Today, 73% of AI-search users utilise prompts to decide which brands are worth their attention before they ever visit a search engine. Large language models (LLMs) have entirely upended the search and discovery phase for prospects and brands alike.
To earn the favour of LLMs, brands need to focus on building trust, authority, and relevance upstream. This means becoming visible in the places AI looks for validation – national news sites, industry journals, expert forums and reputable media. What is said about you is now just as important as what you publish – so strong brand PR is now a non-negotiable.
The new “pre-search” opportunity
The shift to AI-driven prompts has changed how brands establish presence.
LLMs generate adaptable and highly specific answers for prospects foraging for information before they have a specific goal or brand in mind. At this early stage in their journey, users are asking broad questions to understand a category or solve a problem, such as:
- Are productivity apps useful?
- How often should I buy new running shoes?
- What is the best way to learn a new language?
These prompts are inquisitive, unspecific, and low intent. If your brand is part of the answers that follow, you’ve already established early authority. In many cases, the brand named at this stage becomes the reference point against which later options are judged.As intent sharpens, users seek to identify the market leaders, subcategories and solutions that align with their budget and requirements. They consult LLMs for more detailed summaries and product comparisons. They read online articles, listen to influencers on TikTok or Instagram, watch expert YouTube videos, or immerse themselves in subreddits.
This is the new pre-search discovery phase – and it’s where you need your brand to be visible in 2026. If a model cannot draw on a human-led consensus to verify your brand at this stage, it is unlikely to include you in its answers. You aren’t just ranked lower: you probably won’t rank at all.
By the time a user reaches the search bar, they have already used an LLM to define their requirements and narrow down their options. All that’s left to do is confirm they’re making the right call. We used to use search to discover – now we use it to verify the discoveries we make further upstream.
Building upstream trust with brand PR
Now that AI prompts are so crucial to digital discovery, building trust, authority, and reputation among real humans is essential. This is not a new rule, but an old one resurfacing – the traditional PR principle that brands are truly built on earned media.
We’re noticing this shift because AI responses, unlike search engine results, are built on digital consensus, not just the technical relevance and domain authority of individual pages. They aggregate patterns of language from diverse datasets including news archives, professional journals, academic research, user generated content, and affiliate websites to build the best version of “the truth” they can.
When your brand appears in these outlets, real humans begin to see you as authoritative and trustworthy. This part has always been true.
The difference now is that AI search – the preferred source of information for 46% of consumers in 2025 – works in exactly the same way. When an LLM sees your brand appear in its permanent record of trusted sources, it feels confident enough to include you in its answers.
This matters because LLMs are programmed to answer authoritatively to even the most vague and exploratory prompts. Each mention in an AI search response positions your brand as a confident recommendation or trusted citation – effectively the kind of endorsement that PR teams have always worked hard to secure.
Authority, trust, reputation – PR fundamentals still key
As AI search transforms how brands are discovered, one thing is clear: the fundamentals of PR matter more than ever. Trust, authority and reputation are no longer just the outcomes of good communication strategy – they are the inputs LLMs rely on when deciding which brands to recommend.
Authority begins with editorial judgment. For LLMs to recognise a brand as credible, they need evidence that experienced editors and subject-matter experts have validated its claims.
Building the AI-ready brand: A PR roadmap
To ensure your brand isn’t just indexed, but recommended, PR strategy must shift from chasing "hits" to building a verifiable record. Here is how to audit and execute:
- Prioritise "high-judgment" media: LLMs rely on editorial media for 61% of their training data regarding brand reputation. Focus on outlets where human editors verify claims; a single mention in a national trade journal carries more "weight" for an LLM than fifty unreviewed blog posts.
- Create "primary source" data: AI models are hungry for original information. Publishing proprietary research, white papers, or sector-specific data creates a "citation magnet" that forces the model to reference you as the origin of a fact.
- Maintain a traceable public footprint: Even a press release is a tool for AI legibility. When distributed through reputable wire services, they create a permanent, timestamped record that models use to cross-reference your brand’s history and claims.
- Consistency over spikes: Authority is a layering effect. Appearing once in a major outlet is a signal; appearing consistently across sector-specific publications creates a consensus.
- Couple with SEO: PR and SEO work hand-in-hand, central to making expertise legible to both humans and machines. A strong link-building strategy is still one of the best ways to signal credibility. It was true for search engines, and it’s even more true for LLMs.
In 2026, PR is no longer just about public relations – it’s about Programmatic Reputation. If a brand lacks strong third-party recognition before the point of search, its presence in AI responses will remain inconsistent. Building cross-channel credibility has always mattered – but AI-led discovery has made that visibility measurable much earlier in the journey. We aren't just pitching journalists anymore; we are feeding the datasets that define the market.
For more on how LLMs are reshaping the way customers and brands are interacting, make sure to watch our ThinkTank webinar, “Brand PR in the new age of discovery.”
Led by our head of PR, Martyn Gettings, the session sets out how discovery now works in a trust-driven environment, why PR underpins strong brand growth, and how to secure trustworthy third-party coverage that LLMs will recognise and reuse.