How AI assistants decide which brands to mention, and what PR can do about it

By James Whitfield, Head of Editorial, United Press · 5 October 2026 · 7 min read

Clients now ask us a new question: “Why does the AI recommend our competitor and not us?” The honest answer starts with what we don’t know. None of the companies behind AI assistants publish their ranking formulas. What they do publish is useful, though, and it points firmly towards work good PR teams already do.

This article sticks to what Google, OpenAI and Perplexity say in their own documentation. Where we’re giving our own view, we’ll say so.

What is publicly documented

Google: AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google’s page on AI features and your website says both AI Overviews and AI Mode can use a “query fan-out” technique, issuing “multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources” to build a response. To be shown as a supporting link, a page must be “indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet”. The same page states: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.”

Google’s newer guide, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, goes further. It says its generative AI features “are rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems”, and that the answers are grounded using those ranking systems, a technique it calls retrieval-augmented generation. Its summary of “AEO” and “GEO” is blunt: “optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.”

The guide also lists things you don’t need to do:

• “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in Google Search”. It says an LLMS.txt file “will neither harm nor help” visibility in Google Search, because Google Search ignores it.
• “There’s no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it.”
• “You don’t need to write in a specific way just for generative AI search.”
• “Structured data isn’t required for generative AI search, and there’s no special schema.org markup you need to add”, although it recommends continuing to use it as part of normal SEO.

And, most relevant to PR: “Seeking inauthentic ‘mentions’ across the web isn’t as helpful as it might seem. Our core ranking systems focus on high-quality content while other systems block spam; our generative AI features depend on both.”

ChatGPT search

OpenAI’s help article on searching the web with ChatGPT says citations appear inline in responses, and that a “Sources” button lists cited sources and other relevant links. It names Microsoft and Shopify as search partners. For sites, the requirement is to allow OAI-SearchBot to crawl, and the article states plainly: “Placement is not guaranteed.” It also warns users that “search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect.”

OpenAI’s publishers and developers FAQ says “any public website can appear in ChatGPT search” as long as OAI-SearchBot isn’t blocked in robots.txt. It explains that GPTBot is a separate crawler used for training, which publishers can disallow without blocking search.

Perplexity

Perplexity’s help page How does Perplexity work? says it searches the internet and that “each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources”. It describes drawing on “authoritative sources like articles, websites, and journals” but doesn’t publish how it chooses between them.

What is not known

With that caveat, the documentation points in a consistent direction. Assistants that search the web retrieve pages, then summarise and cite them. If you want to be mentioned, you need to be on pages that are crawlable, credible and useful enough to be retrieved and cited. That is mostly a PR and content problem, not a technical one.

What PR can do: be the source

1. Publish original information

Google’s AI optimisation guide contrasts “commodity content”, which is based on common knowledge, with “non-commodity content” that “provides unique expert or experienced takes that go beyond common knowledge”. Its helpful content guidance asks: “Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?”

For a brand, that means data journalists can use (with the methodology published), first-hand analysis from people who do the work, and clear positions on industry questions. When journalists cite that work, the original is easier to find and the coverage points back to it.

2. Make your expert and company pages clear

Have a page for each spokesperson that says who they are, what they know and where they’ve been quoted. Have an “about” page that states plainly what the company does, where it operates and who runs it. Google’s helpful content guidance encourages making clear “who” created content, through bylines and author information. These pages are also what a journalist checks before calling you.

3. Keep entity information consistent

Use the same company name, description, address and leadership details on your website, your Google Business Profile, Companies House filings, social profiles and media boilerplate. The AI optimisation guide says that keeping business details in products like Google Business Profile and Merchant Center “can help your products and services to be visible in both AI responses and other Google Search results”.

4. Use structured data accurately, without expecting magic

Google’s Organization structured data documentation says the markup helps Google “better understand your organization’s administrative details and disambiguate your organization in search results”. It recommends properties such as sameAs, which links to your profiles on other sites, and logo, placed on your home page or about page. It’s worth doing. Just remember Google’s own statement that it isn’t required for AI features.

5. Earn coverage in credible outlets

This is our view, not a documented rule: if AI answers are grounded in search results, then being discussed in publications that already rank well for your subject gives retrieval systems more credible pages that mention you. That’s the logic behind genuine digital PR and thought leadership. It’s slow, it can’t be guaranteed, and it works for reasons beyond AI. We’ve written separately about which kinds of publications tend to matter for AI visibility.

6. Check the basics

Make sure your important pages are indexed and not blocked from snippets. Check your robots.txt doesn’t block OAI-SearchBot if you want to appear in ChatGPT search. Google’s AI optimisation guide also points to the Generative AI performance report in Search Console for measuring how content performs in its AI features.

What doesn’t work, and can backfire

Mass placements and manufactured mentions

Buying dozens of near-identical articles on low-quality sites to “seed” your brand name is the kind of inauthentic mention Google says “isn’t as helpful as it might seem”. If those placements carry links that pass ranking credit, Google’s spam policies treat them as link spam. The same policies cover site reputation abuse: third-party content placed on a host site “mainly because of that host’s already-established ranking signals”. If you do pay for placements, label them and qualify the links. Our guide to earned versus sponsored coverage explains how.

AI-generated content at scale

Google’s spam policies define scaled content abuse as “when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users”. The first example given is “using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users”. The AI optimisation guide adds that creating separate content for every variation of a search “primarily to manipulate rankings or generative AI responses” violates this policy.

Google’s guidance on using generative AI content doesn’t ban AI-assisted writing. It does say “it is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing.”

Special “AI files” and rewriting for robots

For Google Search at least, the documentation is clear that LLMS.txt files, chunked content and special AI markup aren’t needed. Time spent there is usually better spent on something a journalist would want to cite.

If you’d like a frank look at how your brand currently shows up, and which of these steps would make the most difference, get in touch. We’ll tell you what we can and can’t influence.

Sources

• Google Search Central, AI features and your website
• Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search
• Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
• Google Search Central, Organization structured data
• Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search
• Google Search Central, Google Search’s guidance on using generative AI content on your website
• OpenAI Help Center, Searching the web with ChatGPT
• OpenAI Help Center, Publishers and developers FAQ
• Perplexity Help Center, How does Perplexity work?