GEO Ownership Gap: 29% of PR Teams Lack an AI Visibility Lead

The headline number

Public relations has largely accepted that AI search engines now shape how brands get discovered. It has not yet decided who should be in charge of that. Muck Rack's 2026 "State of PR" report found that 73% of PR professionals consider generative engine optimization (GEO) at least somewhat important to their communications strategy. Yet 29% say nobody at their organization is responsible for it. 12

The report draws on a survey of 1,115 PR professionals conducted between May 14 and June 12, 2026, distributed mainly by email. 2 GEO is the practice of making content easier for systems such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to find, interpret and cite. Those models weigh factors like context, authority, recency and factual accuracy when choosing sources. 1

Adoption is high, accountability is not

The gap is notable because AI tools are already routine in the profession. Some 80% of PR pros use generative AI in their work. 2 Measurement lags further behind. Thirty-nine percent say they are not measuring GEO at all, even though 45% describe media measurement and reporting as a major part of their job. 1 Among those who do track it, 25% monitor brand mentions inside AI-generated answers. 1

Practitioners are still adjusting their tactics. Fifty-five percent say they are pursuing coverage in high-authority publications specifically to improve visibility in AI responses, and about half are producing more authoritative content. 2 Thought leadership is also expanding. Fifty-one percent say it makes up at least a quarter of their workload, a six-point rise from the previous year. 2 The broader picture includes familiar pressures too: long hours and reporters who are harder to reach. 1

Why earned media sits at the center

The ownership question matters because a growing body of research points to PR's core product, earned coverage, as a major input into what AI engines cite. The figures differ depending on the study.

• A Muck Rack analysis from May 2026, cited by the AI visibility firm Shadow, attributes 84% of AI citations to earned media. The same source puts press releases at just 0.04%. 3
• Muck Rack's December 2025 "Generative Pulse" study, covering more than one million AI responses, put earned media at 82% of cited links and non-paid coverage at 95%. 4
• Research from Ranqo, also cited by Shadow, found only 2.9% of AI citations point to a brand's own domain. It classified 75.2% as corporate pages belonging to competitors, peers and vendors in the same category. 3

These numbers do not reconcile neatly. A finding that three-quarters of citations land on other companies' corporate pages sits uneasily beside one that more than four-fifths come from earned media. That likely reflects different definitions, query sets and sampling. The point where they agree is narrower and still important: a brand's own website accounts for a small share of what AI engines reference. Shadow argues that a GEO effort focused only on a client's domain is chasing under 3% of where citations end up. 3

Executives appear to be responding. AuthorityTech cites a Delight Labs report from March 2026 claiming 92% of CEOs increased PR investment because of AI search. It also says earned media ranked as the top tactic respondents believe drives AI citation, chosen by 29% of executives, ahead of technical SEO at 22%. 4 These are vendor-reported figures from firms that sell AI visibility services, so they are best read as signals of direction rather than settled benchmarks.

The market moves into the vacuum

Unclaimed responsibility tends to attract outside providers. On October 1, 2026, the answer-engine optimization consultancy SearchTides and the boutique communications agency Needle announced a preferred partnership. They cited the Muck Rack ownership finding directly as evidence that communications teams need specialist help. 5 Their pitch is that many PR teams understand the link between their work and AI visibility but are unsure how to optimize for generative search, or who should lead it. 5

The takeaway

The data points toward a structural problem more than a skills problem. PR teams are already doing much of what appears to drive AI citations: placing stories in credible outlets and producing authoritative content. What many lack is a named owner who connects that work to measurable AI visibility. Without one, the 39% who do not measure GEO cannot show whether their coverage appears in AI answers. That makes it harder to defend budgets that executives say they are increasing for exactly this reason.

The likely near-term outcome is that GEO becomes an explicit PR responsibility, either through internal role changes or through agency-specialist partnerships like SearchTides and Needle. Organizations that assign ownership early will be better placed to show that their earned media is reaching AI answers. Organizations that leave it unassigned risk competitors and consultancies filling that space first.