AEO, social and traditional: PR’s guide to the new three-headed search beast

Search has changed more in the last five years than it has in the last 20, and it’s about to change again. Adobe reports 52% of consumers believe AI will replace traditional search engines for product searches within five years. Whether that’s a bold forecast or a premature obituary for Google, one thing is clear – AI search is reshaping how people discover brands, products and stories, and communications professionals need to take notice.

For PR professionals, this means search optimization no longer rests just with marketing, it’s also a communications strategy. But AI search is just one piece of the story. Winning visibility takes mastering all three heads of the modern search beast — AI, social and traditional.

Making sense of the new search landscape

Just a short time ago, experts predicted that social search — consumers turning to Instagram, TikTok or YouTube for answers — would overtake traditional search. That shift slowed when AI platforms exploded onto the scene, but social search remains a powerful force shaping how consumers research, discover and decide.

Today’s search behavior is a combination of the three. Consumers might begin their search using an AI chatbot, corroborate results with Google and then go to social media to validate their choices. Each step serves a different and important purpose in the customer journey, and PR teams must ensure their brand shows up in all of them.

Capitalizing on PR’s AEO edge

According to an Acquia survey, 70% of marketers expect answer engine optimization to reshape digital strategy. That’s good news for PR because, unlike paid search, AI-driven answer engines prioritize authoritative third-party content such as earned media.

PR teams can strengthen AEO by structuring their earned and owned content, such as blogs, contributed articles and FAQs, so that it’s easily understood and surfaced by AI crawlers. The focus should be less on keywords and more on clear, accurate and credible content. When creating or updating content, aim to answer the questions that people are likely to ask AI directly rather than just what they might search on Google.

For instance, if a brand like Clorox publishes a blog post titled “Ways to Safely Disinfect a Kitchen After Food Prepping,” writes it in a Q&A form and links to citations from industry experts, AI engines such as Perplexity and Google SGE are more likely to reference the content in a query asking “What’s the best way to disinfect my kitchen after preparing chicken?”

Don’t overlook social search’s staying power

Social search occupies a unique place in the customer journey that AI can’t easily replace because it’s built on trust and human connection. Consumers believe other people more than platforms or algorithms.

This makes creator marketing vital in the new search ecosystem because it sits at the intersection of trust, influence and engagement. Consumers are turning to TikTok before Google to make decisions on what to buy or which brands to trust, making it an instrumental part of the customer journey.

It also makes it that much more important to partner with influencers who are truly aligned with your brand and can authentically tell your story. Their content can not only drive engagement, but also help AI platforms learn about your brand.

Read the full article