.

Journalism alone accounts for 27 percent of those citations, while other forms of earned media - including expert commentary, bylined articles, and trade press coverage - make up a further 57 percent. By comparison, brand-owned content - everything a company publishes on its own website - accounts for just 16 percent of the content cited by AI. That puts earned media in a different category. A strong article, interview or third-party endorsement is no longer just a way of reaching an audience today. It becomes part of the external evidence base that AI can draw on tomorrow.

The more people want to understand a company - what it does, whether they can trust it, whether it is a leader in its field - the more important those outside sources become.

That is where GEO and PR converge.

The future of PR is not just about earning attention from people. It is about earning credibility in the information systems that increasingly speak to them.

So What Does This Mean for the C-Suite?

Generative search is changing how corporate reputation is formed.. As legislative staffers, regulators, journalists, and civic leaders rely on generative AI to synthesise complex policy issues, an organization's regulatory standing is no longer defined by what it claims in corporate reports, but by the third-party consensus it earns across the policy and media ecosystem.

For organisations looking to get to grips with this shift, three areas are worth focusing on first:

• Audit AI visibility: Understand how AI systems currently represent your organisation. Identify inaccuracies, gaps, recurring narratives, influential sources and potential vulnerabilities.
• Communicate for two audiences: Continue creating content that informs stakeholders, while ensuring it is clear, structured and authoritative enough to be understood and surfaced by AI systems.
• Map influence: Identify the sources, experts, media and other stakeholders shaping AI-generated answers, and consider what this means for your target media and broader stakeholder strategy.

At BPI, we are embedding GEO into our communications programmes from the outset, recognising that its role extends beyond search visibility and optimisation. Our approach continues to evolve as the discipline develops and its implications for the wider integrated funnel become clearer.