SEO
AI is changing how people discover and understand brands.
It’s also reshaping how they search, with users turning to tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews for answers instead of clicking through pages.
They interact with synthesized summaries, not traditional results.
That shift forces marketers to rethink how visibility is built.
SEO still matters, but it now extends beyond on-page content or rankings.
Visibility depends on how often a brand is cited, referenced, and discussed across the digital ecosystem, and how those signals are interpreted by large language models.
Enter the PESO model.
Long used to balance paid, earned, shared, and owned media, PESO now plays a central role in generative search.
It acts as a visibility engine, with each channel contributing trust signals and context cues that help AI decide whether a brand is included in a summary or overlooked.
How PESO supports your brand’s AI search visibility
Generative search visibility refers to your brand’s ability to appear in AI-generated responses across search-enabled platforms, including:
- Google’s AI Overviews.
- ChatGPT search.
- Claude.
- Other tools that blend search with summarization.
These systems draw from billions of data points across the web – from news articles and blogs to LinkedIn posts, product documentation, forums, and customer reviews.
When your brand is mentioned consistently in credible, recent, and well-structured content across these sources, it becomes more likely to surface in AI-generated summaries.
Here’s where PESO matters.
AI models don’t recognize your marketing silos.
A single article isn’t enough, but when your brand is reinforced across multiple PESO channels, you increase the likelihood of appearing in generative results.
Dig deeper: SEO beyond the website: Winning visibility in the AI era
Rethinking the PESO model in an AI context
Each PESO element contributes differently to generative search visibility.
Paid media
Paid media often goes unnoticed in AI summaries, but its impact is indirect and significant.
Paid campaigns that drive traffic to well-structured and optimized content help build the authority and engagement signals AI systems recognize.
Clear and informative sponsored thought leadership can also reinforce credibility.
Earned media
Up to 89% of AI citations come from earned media, according to MuckRack.
While overall media mentions dropped 41% year over year, brand reach actually increased 10%, PAN’s 2025 Brand Experience Report found. (Disclosure: I am PAN’s head of AI innovation and SVP, integrated marketing.)
This suggests that AI prioritizes context, not quantity.
It doesn’t have to just be top-tier coverage. High-authority, in-depth stories from trade publications and niche media can be just as powerful as those from national outlets.
Thought leadership and original research now perform like earned media.
AI platforms surfaced research and academic-style content 26% of the time, based on findings from PAN’s C-Suite Signals study.
And in queries from CMOs and CISOs, credible owned content, such as whitepapers, blog series, and analyst insights, was among the most cited sources.
This means your thought leadership isn’t just fuel for awareness, it’s a ticket into the generative conversation.
Substance outweighs virality: only 4% of citations came from social media or community platforms, reinforcing that what you say (and how you back it up) matters more than how often it’s shared.
Shared media
Engagement across platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit and Slack communities may not be directly cited in model outputs.
However, they train algorithms on what’s trending, credible and meaningful to audiences.
These informal signals build topical relevance, which informs how AI ranks and presents information.
Owned media
Your website is often where deep content lives, but only if it’s accessible to AI tools.
Structured data, clear headers, schema markup, and question-answer formatting help ensure that content can be parsed and used.
Articles that clearly respond to common search queries tend to surface more frequently in AI results.
Dig deeper: Your website still matters in the age of AI
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Applying PESO to generative engine optimization
Understand the questions your audience is asking
To make PESO actionable for AI-driven search, start by understanding what your audience really wants to know.
What questions are decision-makers typing into ChatGPT or Gemini?
Map those queries to content topics across your media mix, not just for owned content, but also in press outreach, sponsored content, and social conversations.
Reinforce core messages across channels
Once you know the questions, focus on reinforcement.
If an executive is quoted in an article on AI in healthcare, turn that quote into a short-form video or LinkedIn post.
Repurpose the core insight in a blog or newsletter.
The more often the same message appears credibly across sources, the stronger the signal to AI models that it’s trustworthy and worth referencing.
For example, a cybersecurity firm promoting a new compliance solution could:
- Secure a thought leadership article in a top trade publication.
- Follow it with a podcast interview on the same topic.
- Amplify both on LinkedIn and through a newsletter sponsorship.
- Publish a technical blog that breaks down the key insights.
Within weeks, the brand would likely surface in AI summaries for related searches.
Dig deeper: SEO in the age of AI: Becoming the trusted answer
Monitor how your content appears in AI
You should also monitor where your content shows up.
AI visibility benchmarking is still emerging, but even a manual review of AI-generated responses can provide useful insight.
GA4 dashboards that track traffic from platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity, or tools like Semrush’s AI features, can help you identify which pieces are working and why.
Audit your content for trust signals
Audit your content and channels for the signals AI uses to judge credibility.
Check whether expert sources are quoted, whether authoritative publications link back to your content, and whether backlinks support your owned media.
These cues shape how AI evaluates and presents your brand in generative results.
PESO as a strategic lever for AI-first discovery
PR and marketing teams have long treated SEO, brand awareness, and lead generation as separate workstreams.
AI doesn’t recognize those boundaries.
Generative search platforms prioritize consistency, relevance, authority, and clarity across paid, earned, shared, and owned content.
As a result, PESO is more than a media model.
Visibility once meant showing up on Page 1. Now, it depends on whether AI systems view your brand as authoritative enough to summarize it.
This shift turns PESO into a playbook for generative visibility.
Without consistent, trusted content across all four channels, brands risk being left out of the conversation entirely.
PESO becomes a map for building discoverability, trust, and consistency across everything you publish.
Marketers who adopt this approach not only increase visibility, but they also shape the narratives AI learns to associate with their brand.
In a world where AI models decide what to surface and summarize, visibility strategies must evolve.
Aligning PESO efforts with what generative systems value – recency, repetition, and relevance – helps brands appear where audiences now look first.
PESO is no longer about balancing channels.
It’s about training the models that shape perception and ensuring your brand influences how AI explains the world.
Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. Contributor was not asked to make any direct or indirect mentions of Semrush. The opinions they express are their own.
