Digital PR Isn’t Dead

There’s a lot of chat right now treating Google’s AI Overviews and standalone LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity as the same thing. Not to put too fine a point on it, but, they’re not. They don’t work the same way, and understanding the difference matters if you want to build a strategy for your site that actually holds up in the long run. 

AI Overviews sit inside Google Search. They appear above the traditional results, summarise an answer, and crucially cite sources. Those sources come from Google’s index. Which means traditional ranking still matters (a lot). Get into the top 10 search results organically and you’re in the running to be cited within an AI overview. Getting there in the first place is still down to our SEO services, digital PR is what builds the authority on top of that foundation.

Standalone LLMs, like your ChatGPTs, your Perplexitys of the world, don’t use Google’s index at all. They pull from their own training data, web crawls, and in some cases live search integrations. 

What LLMs have in common with AI Overviews is that they both favour brands and their sites with strong external credibility. Lots of coverage, lots of mentions, lots of reputable sites talking about you.

Digital PR feeds both, just through different mechanisms. That’s it, with me so far?

AI Overviews are now a fixture of Google Search. They sit in the prime, top spot and are definitely not going anywhere anytime soon. 

What’s widely observed is that when an AI Overview appears above traditional results, it tends to change how users interact with the page. Organic listings further down the page generally receive less attention, less clicks, particularly in informational searches where users are looking for quick answers – all of which they can get within an AI Overview.

At the same time, there’s an emerging pattern around visibility within AI Overviews themselves. Brand sites that are cited tend to benefit from stronger engagement overall compared to those that aren’t included.

So in essence, the brand websites getting cited are the ones Google appears to trust more, the ones with authority and the ones other reputable sources referencing and linking to them.

Which brings us neatly back to digital PR, and why it remains crucial for sites now and moving forward.

There’s a theory in some corners of the industry that links are dying or are already dead, and that AI has made backlinks irrelevant. That all you need is “good content” and the algorithm will sort it out.

Total crap in my opinion and the data doesn’t support it.

In a recent Ahrefs analysis of 863,000 keywords, it found that only 38% of AI Overview citations now come from pages ranking in the top 10, which is down from 76% in mid-2025. Google’s fan-out process, where a single search triggers multiple related sub-queries, means AI Overviews are pulling from a much wider pool of sources than traditional rankings alone would suggest. Covering a topic with genuine authority across multiple angles carries more weight than holding one strong position for one keyword. That authority, the kind that gets you cited even when you’re not top of the results, comes from other credible sources talking about you. 

Digital PR does exactly that. 

A piece of original research picked up by a national publication, a quote from your MD in an industry round-up, a campaign that earns coverage with a regional publication or a relevant, authoritative business listing on a sector specific directory site. These aren’t vanity exercises – they’re the signals that tell Google, and the LLMs (don’t forget about them) that your brand and site is worth paying attention to.

Unlinked brand mentions on high-authority news sites are now considered as valuable as traditional backlinks in the context of AI citation. So even when a journalist doesn’t link back to your website, Google’s AI systems are taking note of the brand mention. Every piece of coverage is building a picture, every mention is a vote of confidence, and every follow link is still doing what it’s always done – building authority, visibility and brand reputation. 

A lot of marketing teams have deprioritised digital PR because it’s harder to attribute than a paid click, because you can’t draw a nice, neat straight line from a feature in a trade publication to a conversion. It doesn’t show up cleanly in GA4 and your organisation board or CEO can’t see those dots being joined up, so it gets cut or never gets prioritised in the first place. 

Meanwhile, the brands doing it consistently are quietly building the kind of external credibility that gets them cited in AI answers and trusted by LLMs.

It means that if your brand isn’t investing in digital PR, in building genuine, relevant backlinks, in creating content worth covering, in earning mentions from sources Google and the LLMs already trust, you’re leaving visibility and an opportunity to build the authority of your site on the table. Not just in traditional search, but in AI Overviews, in ChatGPT answers, and in Perplexity citations.

The search landscape has changed. There is no doubt that user behaviour and the way people find information has shifted and that it is continuing to evolve. 

This is where Digital PR proves its importance and that it is very much alive, kicking and should be a priority. It has always been about earning visibility where audiences are actively looking for trusted information.

The difference now is that it’s no longer just search engines paying attention, AI systems are too.

Digital PR matters more than ever because it builds the authority, relevance and trust signals that both people and algorithms rely on to decide what deserves to be seen.

If you know your brand site needs stronger trust signals but you don’t have the time, resource, or internal expertise to build a digital PR strategy that supports visibility in both search and AI, get in touch with SQUIDGY. We help brands’ sites earn the authority, coverage, and credibility that search engines, and AI systems, pay attention to.