A Mix of PR and Optimization: How Promotion in AI Search Results Works

A Mix of PR and Optimization: How Promotion in AI Search Results Works Russian companies are increasingly receiving offers to improve their brand's position in AI-powered search results. This service appeared in the US as early as last year and is just beginning to take shape in Russia, yet a number of communication agencies have already started offering it. However, experts assert there's no guaranteed way to conquer a desired spot in AI-generated results, but there are general principles and rules for promotion in such systems. Forbes investigated what these rules are, how effective such a service might be, and what it could cost. ChatGPT Doesn't Recommend Your Company! Emails with such subject lines are landing in the corporate inboxes of many companies more and more often. The senders of these emails, several of which Forbes has reviewed, write in this vein: "Clients are increasingly choosing service providers through ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and other neural networks; we tested variations of the prompt 'Recommend the top 5 reliable companies in your industry'—and ChatGPT doesn't mention you. If you're not in the results, potential clients might think you are not recommended." After this, the AI optimization specialist proposes: "We can show you how neural networks see your company, what they say about your brand, and in what tone. And what needs to be changed to get a recommendation from a neural network." With the advent of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI tools that can be used instead of search engines, businesses have inevitably started to think about how they appear in the results of generative neural networks. Market demand was the primary driver here: to meet it, a new service began to form in the communications field—AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization), the optimization of websites and content for interaction with AI, or, more narrowly, GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), the optimization of content for generative AI systems like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, GigaChat, YandexGPT, and Perplexity. The main goal of this work is to ensure that the desired materials are cited in AI responses. The name of the new service is similar to the now-familiar SEO (Search Engine Optimization)—optimizing a site to improve its position in search engine results. IT and cybersecurity companies have recently started receiving commercial proposals to improve their brand's position in generative system results to attract new clients, Alexander Sanin, CEO of SafeTech Lab, tells Forbes. According to Ivan Khudyakov, CEO of Steplife, his company has been regularly receiving such offers since the beginning of the year: "They are most often organized as 'blanket' spam mailings, without considering the company's specific activities or its target audience." Nascent Stage In the US, the AI search promotion service appeared in 2024, and by the middle of the same year, the first startups offering only this service emerged, according to MWS AI (part of MTS Web Services). "Given the growing number of AI users (primarily generative), this will soon become an important aspect of the work of marketing and PR departments. It's not a given that this field will become a separate discipline, but it will definitely become a part of their work," the company believes. In Russia, the supply and demand for AI optimization are just forming: businesses have developed a need to be "seen" by ChatGPT, and specialized agencies have picked up on this need and started packaging it as a separate service, says Kristina Petrova, founder of the communication agency PR Perfect. According to her, the fact that a content or PR agency offers such a service is currently seen as a competitive advantage, which indicates that the phenomenon is not yet widespread.