After years of hearing that press releases were ineffectual in the digital age, Giles Shorthouse, Growth Director at The Think Tank, explains why AI and large language models have brought this classic PR format roaring back to life.
Between 2006 and 2015, I worked at RealWire, an online press release distribution platform. During those years, I lost count of how many times I heard the phrase ‘the press release is dead’.
Industry pundits declared it an outdated relic. Journalists complained about irrelevant pitches flooding their inboxes. Marketing blogs proclaimed that social media and content marketing had rendered the humble press release obsolete.
Except it never actually died. The press release just needed the right circumstances to prove its worth again. Now, in 2026, those circumstances have arrived. I believe the press release is experiencing an unexpected renaissance. And the catalyst for this is artificial intelligence and large language models.
Why AI changes everything
We’re entering what some are calling the ‘Answer Era’. When people search for information, they increasingly use AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI overviews. Rather than simply ranking websites as a classic online search would do, these platforms generate fully-rounded answers for users, by pulling from multiple sources.
This fundamentally changes the question brands need to ask. It used to be: “Are we ranking on page one?” Today it’s: “Are we being cited in the answer?”
For this reason, press releases will become crucial again. AI systems need structured, authoritative, factual information from trusted sources. Press releases, when distributed through reputable newswires and hosted on company websites, tick every box.
The numbers tell the story. The global generative engine optimisation (GEO) services market was valued at $886 million in 2024 by Valuates Reports. By 2031, it’s projected to reach $7.3 billion – a compound annual growth rate of 34%.
The trust factor
During my time at RealWire, we understood that newswires provided credibility. But in the AI era, that credibility has taken on new importance.
Major newswires like PR Newswire and Business Wire maintain open-access policies for legitimate AI crawlers. This means content distributed through these channels gets indexed for what’s now called Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).
The structured metadata, consistent formatting and canonical links that newswires provide enable accurate attribution by AI systems. Even more significantly, this content often appears in Common Crawl – which comprises roughly 80% of the data used to train large language models.
In other words, press releases distributed through newswires are becoming part of the knowledge base that AI systems draw upon when generating answers.
If you’re not cited, you don’t exist
Research suggests that 68% of local businesses currently appear incorrectly in AI results due to missing, inconsistent or outdated data. This matters because if brands aren’t referenced by LLMs, they are missing crucial visibility in new digital marketplace.
Earned media remains the top driver of brand visibility in AI tools. To recap, earned media refers to the publicity a brand gains organically through mentions, shares, reviews, or recommendations rather than paid advertising. Press releases distributed through trusted channels create those earned media opportunities while simultaneously providing authoritative source material for AI systems
The dual distribution strategy
Back in my newswire days, we focused primarily on getting releases distributed to journalists and syndicated across news websites. That remains important, but now there’s a second critical component: hosting full press releases on your own website.
This dual strategy maximises what researchers call ‘authority signals’. The newswire distribution provides immediate credibility and gets your content into AI training datasets. Publishing the full release on your own website ensures long-term crawlability and gives you control over how the information is presented.
Companies should create dedicated newsroom sections on their websites with:
- Clean URLs and metadata
- Machine-readable structure (clear headings, bullet points, short paragraphs)
- Multimedia integration with descriptive captions
- Regular updates to signal freshness to AI crawlers
The combination delivers results. Best-performing campaigns now generate 5-20 backlinks through this approach, according to PRLab , and content can appear in LLM answers within hours of press release distribution.
Structure matters more than ever
AI systems, particularly LLMs, prioritise the first 75-100 words of any press release. Of course, this isn’t new advice. PR professionals have always aimed to front-load the most important information. But now it’s critical for a different reason. That opening paragraph determines whether AI systems consider your content relevant for user queries.
The Notified SOAR Content Framework™ provides a useful guide:
Notified analysed thousands of press releases, investor updates and corporate statements for AI visibility, examining patterns and qualities of good practice and strategy.
They discovered the content most likely to be surfaced and cited shares four key traits: Structure, Originality, Authority and Recency. So Notified invented the SOAR Content Framework™.
Structure: Use clear headlines, bulleted ‘Key Facts’ sections, and clearly represent entities, dates and numbers.
Originality: Include direct ‘from the source’ content, first-party data and named human quotes.
Authority: Publish on high-authority domains with organisation schema and spokesperson contacts.
Recency: Ensure accurate publication dates and fast follow-up (24-72 hours is optimal).
The formatting requirements are straightforward but essential:
- Keep sentences to 15-20 words
- Use small paragraphs (2-4 sentences)
- Include clear subheadings and bullet points
- Add FAQ sections where relevant
- Provide verifiable data points (numbers, dates, percentages)
- Spell out company names and entities consistently
Crucially, avoid promotional language. AI systems deprioritise vague terms like ‘industry-leading’ or ‘innovative’ in favour of concrete facts. Write with a factual, journalistic tone.
New metrics for a new era
The shift from SEO to GEO requires different measurement approaches. Rather than tracking traditional metrics like click-through rates and organic rankings, brands now need to monitor:
- AI Share of Voice
- Entity Mentions across AI platforms
- Citation Frequency in AI-generated answers
- How accurately their brand appears in results across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude
The PR world is adapting fast to help brands optimise content for this new landscape.
The renaissance is real
Looking back at those conversations about the death of the press release between 2006 and 2015, I can see now what was really happening. The press release wasn’t dying – it was waiting for a technology shift that would reveal its true value.
In an era where AI systems determine what information surfaces in response to user queries, the structured, authoritative, factual format of a press release is exactly what’s needed.
The brands that recognise this opportunity and adapt their approach will gain significant competitive advantage. The brands that ignore it risk becoming invisible in the answers that matter most.
The press release is dead. Long live the press release.
Interested in mastering GEO for your business? Read our guide GEO: The discipline putting PR back in the driving seat
