The Search Paradigm Has Shifted
With the rapid rise of AI-powered search experiences—like Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT with browsing—audiences are discovering content without ever visiting brands’ websites. In other words: SEO is no longer just about clicks. According to Semrush in a December 2024 report, one in ten U.S. internet users now use generative AI as their primary search tool. In September 2024, Seer Interactive reported that traditional organic click-through rates can drop by as much as 70% when AI answers are present on the page.
This evolution is demanding a mindset shift. SEO must now be seen not just as a digital marketing function, but as a broader and integrated communications strategy. This “new SEO” must now ensure your story gets told, cited, and trusted wherever discovery happens, as well as downstream in traditional formats. In this new context, our benchmarks for success must evolve towards earning brand authority in AI-generated summaries, zero-click results, and every diverse and evolving moment in between.
SEO and PR: Two Sides of the Same Strategy
Historically, PR was tasked with building reputation, and SEO with driving visibility. But in an AI-first landscape, those goals are converging. As Delaney MacKenzie noted at a recent Women in Tech SEO Fest: PR tells the story; SEO ensures it’s discoverable, accessible, and amplified, and seen as important and citeable long after the initial moment passes.
And, this convergence is accelerating. Authority, expertise, and brand trust—once the domain of PR—have become key SEO ranking signals, especially for life science companies where credibility is critical. Since 2022, Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines have emphasized E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) as central to content ranking. Smart marketing teams are leveraging new tools and techniques to distill SEO data into audience intent and search behavior insights, which PR can use to inform narratives. In return, SEO benefits from PR’s storytelling and credibility to earn mentions, citations, and brand presence in AI outputs and knowledge panels.
Influence Without the Click
In this new hybrid environment, success is no longer measured solely by traffic; marketers are finding new and exciting ways to challenge the status quo: Is your brand cited in AI answers? Are your stories referenced in third-party coverage, and does that translate into visibility across AI models? Do your experts appear in the sources that search engines and language models trust?
In January 2025, Rand Fishkin from SparkToro noted that influence without clicks is the next wave of visibility, given Google is now answering almost two-thirds of all queries without a click, and of the clicks that do happen, most are for branded and navigational terms. In other words, research is done outside of the traditional journey, and most users making it to your website already knew about you and wanted to visit you. Visibility, without generating direct traffic—is now just as important as owning the top organic links. In this new landscape, PR becomes the most important top-of-funnel SEO strategy.
The New Mandate
Smart marketers—especially in the life science space—will focus on value and reputation in a machine-readable world. As the lines between earned and owned blur, our mandate is to build brands that are not just visible, but unmissable—across the formats, platforms, and search engines of the audiences that matter.
