AI is reshaping how we discover, understand, and trust information.
Whether we accept it or not: AI is already telling your story. It’s on us to intentionally ensure it is accurate, credible, and showing up where your audiences are searching.
To stay visible (or cited) in this new AI-first era, we have to rethink how we write and structure our messages. We’re not just creating content for people; we’re creating content that machines can read, interpret, and share with people.
Your message isn’t just competing for clicks. It’s competing for citations, summaries, and exposure. GPT crawlers and AI systems are scanning, summarizing, and surfacing your content in real time. If you’re not included, you’re invisible.
Search engines are turning into answer engines. The top result isn’t a link; it’s a generated summary. If your voice isn’t in that summary, your brand risks disappearing from the conversation.
This is the fastest shift in digital visibility I’ve seen in my career — and it’s still accelerating. It’s exciting to be adapting in real time, but it also requires vigilance. We’re watching the impact, safety, and governance protocols that shape how AI is implemented across communications.
Understanding how this changes your website, your messaging, and your strategy isn’t optional. The longer it is ignored, the harder it will be to ‘catch up.’ In this new landscape, being cited (or summarized) by AI is how your organization stays discoverable, relevant, and trusted.
“If AI can’t read you, people won’t reach you.”
AI Powered Search and Summaries
AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude aren’t crawling and citing links alone – they’re summarizing answers based on previously crawled and trusted content based on the person’s questions. To understand Gen-AI summaries and citations, here’s a quick overview of how ‘AI crawlers’ fetch your content and cite/create those summaries:
- AI reviews the INTENT of someone’s query (not just keywords)
- Those ‘AI Crawlers’ pull content from previously crawled data and a mix of newer website information
- Using the data they fetched, ‘AI Crawlers’ synthesize the most relevant information to answer the person’s query at their central transformer (The T in GPT!)
- ‘AI Crawlers’ will translate content to a natural language response, often with citations (hopefully citing your website and summarizing your words accurately)
In this process, it is clearly important to be easy for the ‘AI Crawlers’ to access, read, and understand your content. If your content isn’t structured for citation, it’s likely invisible to AI.
Time is of the essence: AI crawls and remembers content across months – it doesn’t re-crawl with each search or day (except for RAG). If you’re missing in key search citations and summaries, you’ll be playing catch up until ‘AI crawlers’ fetch new data to better answer consumers’ questions.
What AI Prioritizes for Citations and Summaries
Fortunately, there is a formula and strategy to ensure your messages are reachable by AI and resonate with people. Refined PR and communications strategies can support AI visibility signals. These strategies are crucial is your message is not being cited accurately as well. Let’s review what ‘AI Crawlers’ are looking for when they vet their sources.
Earned Media Dominates
According to Muck Rack’s latest What Is AI Reading? 85% of AI citations come from earned media and almost 50% of real-time answers are pulled from journalists/news sources.
Recency Wins
56% of articles cited by ChatGPT were published in the last 12 months (fresh content!). AI prefers new, especially on fast-moving topics.
Consistency and Structure
AI engines prioritize content that is easy to scan, read, trust:
- Messages repeated across channels (website, media, social)
- Content trusted by other platforms (e.g., cited in credible sources)
- Pages updated with fresh information (includes dates)
- Site that are clear and well-structured (headings, bullet points, summaries)
GTPs are checking that: “This content is trustworthy.” “This source is authoritative.” “This is the right answer.” “This information is up to date.”
How to Get Cited by AI
Some AI visibility signals are technical – others are content updates you can make today.
- Use Structured, Public Pages
HTML, not PDFs. Schema markup for FAQs. Clean headers and metadata. Help ‘AI Crawlers’ understand and index your content. - Earn Topical Authority
Build content clusters around your core areas — multiple pieces, multiple formats, one clear message. - Repeat Cohesive Messages Across Channels
Publish the same phrasing in press releases, social posts, newsletters, and influencer quotes. Signal consistency. - Track and Adjust
Partner with our team to monitor your AI visibility. We can audit where your messages are being seen, opportunities to improve, and tracking AI search metrics. New tools are launching to support AI indexing, such as MuckRack’s Generative Pulse or SemRush AI visibility tool.
Collaborative can work with your team to see where and how you’re cited — and adapt accordingly.
Why Digital Integration Matters
AI reads across platforms. If your message isn’t repeated consistently — and aligned — across your digital presence, your signal weakens. AI can’t interpret what it can’t read. Structure matters for searchability.
Case study: A nonprofit publishes an AI ethics guide:
The Guide lives on their website – Covered in a news article – Gets shared in a newsletter – Mentioned by numerous trade and industry leaders – Referred in a crowdsourcing platform (Quora/Reddit) – Sourced in a LinkedIn post…That consistent message tells AI: this is a trusted, timely, expert source. In essence, how you get cited.
By The Numbers: AI ‘Google’ World Shift
I love data-driven storytelling. There is a story behind this AI era, but to highlight the speed and magnitude of the AI earthquake online, let’s let the numbers talk:
AI is being used at scale: By July 2025, 60% of U.S. adults and 74% of adults under 30 reported using AI to find information at least occasionally (AP-NORC, 2025).
Search ends on the engine. Bain & Company (2025) found that approximately 80% of consumers rely on AI-written summaries for at least 40% of their queries. Nearly 60% of searches on search engines result in zero click (they aren’t clicking to your website).
Website traffic implications. Gartner projects a 25% decline in traditional search volume by 2026 as conversational AI and virtual assistants increasingly substitute for conventional search queries. (Have you noticed your site traffic decreasing this year? Zero click is likely to blame.)
Bonus! Social, Visual, Voice Search
Social media is it’s own search engine (+ some social content is now indexed on Google). Many people are also using “Alexa” or “Siri” for search. There is a rise in ‘image’ search. Foreshadowing to discuss the importance of optimizing with alt text, captions, and natural phrasing.
The globe is full fledged in a new phase of digital. AI will only continue to evolve and shake up the way we engage online. The Collaborative Communications team is supporting our clients and partners to not only understand these shifts, but apply necessary adaptations and strategies to their current messaging, websites, and PR plans.
Contact us to learn how our team can help you future proof your PR plans with Gen-AI digital landscape in mind.
We will be covering Social Media Discoverability in upcoming blog series. You can expect details such as: Social media algorithm updates, alt text, captions, natural voice, FAQs, video reels, native app engaging features, and more. Be sure you’re subscribed for our latest insights.
Suzanne Woodward
Digital Engagement, Collaborative Communications
Suzanne Woodward is the Director of Digital Engagement at Collaborative Communications. She leads bold, mission-driven organizations in building authentic, data-informed digital strategies that center community and drive measurable impact. Suzanne specializes in data-driven campaigns, person-centered storytelling, and AI-driven PR integration.