GEO for Newsrooms: How Publications Can Stay Visible as AI Kills Clicks

While countless companies are pivoting their acquisition strategies thanks to the increasing ubiquity of AI, publications are no exception. Editors and audience engagement managers are grappling with how to move forward without a signal roadmap to draw inspiration from. 

We’re here to help. Here’s how editorial teams can build visibility — and keep getting cited — without losing their editorial souls.

What’s Changing (And Why it Matters)

A 2025 study revealed that a No. 1 organic search result can lose 79% of potential traffic when it sits beneath an AI Overview, according to The Guardian. That is a staggering number that demonstrates the significant shift happening in online search.

New York Magazine captured the moment, calling it a “traffic apocalypse,” with publishers large and small recalibrating what growth looks like when fewer journeys start with a click. 

So if the way people are visiting websites and accessing information is fundamentally evolving, what can editors do to keep pace?

Why Publishers Should Care About LLM Citations

Even as search referrals shrink, people’s questions haven’t gone away — they’re just being answered somewhere else. Millions of daily queries that once sent readers to newsrooms now surface inside ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Gemini. Those answers are built from existing reporting, data, and analysis — often the very work journalists have produced.

If your publication isn’t one of the sources being pulled into those answers, you lose more than a click; you lose the chance to shape public understanding, to have your reporting credited, and to build brand recognition with new audiences. 

Appearing in LLM-generated summaries keeps your name attached to your work in the environments where people are now getting information. It’s not a perfect substitute for traffic, but it’s a powerful brand signal and a path to loyalty: the more often someone sees your outlet cited as the source of an answer, the more likely they are to recognize and seek you out directly.

In other words, GEO isn’t just a defensive tactic to protect traffic; it’s a way to make sure your journalism travels, is attributed, and continues to build trust and authority wherever people look for answers.

The Existential Crisis: What Makes Your Publication Truly Unique?

We are now in an era of “seeking out” rather than “stumbling upon.”

This isn’t just a revenue problem: It’s an identity problem. If fewer journeys start with a click, the newsroom’s north star is becoming a brand readers remember, trust, and intentionally return to.

This can be seen as an opportunity to go back to basics, starting with the classic marketing question: What audience are you serving, and what unique value are you providing?

Building an editorial strategy around this question and sticking to that strategy is how you’ll build brand authority over time, which will increase the chances your audience will purposefully navigate to your content and that search platforms, including LLMs, will cite you.

Increasing Publisher Visibility

Defining your publication’s purpose is critical, but you still have to reach people — and LLMs are becoming a core way of doing that. Here’s how to make your work more visible in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and beyond.

Think in Entities, Not Just Pages

Search engines and AI tools don’t just look at individual articles anymore; they build a picture of your whole publication. That means your reputation travels with every story.

Map Coverage to the Entities You Intend to “Own”

Choose the people, places, institutions, and recurring issues where you want a durable association. Build depth over time: a beat reporter’s byline history, an editor’s note tying packages together, and internal linking that signals scope and continuity — all of it strengthens entity-level authority.

Package Originality So Machines Recognize It

Wire rewrites and basic explainers are easier to summarize without credit. Exclusive interviews, first-party data, and distinctive analysis get cited more because they’re completely unique. Make exclusivity explicit in headlines and subheads, reinforce it in captions, and back it with structured data so synthesis engines can parse what’s new.

Refresh the Evergreen You Want to Be Known For

Evergreen explainers, timelines, service pieces, and “what is/why it matters” formats are most likely to be summarized upstream. Keep them living: Add current stats, new expert quotes, and a visible “last updated.” If a piece can be fully cannibalized by a 60-word answer, rethink the format — front-load the direct answer, then layer the nuance (methodology, charts, primary docs, service detail).

Make Structure a Newsroom Habit, Not a One-Off Project

Article, author, FAQ/how-to, and data-table markup help machines extract accurately (and cite accurately). The more consistent this is across desks, the more your work survives summarization with your name still attached.

Conclusion

Organic search once rewarded the right keyword strategy; now, AI summaries and zero-click results mean fewer people land on your site. That shift is painful, but it’s also clarifying.

Publications that treat GEO as more than a defensive SEO tactic — by re-centering on who they serve, packaging their originality so machines and people can recognize it, and building a consistent entity footprint — are the ones still showing up in the places where information is actually consumed.

Appearing in LLM answers won’t immediately replace lost traffic, but it keeps your name attached to your reporting and builds brand familiarity in front of new audiences. Over time, that visibility can drive direct visits, subscriptions, and trust — the real metrics that matter when algorithms stop sending you free clicks.