Last month, we wrote about the importance of earned media in generative engine optimization (GEO), the practice of optimizing content to increase its visibility in AI-generated answers.
AI models rely heavily on external signals, like earned media, to decide which brands to mention in their answers. They aren’t likely to rely solely on what you claim on your website, but when those claims are consistently backed up by credible third-party sources, AI has more evidence to validate them — and may be more likely to cite your brand in response to relevant questions.
Earned media isn’t the only content AI is paying attention to, though. While earned media makes up the majority of AI citations, press releases are increasingly used by AI models to understand companies and their products.
Press releases have always helped reporters tell your story. Now, they also need to communicate that story clearly to AI.
How to Structure Your Press Release for Better GEO
The easier your announcement is for AI systems to understand and retrieve, the more likely it is to be surfaced when users ask questions related to your industry, so don’t make AI hunt for the good stuff.
Here are some best practices we’ve been following at Look Left to make our clients’ press releases more visible to AI models.
Headline
The headline should include the company’s name, the main announcement, and the main outcome or impact of what’s being announced. This can make it easier for LLMs to understand what the release is about before parsing the rest of it.
To give room to fit enough recognizable entities into the headline, the advice for optimal length is shifting. The old advice was to keep headlines to 50 to 100 characters, but now it’s recommended to aim for 80 to 110 characters.
Subheadline
The subheadline serves a similar purpose, providing additional context or supporting data that didn’t fit in the headline but can help an LLM better understand the announcement.
TL;DR
A TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) puts the most important information right up front. Use a bulleted list or short summary to capture the key points of the announcement so neither reporters nor LLMs have to dig for them.
Dateline
While it’s long been standard practice to include the date and location at the beginning of a press release, it’s even more important now because it helps LLMs assess the relevancy and recency of an announcement, which are key factors used to determine whether or not to cite your content. According to Muck Rack’s What Is AI Reading report, over half of AI citations come from content published in the last 12 months, and the highest citation rate is from content published within the past seven days.
Body
The body of the press release remains largely the same, but GEO makes clarity and scannability more important:
- Lead with the news. The first 75-100 words are the most important, so ensure the who, what, when, where, and why are in the first paragraph.
- Keep it digestible. Use short paragraphs that are no more than three to four lines each.
- Break it up. Add clear, descriptive section headers to organize different topics.
FAQs
Adding an FAQ section at the end of the release provides LLMs with highly retrievable information in a clear question-and-answer format.
It’s best to use questions that buyers would ask, rather than those that serve only a marketing purpose. Don’t use this space to answer questions about why your company is unique. Use it to answer questions about how the product is different from your company’s other offerings, how it compares to similar products on the market, or how it relates to other products briefly mentioned in the announcement.
Boilerplate
The boilerplate should go at the very end and include clear facts about the company, such as its location, when it was founded, what it does, who it serves, and key achievements.
How Your Writing Impacts AI Visibility
Structure can only get you so far. Once you’ve made your release easy for LLMs to navigate, the words themselves need to do some work. For GEO, that means trading vague claims and marketing language for clear, factual information. Instead of saying “faster,” say “reduces deployment time by 20%.”
Specific, verifiable facts give AI something concrete to understand and validate, especially when you can back them up with links to reputable third-party sources.
It’s also important to explain why the announcement matters by answering the questions that buyers and reporters are most likely to ask, such as who the product is for, what problem it solves, and when it’s available.
A few more ways to make your release work harder:
- Name names. Spell out entities (company names, product names, executives, and events) on their first mention to help the LLMs compare the text against their existing knowledge graph.
- Vary your language naturally. Use related terms and concepts to improve semantic coverage without keyword stuffing.
- Explain what changed. Include comparison context like “previously” or “unlike traditional” to help the LLM understand what’s new and how it differs from previous releases or other products.
- Build the trail. Link to owned content that adds context, such as product pages, documentation, previous announcements, blog posts, or whitepapers.
Good GEO Is Just Good Communication
As you incorporate these best practices into your writing, you’ll realize that the changes you’ve made for AI will help human readers, too.
A TL;DR helps reporters understand the key points before they read the rest of the release. Data helps tell a story of why the announcement is being made. FAQs add context to the announcement. And clear, specific writing helps everyone understand what you’re trying to say.
The best content for AI is often simply better content for everyone.
Ready to make your press releases work harder for both people and AI? Let’s talk.
Frequently Asked Questions
What types of announcements benefit most from GEO?
Announcements that answer common customer or industry questions tend to have the greatest potential. Product launches, research reports, funding news, partnerships, and major company milestones all provide information that people may later ask AI tools about.
Will optimizing for GEO hurt my chances of earning media coverage?
No. In many cases, the same qualities that make a press release easier for AI systems to understand — clear writing, factual claims, logical organization, and supporting evidence — also make it easier for journalists to quickly evaluate and report on your announcement.
How can I assess if my press release is AI-friendly?
Ask an AI platform if it could understand the announcement after reading only the headline, summary, TL;DR, and first paragraph. If the key facts, audience, and business impact are immediately clear, you’re on the right track.
Does it matter for GEO where a press release is published?
Your website should always host the full press release, even if you’re also using a wire service. Some experts recommend publishing to your newsroom before distribution, so AI systems have a clear first-party source to crawl, although this practice is still emerging.
