How Way.com Fuelled Full-Throttle GEO Growth with Earned Media at Scale

Whatever acronym you choose — AEO, AIO, or GEO — it’s clear that generative AI search has irrevocably changed the SEO game and content marketing forever.

Research backs this up. A recent study by Pew Research found that only 1% of users who encountered AI summaries in a Google search clicked on a link in the summary itself — sending business-as-usual brand metrics into a nosedive.

As the seismic shift in search behavior emerged, Way.com’s SEO lead took the initiative to fully review the strategy, guiding the company early into the new GEO era to ensure visibility in a rapidly evolving search ecosystem.

Revving Up: Growing Brand Presence in a Transformed Terrain

To expand across their business verticals — from insurance to airport parking — Way.com needed to supercharge their earned media strategy. If they could accelerate their brand journalism, they would not only clutch a larger share of voice in their industry, but they would also show up in generative AI results.

However, increasing PR output without amping up their internal resources would be a challenge. How could they maximize PR results without dramatically expanding their in-house team?

After collaborating with Stacker for a few months on earned media syndication, Way.com accelerated its ranking from underdogs to being seen in a crowded race. Here’s how they did it.

Objects in the Mirror: Competitors Closer Than They Appear

Now ten years in, Way.com has established a strong SEO footing that has helped more than 9 million U.S. drivers save money.

Fast forward to today, as the company pushed toward making care ownership affordable for all, Way.com set ambitious new lead-gen goals and expanded product offerings (like insurance and car repair). Only this meant going head-to-head for competitive keywords with household names such as Forbes and NerdWallet.

It was a steep challenge — but Way.com knew that if they took advantage of the move to GEO early, they could leap ahead of their competitors on AI-powered platforms.

Ryan Becker, VP of Growth Marketing, who returned to Way.com for this challenge, knew that actual organic growth depended on efficiency and uncompromising editorial standards. As Becker put it, “We needed high-quality press at scale,” to compete in GEO.

Navigating the Roadblocks to Earned Reach

He was spot on: gaining traction in a competitive search space generally involves a lot of time and resources for manual outreach and backlinking. But beyond traditional search, it was essential that their earned media push also penetrated the AI Overview space, too. Without this, chances were slim that their hard work would cut through — a new study showed that sites that were previously the #1 result could lose about four-fifths of their traffic when the results appeared solely under an AI overview.

Stacker provided a solution to get real coverage and robust backlinking — something that traditional PR or link exchanges couldn’t match.

Steering into GEO with Strategic Content

Stacker’s team of editorial experts worked closely with Way.com to optimize their original, brand journalism pieces, ensuring journalistic rigor and performance based on years of Stacker’s proprietary pick-up data, while aligning content to Way.com’s search and brand goals.

Through the Stacker Newswire, their stories were sent to 4000+ trusted local and national news outlets. Way.com’s data-rich stories, like High tariffs and car repairs cost: The ripple effect, generated 391 media pick-ups.

Stacker Local add-on also allowed hyper-localized content that targets geographic keywords, deep-linking to city- and state-level programmatic landing pages. This hands-off approach helped them scale deep link-building, which helped boost their average keyword ranking by 20 positions without resorting to costly or low-quality link schemes.

“We used to be invisible for a lot of these insurance terms. Now we’re seeing consistent gains every month. Stacker has absolutely helped us move the needle,” says Ryan Becker.

Way.com monitored campaign performance in real time from their reporting dashboard to continuously make informed editorial improvements. These insights equipped the team to benchmark, learn, and refine their publishing approach.

Results: Traffic and Visibility on the Rise

Their earned reach approach paid off. Way.com gained a 30% increase in traffic to insurance landing pages and made steady, month-over-month referral growth from AI-powered tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Their stories appeared more frequently in AI-driven searches, with referral traffic from these channels gaining steam — extending the impact of earned media beyond traditional search into the next generation of AI-led discovery.

From having no presence for high-value insurance keywords, Way.com climbed the ranks to page five or six on Google — a feat that usually takes months, if not longer. With continued earned reach, their search rankings and domain authority should climb even higher.

Putting Pedal to the Metal & Sustaining Momentum in the Fast Lane

Becker said that their partnership with Stacker empowered Way.com to compete in fiercely competitive markets by scaling smart and moving fast without cutting corners. He said, “You guys have done right by me. That’s why I brought Stacker to two companies—and I’ll keep recommending it.”

Moving forward, Way.com plans to put the pedal to the metal, using Stacker to amplify these early wins and fuel expansion into new verticals and high-demand sectors.

Crucially, as AI search continues its rise, if Way.com continues this pace, it can stay a step ahead of its competitors and AI-powered platforms with its forward-looking approach to GEO and earned media.