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Module 8 · Lesson 8.3 · Mentions, digital PR and links · 3 min

Brand mentions and digital PR on the sites AI engines read

Lesson 8.3 of the free AEO and GEO course: why brand mentions matter to AI engines, how to find the publications the engines already read for your questions, what to pitch to a journalist, and how the real case of an Italian luxury tour operator worked, with press coverage and quality links.

The video for this lesson is coming soon to YouTube. Meanwhile, the full transcript is right here.

Transcript

0:00Introduction

Lesson 8.3: mentions, digital PR and links.

0:05Mentions before links

In Lesson 4.1 you saw an Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands. Mentions of a brand's name across the web had a 0.664 correlation with showing up in Google's AI Overviews. Backlinks, only 0.218. It's a correlation, not proof. But it tells you where to look: people talking about you, in the right places, even without a link.

0:32The right places

Which places are the right ones? The ones the engines already read for your questions. You'll find them in your audit's sources: industry publications, local newspapers, specialist blogs, associations. One article in a publication the engines cite is worth more than ten press releases published where nobody reads them.

0:53What to pitch

A journalist doesn't publish an ad. They publish news, or something useful to their readers. Your own data, that nobody else has: for example, what your customers really ask you. An expert comment on a current topic in your industry. A true story: a project, a client, a result, told with permission from the people involved.

1:17The tour operator case

For the Italian luxury tour operator, the work off the site followed exactly this logic. Verified press coverage, with placements in top-tier publications like The Telegraph and Forbes. Then that coverage came onto the site: a dedicated press page, and articles citing the publications. And the links came from industry publications, with one rule: quality, not volume. The press confirmed what the site said. Together with the work on content and technical structure, the result: quote requests from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, for over $209,000 in declared budget.

1:57What about links?

What about links? They still matter: they help the engines find your pages, and confirm who's talking about you. But a good link is the result of a good mention. You don't buy it, and you don't trade it: we'll see why in the next lesson.

2:11Your task for today

Your task for today: from the External sources tab, pick three publications or industry sites that the engines cite for your questions. For each one, write what you can offer, a piece of data, a comment or a story, who to write to, and the date you'll do it by.

2:39Next lesson

In the next lesson: what not to do. Fake reviews, mass-produced content and link exchanges, and why they do damage. See you there.

Your task

From the External sources tab, pick three publications or industry sites that the engines cite for your questions. For each one, write what you can offer, a piece of data, a comment or a story, who to write to, and the date you'll do it by.

Track it in the course worksheet.

Sources

Checked 19 October 2026.

  • Ahrefs, «An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied)», 26 May 2025 (https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/): «Web mentions (0.664) correlate much more strongly than backlinks (0.218).» Correlation, not causation (Lesson 4.1).
  • Luxury tour operator case (How I Got a Luxury Tour Operator Cited by ChatGPT and Gemini, «Authority: media and link building»): verified press coverage over twelve months, with Tier 1 placements on The Telegraph and Forbes; a dedicated press page and recap articles citing the publications; links from industry publications, «quality over volume». Project result: quote requests that came from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude for over $209,000 in declared budget (Lesson 0.1). The client is an Italian tour operator, and the case is real. It does not show that the publications themselves were cited by the AI engines: they went along with the work on content and technical structure.
  • The places named in the lesson (industry publications, local newspapers, specialist blogs, associations) are generic categories, not specific outlets.
  • CiteProof: sources of the «press» kind in the Source map, with the action «An outlet the engines already read» (The Brand page: how the AI engines see your business).