For years, the backbone of digital PR (DPR), a function of SEO, has been straightforward: build high-quality backlinks from authoritative sources, and your site’s visibility and associated key words will see ranking increases.
That strategy made perfect sense in a world where search engines relied primarily on link signals to rank and display results. But as we all know, the game is changing -–– fast.
We are seeing interesting deals being struck between publisher sites and AI companies as they navigate this new world and try and ensure their content is favoured by LLMs. Simultaneously, we are seeing publishers such as The New York Times and Mumsnet launching lawsuits against AI companies for unauthorised use of their content to train AI models.
There are lots of rapidly changing elements at play across the media and search landscape that mean PR’s need to stay on their toes.
Do LLM’s mean links need a rethink?
With the continued rapid adoption of AI tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and other large language models (LLMs) powering new forms of content discovery, traditional backlink strategies are naturally starting to move away from being the focus of digital PR outputs.
This is not a total exodus from backlinks (or SEO), as traditional factors still matter, but now more than ever, digital PR must build authority. High-quality, trustworthy content remains the key to influencing how AI models, and audiences perceive brands.
This means brand mentions – not just backlinks – are emerging as a critical currency in PR and online visibility. Previously, brand mentions did not hold as much weight and were not as valued by clients from a digital PR point of view.
Our fantastic four:
Naturally, the Total Search DPR team is evolving our offering in line with the changes we are seeing within the search space. We wanted to share four key focuses we are using to educate clients on the way the landscape is changing and encourage them to consider the value of brand mentions.
1. Helping clients understand how LLMs interpret and prioritise information
Unlike traditional search crawlers, LLMs don’t weigh backlinks as heavily when generating responses. They’re trained on billions of parameters and patterns, including how often a brand or product is mentioned in relevant contexts.
That means reputation, context, and frequency of mention carry significant weight.
For example, if your brand is consistently mentioned in articles about “top eco-friendly home brands,” LLMs will associate your business with that category – even if you didn’t get a direct link. If your competitors have more brand visibility in those contexts, they’re more likely to be surfaced in AI-generated answers.
In this landscape, PR becomes less about link-building and more about narrative-building. Where is your brand showing up? What themes and values are associated with it? Are people talking about you in ways that matter?
Our Research & Insights team has developed a tool which allows us to show clients how LLMs rate the sentiment, topical relevance, and informational value of the content and media coverage we secure for them. This helps our team, which has been traditionally tied to a link-based KPI, demonstrate value for ‘unlinked’ media coverage, including brand mentions they secure.
2. Being included in conversations is key for AI Overviews
Google’s AI overviews and tools like ChatGPT now generate answers using large datasets – including web content, news articles, blogs, and forums – often without linking to a source at all.
That means your brand could influence consumer decisions without ever being clicked on.
If someone asks ChatGPT, “What are the best skincare brands for sensitive skin?” the model doesn’t just pull from the top Google results. It references a massive amount of indexed content and knowledge, including where your brand has been mentioned, even if no link was involved.
This subtle shift turns brand mentions into powerful digital signals. You’re no longer optimising for a click – you’re optimising to be included in the conversation.
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3. Mentions drive authority and awareness (even without links)
From a user perspective, brand mentions act as digital word-of-mouth. When a user sees your brand referenced across articles, blog posts, Reddit threads, and social media -even without links – this builds familiarity and credibility.
LLMs are picking up on that, too.
Because ChatGPT and similar models are designed to mimic human communication patterns, they’re likely to echo the sentiments and associations found across the content they’re trained on. That means mentions that include positive sentiment, expertise, or product relevance are more likely to be included in AI-generated outputs.
And unlike traditional SEO, there’s no metadata or schema you can tweak to control this. This means the best bet for clients is to be consistently and positively present across the digital ecosystem.
For our digital PR team, this means regular outreach activity to journalists is still key.
4. PR goals are evolving: from clicks to visibility in AI responses
As we have already mentioned, digital PR in 2025 is no longer just about securing backlinks – It’s about being seen and remembered by the machines that shape public knowledge.
As LLMs like ChatGPT become the go-to assistants for product recommendations, service comparisons, and brand insights, our clients’ presence in those generated responses becomes invaluable.
That means KPIs are starting to change shape, too. Instead of just tracking referral traffic or link equity, brands can start monitoring:
- Unlinked brand mentions
- Sentiment analysis
- Topical relevance
- Placement in AI-generated content
This data can help clients understand how their brands are being represented in the training ground of tomorrow’s AI answers.
To help our clients navigate this evolving notion of value from DPR outputs, our Research & Insights team has created a tool that takes a context-first approach to analysing brand mentions, blending sentiment, source authority, and informational value into a single measure of impact.
It factors in recency to highlight fresh coverage while retaining the importance of historical brand building. Crucially, it can also isolate topic-level coverage, revealing how your brand ranks within specific conversations. The result is a data-backed view of genuine influence beyond just counting mentions, showing exactly where your brand stands and why.
Final thoughts:
The rise of ChatGPT and other AI-powered assistants doesn’t mean backlinks are dead - they still help with traditional search and domain authority. But we’re undeniably moving toward a world where mentions matter just as much, if not more.
In this world, the winners will be the brands that are talked about often, in the right places, and in the right way. If your PR strategy is still focused solely on link-building, it’s time to widen the lens.
The future of digital PR is conversational, contextual, and brand-first. Make sure your brand is part of the dialogue - link or no link.
To talk to our DPR team about any of the insights or products detailed in this article, please reach out to:
Kate Giove – Partner, Digital PR.
