Relationships drive results: prior replies lead to 1.5x more opens and 19x more responses A single reply isn’t just engagement—it’s a relationship trigger that compounds future outreach success Recency matters: journalist relationships decay significantly after ~90 days Even after Read more

Overall, about 3% of all news citations came from publishers with confirmed OpenAI or Google data partnerships. Less than 1% of citations from Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews came from Google’s confirmed partner, the Associated Press. 28.5% of ChatGPT news citations came from OpenAI partners, Read more

Around 75% of sites blocking OpenAI or Google AI bots still appeared in AI citations. Roughly 95% of the cited pages blocked GPTBot or Google-Extended, the bots used for model training. About 70% of ChatGPT citations came from sites blocking ChatGPT-User or OAI-SearchBot, which power live Read more

News publications account for 14% of AI citations in the study. Citations from news publications primarily come from decision-making prompts. (18%) True news content beats out affiliate-driven news content in AI citations. Syndication (6%) and newswires (0.21%) deliver minimal AI visibility. Read more

Images don’t noticeably affect open and reply rates. Images can hinder deliverability if used inappropriately via the spray-and-pray technique and high volumes. Images are essential for product PR. Images can be a difference-maker for expert commentary as fake experts are at an all-time Read more

The UK builds digital PR around press releases, while the US relies more on newswires and avoids full releases in outreach emails. US PR pros personalize more often and more deeply than their UK counterparts. AI adoption in pitching is much higher in the US than in the UK. UK campaigns secure Read more

Digital PR places brands on sites and platforms where most Americans actually consume information. Digital PR–driven rankings and brand mentions correlate with AI citations and AI-generated answers. High-authority publisher links and brand mentions secured through digital PR likely influence Read more

Most Americans do not rely on AI for news, with roughly 60% saying they never or rarely get news from AI. AI has not replaced traditional news habits, as user behavior is shifting more toward social. 71.7% of Americans who use AI for news have seen it produce false information. Only 7.1% Read more

OpenAI partners broadly, but partnerships don’t guarantee ChatGPT citations. Google uses very little licensed news data for LLM training beyond Associated Press. Perplexity signs the most publishers, and gets blocked the most. Microsoft’s deals mainly support Copilot. Meta mixes licensed Read more

79% of top news sites block AI training bots via robots.txt. Google-Extended is the least blocked among training bots. 71% of sites also block AI retrieval bots. PerplexityBot, used for indexing, is blocked by 67%. Only 14% of publishers block all AI bots, while 18% don’t block any. Read more