Digital PR | 11th March 2026

The way we work as digital PR professionals is evolving as AI results are being integrated into search. What’s more, there’s fast becoming a need to optimise for AI results in certain industries, or risk your website visibility in search results.

A recent study from Ahrefs found that up to 44% of searches for ‘science’-related queries generate AI results, double the baseline average of across all industries of 20.5%. Industries that followed this was 43% for ‘health’ searches, and 37% for ‘pets and animals’. If you’re a brand optimising organic channels related to these industries, you need an AI strategy in place.

The big question is how do we optimise for AI results? There are a number of studies with huge sample sizes (i.e Ahrefs: ‘An analysis of AI overview brand visibility‘, or SEMrush: ‘Do backlinks still matter in AI search?‘) which prove the relationship between digital PRs core goals of links (referring domains), brand authority, and brand mentions and visibility in AI Overviews.

Digging deeper into this, it’s up to us as digital PR experts and digital marketing professionals to develop the process how AI visibility is achieved. In this study, our Industry AI Visibility Index, we have sought to answer this, with the question:

‘How can we tailor our digital PR activity to create a direct route to positively impact AI visibility?’.

What do the experts think? Daniel Dracott, SEO and Content Manager at Away Resorts, says:

“The importance for Organic visibility in AI search for Away Resorts is twofold, accuracy of brand information giving our customers the most accurate and useful information about Away Resorts and our locations, for both holidays and ownership. Secondly, is making sure we’re being represented at top of funnel type search e.g. “best holiday parks in the UK”.

“We work with Distinctly to identify areas of opportunity to best represent our brand in AI search results and improve accuracy of brand information by using Peec.ai and Gumshoe. The Digital PR and content teams at Distinctly Digital are very proactive in identifying opportunities and building partnerships with publishers to promote Away Resorts.”

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Key findings:

  • On average, publications commonly appearing in UK searches allow two in three (69%) AI platforms to use and replicate their content.
  • Claude has access to the highest percentage of news publications to reproduce in live searches by users on the platform.
  • Access levels to news publications for AI crawlers remains high across the board, with Google Gemini and ChatGPT accessing three in four publications.
  • Food and drink publications have the highest overall average publication ‘AI-open’ score of 96%
  • This is followed by the average AI-open scores for the Home & Garden industry (87%), Beauty (87%), Education (85%), and both Law and Construction on 84%.
  • Regional PR coverage ranks high in providing opportunity for visibility in Google and Claude AI results. Overall score for the niche gets skewed, however, by almost completely blocking other AI crawlers such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Apple.
  • National publications allow a little under half (45%) of AI crawlers to access their content
  • The publications with the highest AI-value to PR-value ratio include Independent.co.uk, SkySports.com, BBCgoodfood.com, and GBnews.com.

Identifying which AI channels are most likely to crawl news publications

Knowledge of which publications allow AI services to see and use their content in the first place should be the foundation to generating visibility in AI results with digital PR. If publications don’t allow AI crawlers on their website, coverage in these will provide little to no direct* benefit for AI visibility.

To empower our digital PR activity here at Distinctly, we analysed robots.txt’s of 452 publications across 19 news verticals in the UK. This led us to research 6,780 data crossover points between publications and AI LLM user agents. (see the full methodology here)

Which AI platforms are UK news publications most open to? These figures highlight which AI platforms we can most effectively target with digital PR activity, by focussing on the percentage of ‘AI-open’ news publications for each.

This shows us that, on average, Claude has access to the highest percentage of news publications to reproduce in live searches by users on the platform.

However, access levels to news publications for AI crawlers remains high across the board, with Google Gemini and ChatGPT accessing three in four publications. Diffbot, which is used by the DuckDuckGo search engine, can access four in five news publications.

What do the experts think? Lisa Hamilton, Director of Marketing at SFG20, says:

“For a brand like SFG20, that sets the industry standards that decision-makers actively seek out to manage compliance with FM regulations and reduce risk, visibility in AI-driven channels is becoming fundamental. When a facilities manager asks an AI tool for recommendations on cost-efficient maintenance or on software solutions to help them stay legally compliant, we need SFG20 to be the answer it gives. That means ensuring our expertise, authority and technical credibility are present wherever AI models are sourcing and validating information — not just where traditional search rankings would have taken us.

“The approach of targeting publications open to AI gave us a simple, practical, and measurable way to see if we were taking the right steps to appear in AI results. This is exactly the kind of thinking we look to agency partners to bring — not just to stay current, but to genuinely challenge how we approach brand visibility in a rapidly shifting landscape. In a sector where trust and accuracy are everything, getting ahead of how AI surfaces authoritative sources is high on our priority list.”

The opportunity for exposure in AI results: an industry-by-industry analysis

Beyond top level insights for all publications, we can dig deeper into the data to tailor our activity to AI-open publications within each sector. We look at the figures to reveal the sectors with the most AI-open publications, which can be capitalised on with strategic digital PR activity.

View the full interactive table here.

What does this mean? We know that digital PR activity plays a key role in generating brand exposure online and promoting visibility in AI results. Though if you’re undertaking PR activity with this goal, first you will want to know the relative opportunity for ‘direct impact’ through press coverage in your industry, and which AI platform is most open.

Overall findings:

  • Food and drink publications have the highest overall average publication ‘AI-open’ score of 96%. All publications analysed in the sector allow Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Apple Intelligence to crawl and use their content.
  • This is followed by the average AI-open scores for the Home & Garden industry (87%), Beauty (87%), Education (85%), and both Law and Construction on 84%.
  • On average, publications commonly appearing in UK searches allow two in three (69%) AI platforms to use and replicate their content.
  • On the other end of the scale, just under half (45%) of AI crawlers are able to access content from national publications, followed by a low of just below two in every five (37%) able to access regional publications.
What do the experts think? Amy Walton, Head of Content at Screaming Frog, says:

“Earned media fuels AI. But there’s a big misconception within the industry that more press mentions result in greater AI visibility. Instead, it’s a quality over quantity matter, securing the right mentions in the right places. These right places include news sites that welcome AI training and citation crawlers.

“I would encourage all digital PRs to know the “AI-friendly” publications most aligned with their target audience and identify the pages that LLMs cite the most often for core prompt set. A content and outreach strategy can then be reverse engineered to secure these highly valuable mentions. Extra attention should be paid to cited pages where your brand (or client) doesn’t appear, but competitors do.

“This is a fast-moving space, so keeping up to date is a priority. Media owners are in ongoing negotiations with AI firms, policymakers are being lobbied from both sides, and AI companies continue to refine their tools, policies and partnerships.”

Industry opportunity varies depending on which AI platform you want visibility from

The average publication ‘AI-openness’ figures across all AI crawlers provides a good overview, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. There’s nuance of which AI platform do you want to improve visibility on?

How does digital PR targeting change depending on the AI platform?

  • Despite the low average score, Regional PR coverage provides good opportunity for visibility in Google and Claude AI results. This changes the narrative behind targetting regional press coverage, showing they play a role in AI visibility in key platforms.
  • National publications are more likely to provide visibility in Claude (which is able to access 62% of publications) and Diffbot (62% – used by the DuckDuckGo search engine), compared to Google AI results (50%) or ChatGPT (42%). Knowledge of which national publications are open to AI is essential in an effective strategy.
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