Search is becoming synthesis, that should matter to PR

Search is becoming synthesis, that should matter to PR

June 2026

By Christopher Ross de Cruz, Global Head of Innovation, Content & Crisis Communications Hub, Sandpiper

AI search has made credibility the primary currency of digital visibility. PR has been building that currency for decades. The question is whether the industry moves fast enough to claim the ground.

For years, search rewarded a certain kind of discipline: content built around the right terms, technically optimised, and supported by enough authority to earn the click. AI search changes the terms of that discipline.

Last month, Google stopped being the search engine that we grew up with in any meaningful sense. The results page will now be taken up almost completely by  AI-generated summaries. Essentially, meaning links to ranked pages will be largely replaced by a synthesised answer the AI constructs from whatever it judges to be the most credible body of knowledge on a topic. The search box accepts images, video, and files. The click, in many cases, may never happen.

The communications industry noticed, but much of the reaction stopped at the obvious point: this may hurt website traffic. True, but there is more to observe.

According to the head of search at Google, with AI-synthesised answers, a new way of search emerged. Users started asking longer questions, with more natural language rather than fragments or key words. “They started asking the question they really have.” In response, Google has dismantled the infrastructure that made ‘keyword visibility’ the dominant digital awareness strategy of the past decade. ‘SEO’ has become a question of credibility, and no longer a ‘game of keywords and backlinks to play the ranking algorithm‘.

The gap that change has created has an obvious owner, or at least an obvious contender – PR has been in the credibility business for decades. The playing field just finally matches the job.

The chain that broke

The old logic was simple. A brand wants visibility on a topic, so it invests in content optimised for specific keywords, earns backlinks to boost authority, and climbs the rankings. Paid search filled the gaps. Earned media – (press coverage, analyst commentary, third-party endorsement), was treated largely as a bonus. Hard to measure. A supporting actor in a production dominated by the algorithm, that production has ended.

Today, when an AI Overview answers a query on the results page, rankings risk becoming less decisive. The page that spent years climbing to position one gets less traffic, because the AI read it, synthesised, and moved on.

Google’s AI doesn’t rank the best answer. It displays a blend of what it judges to be the most credible body of knowledge on the topic a user searches, and then it speaks in its own voice.

What does matter is whether you’re part of the authoritative conversation AI draws from – and no single function owns that. The brands that get this will be the ones where communications, strategy, and content start working from the same brief.

Why earned credibility is the mechanism

Public relations has always been in the business of building credibility through third-party validation. A journalist writes about you. An analyst cites you. An independent expert endorses your position. A thought leadership research paper is published with industry peers. Trust transfers from their reputation to yours. That mechanism — earned authority — is precisely what Google’s AI is now trying to replicate when it decides whose knowledge to draw from, and whose to ignore.

They even have a name for it. E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. The areas it rewards include – citations from credible sources, consistent presence in reputable publications, authoritative voices speaking on a topic over time – all outputs of a well-run communications programme working in step with content strategy.

For years, SEO and PR sat in adjacent rooms. AI search has knocked the wall down. The brief now belongs to both disciplines, or it belongs to neither.

The communications industry ceded this ground gradually, and mostly without noticing. We measured ourselves in AVEs and coverage volume while the real currency – what gets cited, what shapes the trusted information environment – shifted beneath us. With Google’s latest update, change is at our door, and the question is who moves first.

Narrative architecture

The phrase I keep returning to is narrative architecture. The deliberate construction of an organisation’s content and knowledge ecosystem. It’s the full, interconnected set of ideas, positions, evidence, and voices that define it in the world.

Yesterday, narrative architecture may have been dismissed as “PR fluff”. Nice to have, but still subservient to the keyword algorithm. Today, a brand that has built genuine narrative architecture becomes the thing AI quotes. Credibility at that level accumulates, through consistent positions, and real expertise, voices that show up repeatedly on the same topics. It doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t happen fast.

Four things it requires:

Owned expertise. Genuinely expert content that establishes the organisation or brand’s definitive positions on core topics. Clear, factual, specific. Written by people who actually know the subject.

Earned citations. A sustained programme of media relations, expert commentary, and research publication that generates credible third-party references. These are the signals AI reads to determine authority.

Identifiable voices. Executives, researchers, practitioners – knowledge holders developed and consistently deployed to speak with genuine authority on defined topics. AI systems increasingly distinguish between organisations with credible human experts and those that produce anonymous content.

Coherence over time. Consistency of position across owned, earned, and shared channels. When an AI aggregates everything ever said about your organisation on a topic, it should find a coherent body of knowledge and not contradictions with noise.

The problem underneath the opportunity

The publications through which earned media gains its authority are being hollowed out in real time. The same AI shift that created this opportunity has long been placing real pressure on the publishers and journalists who give earned coverage its value. If the outlets that make a quote worth quoting can’t sustain themselves, the ecosystem this entire strategy depends on is in serious trouble.

Brands that understand this will invest in quality journalism because the ecosystem their credibility depends on requires a functioning independent press to exist at all. The citation only carries weight if the outlet does.

The communications and strategy functions that will lead this conversation are already working at the level where business decisions originate – shaping the brief, not receiving it. Some communications teams have found a seat at the table. Most are still working toward it.

PR has always been in the credibility business. So has good strategy and good content. Google has just changed the cost of keeping those three things apart.