Sallavi Gowda
| 1 hour ago
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As AI-driven search changes how consumers discover and evaluate brands, the traditional equation of rankings, keywords and backlinks is being broadened by contextual signals such as brand mentions, earned media, expert commentary and third-party validation. Industry leaders say this does not make backlinks irrelevant, but it is pushing brands to think beyond link equity and towards how consistently they are recognised across credible digital conversations.
For PR and SEO teams, the shift could also bring previously separate functions closer together, with earned media increasingly viewed as a component of a broader AI search visibility strategy.
According toShiva Bhavani, Founder & CEO, Wing Communications, backlinks will continue to matter, but brands can no longer assess their online presence purely through links and rankings.
“When someone searches for a company today, particularly through an AI tool, the system is trying to make sense of much more than the company’s own website,” Bhavani says. AI systems are increasingly looking at what a company does, where it is mentioned, what people say about it and what it is associated with.
Using Nike as an example, Bhavani points to the volume of information surrounding the brand, from athletes and publications to creators and consumers. Not every conversation links back to Nike’s website, but each contributes to the broader understanding of the brand.
“The difference is that we are starting to look at the whole picture rather than one particular SEO metric,” he says. For brands, he adds, being visible in the right conversations could become as important as being visible in search results.
Chirag Taneja, CEO & Co-founder, GoKwik, similarly sees AI-driven search as changing the nature of authority. Traditional search engines relied heavily on backlinks as a signal of credibility, while AI systems are increasingly evaluating content in context to understand what a brand does, who it serves and how reliable it appears.
“A brand with a clean backlink profile but a thin public footprint, no coverage, no expert commentary, no presence in conversations about its category, is now less visible in AI-generated answers than one actively discussed across external platforms,” Taneja says.
He adds that brands on GoKwik’s network are increasingly treating earned coverage as a discoverability driver rather than only a reputation tool, signalling a potential shift in marketing priorities.
While third-party mentions are gaining attention, experts caution against turning them into another volume-driven metric.
Bhavani argues that a mention only becomes valuable when there is substance behind it. A company repeatedly discussed by industry voices, trusted publications and relevant communities can build a stronger perception of expertise than one simply accumulating links.
“Consistency is important,” he says, noting that a single article is unlikely to establish authority. Sustained participation in relevant conversations is more meaningful when the company has something useful to contribute.
Nikhil Parmar, Founder & CEO, Impactful Pitch, also believes the shift is less about replacing backlinks and more about broadening the definition of authority.
“AI systems are synthesising information from multiple sources, so repeated, contextual mentions of a brand across credible publications, expert commentary, communities and industry platforms can help build a stronger association between that brand and a particular category or area of expertise,” Parmar says.
He cites recent Ahrefs research across 75,000 brands and 25 million AI Overviews, which found a stronger correlation between branded web mentions and AI Overview visibility than backlink volume. Parmar cautions that the finding indicates correlation, not causation.
The implication, he says, is that brands need both links for discoverability and authority, and credible mentions for recognition, context and reputation.
The quality and context of a mention could prove more important than the raw number of times a brand appears online.
Parmar points out that a brand being referenced repeatedly by credible publications and industry experts in connection with a particular subject creates a richer signal than accumulating unrelated links. A large volume of low-context links, he argues, may tell little about a company’s reputation, whereas a smaller number of strong, independent references can establish a clearer picture.
Ridhima Bhasin, Founder & CEO, Ampliverse, takes this argument further, suggesting that AI search is changing the unit of authority itself.
“AI search changes the unit of authority from the link to the mention,” Bhasin says.
She points to research from Ahrefs and BrightEdge indicating that a significant proportion of sources cited in AI-generated search experiences do not overlap with Google’s traditional top-ranking results. This suggests that visibility within AI search can extend beyond the conventional first page of search results.
However, Bhasin highlights another consideration: accessibility. Highly credible media coverage may not always be accessible to AI systems if it sits behind paywalls or login walls. As a result, the sources shaping an AI system’s understanding of a brand may not always be the same sources that carry the greatest prestige with human audiences.
“What stays constant across every model is the direction of authority, which is decided by what others say about you, not what you say about yourself,” she says.
The changing search environment is also challenging the traditional separation between PR, SEO, content and digital teams.
“AI search doesn’t recognise the separation,” says Taneja. He argues that PR and SEO need to work towards a common strategy because AI systems draw on the same wider pool of publicly available content when generating answers.
For PR teams, this means looking beyond coverage volume and considering where and how a brand is being discussed. For SEO teams, it means ensuring that owned content is aligned with the external narrative being created around the brand.
Parmar believes the shift could fundamentally change how both functions are measured. SEO teams have traditionally focused on rankings, traffic and backlinks, while PR teams have focused on coverage, reach and reputation. AI-driven discovery brings those objectives closer together.
This could make earned media a more deliberate part of an overall visibility strategy, provided brands focus on building sustained credibility around subjects where they have genuine expertise.
Kunal Kothari, Chairman, Founder & COO, Mobavenue AI Tech Limited, also sees an opportunity for PR and SEO teams to work more closely. He argues that PR can create credible associations around a brand, while SEO and digital teams can assess how those associations translate into discoverability, engagement and intent.
The emphasis, Kothari says, should move from asking how many links were generated to whether a brand is consistently recognised for the right topics, capabilities and consumer needs.
The larger shift may therefore be less about one SEO metric replacing another and more about how brands establish relevance in an increasingly fragmented discovery environment.
Bhavani believes brands should start with the fundamentals: what they have to say, what they are doing that is interesting, what problem they are solving and why anyone outside the organisation should care.
That could mean original research, a founder with a genuinely differentiated perspective, a strong creative campaign or useful expert commentary. When other people choose to discuss that work, brands gain a form of independent validation that owned channels cannot provide on their own.
Bhasin similarly describes earned media as becoming part of the “discoverability infrastructure” around a brand, while cautioning that the objective should not be to secure mentions everywhere.
For marketers, the emerging priority may therefore be less about simply ranking for a keyword or accumulating backlinks and more about building a credible, consistent association between the brand and the subjects it wants to own.
As AI increasingly mediates discovery, the question for brands is no longer only where they rank, but what they are known for when the answer is generated.
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exclusives11-Sep-2026Shiva BhavaniKunal KothariRidhima BhasinNikhil ParmarChirag TanejaSallavi Gowda
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