As AI bots begin to replace search engines for answering life’s questions, PR pros have been ferociously trying to break into the AI black box to better understand websites feed these tools their answers. Cracking that code can help PR professionals better shape the narratives around the brands they serve – and everyone wants that.
A new study from Muck Rack begins to peel the top of that black box and give communicators a glimpse at the sites they need to influence to influence the searching public.
The PR software conducted a test of more than 1 million queries to see what kinds of webpages the AI results cited.
What they found cements the importance of PR more than ever.
“If the study shows one thing, it’s that this is like a game to be played by the communications community,” said Matt Dzugan, senior director of data for Muck Rack.
The study found that 95% of all links cited by ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Claude are drawn from non-paid media types. Journalism accounts for 27% of all links – but that number leaps to 49% in queries that requested answers that needed some sort of recency.
“We see content get cited within 24 or 36 hours of being published. In fact, the single most common and most likely publication date is one to two days before the prompt, which I think is pretty interesting,” Dzugan said.
The research found that AI models in general, especially ChatGPT, have a recency bias in the content they cite, with 56% of all journalism sources on the platform drawing from content published in the last 12 months. However, on Claude, that dipped to 36%. Claude also generally cited journalism content “significantly less” than the other two models, the study found. Just as each search platform has slightly different rules, so does each AI model. However, it’s also likely that one or two of these models will become those PR pros are most interested in – our money’s on ChatGPT for sheer market share and Gemini for its Google connection.
These are the most popular websites cited by AI, in no particular order:
CNBC
Harvard Business Review
NPR
Yahoo Finance
Good Housekeeping
Tech Radar
Reuters
Time
Financial Times
Investopedia
Axios
Forbes
The Associated Press
This study also puts a spotlight back on corporate blogs and brand journalism. It’s important to note that the study makes a distinction between other blogs’ content about your brand (shown on the graph as corporate blogs and content, 37%) and your own content about your brand (owned content, 9%).
As we can see from the data, it’s essential not only to create content about your brand but also to secure mentions on other corporate blogs.
Social media occupies a small portion of the source pie (2%) – perhaps not surprising from those of us who remember when Google Gemini recommended that people use glue to stick cheese to pizza, thanks to a cheeky Reddit thread. But while not a main source of chatbot answers, social media is still a component. If you’re looking to influence AI via social, the bots look most at Reddit, LinkedIn and YouTube.
It may feel daunting to see this new field of PR opening up, with so many new avenues for influencing the media, blogs, social media and more. But Dzugan recommends you look at this as an opportunity instead.
“I think it’s incredibly inspiring and motivating to go out and see these results for your niche and just say, ‘Oh, wow, there it is. Plain as day, here’s the writing that is on the wall. Now, what can I go do about it?”
See the full report here.
Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.