How to Influence What AI Says About Your Organization
The person searching for your organization right now may never see your website. They will ask Claude, ChatGPT, or Google Gemini and the answer they get will be assembled from sources you do not control and weighted by factors you may not even know.
This is the new reality reputation management needs to consider. The good news is there is a framework most communicators already know that is perfectly adaptable to meet this challenge.
The PESO model has anchored integrated communications since 2014: Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned. It remains the most useful schematic of how messages can be delivered in a fragmented media environment. It treats reputation as something built across channels you buy, channels you earn, channels you share, and channels you own – often in mutually reinforcing ways.
What the model did not anticipate is that a consequential reader of those channels is no longer human.
Large language models now govern how you’re seen
Large language models now sit between your reputation and your audiences. They ingest content, weigh credibility on their terms, and synthesize answers. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the discipline of controlling how your brand is presented inside those systems. It runs on different dynamics than search optimization. SEO competes for clicks from a ranked list. GEO competes for citations inside generated paragraphs.
What makes PESO and GEO inseparable are the underlying mechanics: the same inputs that build human-perceived reputation also feed AI.
The data is clear: Analysis of more than one million AI citations found that earned media accounts for 82% of all AI citations, with non-paid sources accounting for 94%. A brand’s own website typically supplies a smaller percent of what AI engines reference.
Research analyzing 75,000 brands found that those in the top quartile for web mentions earn more than 10 times the AI citations of the quartile below them. ChatGPT cites only 15% of the pages it retrieves, concentrating on a narrow band of high-authority domains.
Campaign-style communications will shape how AI sees you
AI can be heavily influenced through a well-designed and executed integrated communications campaign. This is PR’s home ice advantage.
Owned media gives the AI a coherent view of you. Your ‘about’ page, executive bios, digital content, and FAQs are your anchor reference points. They will not earn most of your citations, but without them AI will have trouble resolving who you are. Worse yet, it will relay on others to define you.
Earned media is the heaviest lift but also the highest upside. Trade media, traditional journalist coverage, expert commentary, podcast appearances, contributed bylines – these are sources AI models treat as authoritative.
Shared media is often overlooked. Reddit alone drives around 20% of external AI citations. Review platforms, Q&A sites, and community forums are now infrastructure for AI answers, not just engagement channels.
Paid media funds the visibility for your narratives. It also seeds key content you control to shape how your reputation is perceived. This can be original research, data reports, white papers – anything journalists pick-up and AI systems then cite.
Disciplined, consistent communications deliver reputational results
No single PESO quadrant shapes your brand through GEO. GEO is the natural output of an integrated public relations program. Brands running disciplined integrated communications programs will not only shape how they’re seen, and how the issues they care about are seen, but will also influence the way AI models are talking about them.
This kind of reputational maintenance must be done through treating communications as an always-on function. AI citation data shows that over 80% of AI-referred traffic goes to pages updated within the past two years; only 3.6% goes to pages older than four. Stale content gets discounted. Recency is rewarded.
This is why the campaign approach matters more in the AI era. A consistent and sustained drip feed of earned coverage, third-party validation, and strategic owned content will allow you to define yourself in this AI-driven digital world. The PESO model was always about integration of public relations channels; GEO is the proof that integration now delivers results at the leading edge where your audiences are using AI.
Organizations and brands that act now to shape their reputations will succeed because they are defining themselves through consistent multi-platform communications.
AI algorithms are constantly reading about you. Organizations can build strong reputations by taking control over what those agents see.