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Which Publications Does AI Search Actually Cite? What 405 GEO Audits Reveal About Where to Pitch

PR teams have traditionally used publication reputation, audience size and SEO authority to decide which outlets belong on a media list. Those signals still matter, but AI search introduces another question:

Which publications is AI already using to answer questions about your industry?

An analysis of 405 completed GEO audits conducted through Featured between June 2 and August 21, 2026, found 22,881 AI citations across 11,499 distinct domains, according to the Featured AI Citation Report, June–August 2026. The findings reveal a much broader and more fragmented source landscape than traditional media lists might suggest.

For PR teams, that creates an opportunity to use AI citation data as another signal when deciding where to focus outreach.

AI Search Draws From a Broad Range of Sources

Traditional SEO metrics can tell PR teams a lot about a publication’s conventional search authority, but they don’t fully describe the sources AI search uses to answer category questions.

Across the 22,881 citations in Featured’s GEO Audit dataset, 34.5% went to domains with a Domain Authority below 40.

Looking at the websites themselves rather than citation volume, the pattern is even broader. 53.9% of the 11,499 distinct domains cited had a Domain Authority below 40, and the median cited domain had a Domain Authority of just 37.

At the same time, high-authority domains remain important. 31.2% of all citations went to domains with a Domain Authority of 80 or higher.

The takeaway isn’t that PR teams should stop pursuing high-authority publications. It’s that Domain Authority alone doesn’t tell you which sources AI search may use for a particular question.

A niche publication with modest SEO metrics could be cited repeatedly for questions in a specific category, while a much larger publication may not appear at all.

There May Not Be a Single AI Media List

The citation data also reveals how fragmented AI search can be.

The 22,881 citations were spread across 11,499 different domains. 76% of those domains were cited exactly once.

That makes it difficult to create a universal list of publications that every brand should pursue for AI visibility. The sources that matter can vary based on the questions being asked, the industry and the specific category.

For PR teams, that means the traditional approach of building a media list based primarily on publication size, reputation or SEO metrics may miss opportunities.

Instead, teams can start with the questions their customers are asking AI and work backward from the sources appearing in those answers.

Most Brands Are Still Invisible in AI Search

The audit data also shows why this matters.

Across 405 completed audits covering 378 brands in 344 industries, 78.5% of brands were not mentioned in any of the buying questions tested for their category. Across the 1,983 buying questions tested, an audited brand was mentioned in just 6.7% of questions.

Brands’ own websites were even less visible. 92.6% of brands never had their own website cited in an AI-generated answer about their category, and just 2.0% of the buying questions produced a citation to the brand’s own site.

The low mention rate was consistent across the four AI models tested. Brands were mentioned in 5.7% of questions on Perplexity, 4.5% on ChatGPT, 4.4% on Claude and 2.8% on Gemini.

For brands, the takeaway is clear: most are still largely absent from AI-generated answers about their categories, and their own websites rarely appear as sources.

AI Cites Editorial Coverage More Than Brand-Owned Content

The audit data also points to a potential gap between what brands publish themselves and what AI search uses to answer questions about them.

Of the 10,176 citations classified by source type, editorial coverage accounted for 64.5%, while brand-owned content accounted for just 1.7%.

Competitor sources accounted for 22.6% of classified sources.

That means competitor content appeared in the classified citation set more than 13 times as often as brand-owned content.

The finding doesn’t mean brands should stop investing in their own content. Instead, it suggests that earning third-party coverage may be an important part of how brands expand their presence in the sources AI search draws from.

For PR teams, that creates a practical opportunity: identify the publications already appearing in AI answers, then determine which of those outlets are realistic targets for coverage. The publications surfaced by the audit can then be pursued through journalist requests on HARO and Featured.

Find the Publications AI Is Already Citing

The challenge is figuring out which sources matter for a particular brand.

PR teams can start by identifying the questions customers are likely to ask AI search engines. From there, they can examine which brands and sources appear in the answers and look for publications that repeatedly influence relevant prompts.

This is where AI visibility research can become a practical PR tool.

Featured’s GEO Audit shows teams where their brand appears in AI search, where competitors appear instead, and which publications, websites and articles AI cites. It then ranks the publications to pitch based on citation frequency, giving teams a prioritized list of media targets. From the audit, users can draft a pitch with the Draft Pitch button or find active media requests from that publication, all within Featured.

Instead of starting with a traditional media list and guessing which outlets might influence AI visibility, PR teams can use the sources AI is already citing as a data point for deciding where to focus outreach.

Featured’s GEO Audit can also surface a different type of visibility gap: an AI search engine may cite a brand’s own website without actually mentioning the brand in its answer. In that situation, the opportunity may be to strengthen or promote existing content rather than pursue entirely new coverage.

The result is a more targeted approach to AI visibility: identify where a brand is missing, understand which sources are influencing the answers, and prioritize the publications that may be worth pursuing.

AI Visibility Gives PR Teams a New Media Signal

The 405 GEO audits don’t suggest that traditional authority is irrelevant. High-authority websites remain a major part of the AI citation landscape. But they do show that the landscape is broader than a conventional SEO-based media list might suggest.

More than half of the distinct domains cited had a Domain Authority below 40. Three-quarters of cited domains appeared only once. And nearly four out of five brands audited were not mentioned in a single buying question in their category.

For PR teams, that creates a new signal for media targeting. The question isn’t only:

“How authoritative is this publication?”

It’s also:

“Is AI already using this publication to answer questions about my industry?”

That signal can help PR teams identify relevant outlets they might otherwise overlook and prioritize outreach around the sources shaping the AI answers their customers see.

30x More Creators Than Journalists: The Opportunity for PR Professionals

There are six PR professionals for every working journalist, creating an increasingly crowded pitching environment where multiple brands, agencies, and communications teams may be competing for the attention of the same reporters.

Traditional media relations have always involved competition for limited attention. But the media landscape is changing, and PR professionals now have access to a much larger pool of potential media partners.

The PR Pitching Problem

Traditional media relations are built around scarcity. There are only so many journalists covering technology, healthcare, finance, beauty, travel, business, and other industries.

On average, a journalist receives 42 pitches for every HARO query, making it easy for even a strong story to get lost in the volume.

Creators introduce a different model. There is a much larger pool of potential media partners to tap into, with creators who have already built audiences around specific industries, interests, and customer segments.

Rather than asking only, “Which journalist should I pitch?” PR professionals can also ask, “Which creators already have the audience I want to reach?”

There Are 30x More Creators Than Journalists

The creator economy has dramatically expanded the number of people producing and distributing content. IAB’s 2025 Measuring the Digital Economy study estimates 1.5 million full-time-equivalent digital creator jobs in 2024, compared with roughly 49,300 news analysts, reporters, and journalists. That’s roughly 30 full-time-equivalent creator jobs for every journalist.

Creators on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms are effectively building their own media channels. They have audiences, niches, editorial perspectives, and established relationships with people who actively choose to consume their content.

And many creators aren’t operating as large media businesses. According to NeoReach’s 2025 Creator Earnings Report, nearly 57% of surveyed full-time creators earn below the U.S. living-wage benchmark of $44,000 from content alone. The report surveyed more than 3,000 creators representing 1.1 billion combined followers.

That creates an opportunity for brands. Creators need content, ideas, expertise, products, and partnerships that help them consistently produce content their audiences want to see.

For PR professionals, creators can become another way to put a brand, product, expert, or story in front of the right audience.

Expand Your Media Outreach

Imagine a PR professional representing a new financial product.

The traditional approach might be to identify journalists covering personal finance, fintech, or investing and send them a pitch. That remains an important part of media relations, but it doesn’t have to be the only approach.

There may also be dozens or hundreds of creators making content for exactly the audience the company wants to reach.

A personal finance creator could explain the product. A fintech creator could demonstrate how it works. A career creator could discuss how it helps people manage their finances. A small-business creator could show how it applies to entrepreneurs.

The goal isn’t to replace traditional PR. It’s to expand the definition of media outreach.

Instead of only asking who might write about a story, PR professionals can also consider who can authentically incorporate that story into content their audience already wants.

Finding the Right Creator Is the New Challenge

Having more potential media partners creates a different problem: how do you find the right ones?

Searching manually across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn can quickly become as time-consuming as traditional media research. The goal isn’t to find the creator with the biggest following. It’s to find creators whose content, audience, and niche align with the brand.

That challenge is becoming increasingly important as creator marketing scales. IAB’s 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report found that 32% of respondents cited identifying the right creators to partner with as their biggest challenge.

New creator discovery tools are making that process more similar to media-list building, but with a more conversational approach.

For example, Featured’s Find Creators is a chat-based search experience that lets users describe the creator they’re looking for in natural language.

A PR professional might search: “Find me finance creators on TikTok with more than 25,000 followers who are based in California and average at least 10,000 views per video.”

The tool can use criteria such as platform, follower count, average views, location, language, posting activity, and industry or niche to surface relevant creators from Featured’s database of 380 million creators. Users can combine these criteria in a single natural-language search or search for specific creators by handle.

Once a creator is identified, information such as engagement rate, audience insights, average likes and comments, previous collaborations, and contact information can help determine whether that creator is worth approaching.

The advantage isn’t simply having more creators. It’s being able to search that larger pool and quickly find the people who are actually relevant to a brand and its audience.

PR Professionals Should Start Optimizing for Social

The traditional PR playbook isn’t going away. Journalists still play an important role in shaping public conversations, establishing credibility, and producing news.

But PR professionals now have another distribution channel to consider: social media.

Creators are building audiences around specific industries, interests, communities, and customer segments. That gives PR strategies two parallel paths:

Pitch journalists for earned media.

Pitch creators for social distribution.

The goal isn’t to choose one over the other. It’s to build a media strategy that reaches audiences through both.

Find the Creators Already Reaching Your Customers

The next evolution of PR may not be about sending more pitches. It may be about finding more of the right people to pitch.

Creators have become an enormous, decentralized network of niche media channels, reaching audiences interested in everything from finance and healthcare to beauty, technology, travel, business, and beyond.

For PR professionals and brands, the opportunity is straightforward:

Find the creators who already have your customers’ attention, and give them a reason to create something worth sharing.

The traditional media landscape has a scarcity problem. The creator economy offers abundance.

The PR professionals who learn how to work with both may have a significant advantage in getting their brands and clients in front of the audiences that matter most.

Why Your AI-Written Pitch Might Never Reach a Journalist

About 21% of pitches submitted through HARO are flagged as fully AI-generated, and roughly a third of journalists have chosen not to receive them. Here’s what that means if you’re the one writing the pitch.

Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured, says about 21% of pitches submitted through HARO score as fully AI-generated, and roughly 35% of journalists have opted out of receiving them. If you answer queries yourself, a templated AI reply may never reach a human. Writing it yourself has become a competitive advantage.

Farmiloe made the point on Let’s Talk PR & More with host Sherry Goldman, president of Goldman Communications Group. Most of the coverage of that conversation will focus on what it means for agencies. The more useful question, if you’re a founder or a marketer answering queries between other jobs, is narrower: does any of this change what I should do on Tuesday morning?

It does. Here’s the part that applies to you.

What does a 21% AI-generated rate actually mean for your pitch?

Every pitch submitted through HARO, Connectively and Featured runs through AI detection. The output is a percentage score, colour-coded, visible to the journalist.

“And that AI detection essentially says, hey, was this human written or was it written by AI? And if it’s 100% score, which we see about 21% of the time, then we essentially can flag that for a journalist to look into further.” — Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured

Journalists also get a one-click option to filter out anything scoring 100% AI-generated before they read it. About 35% have switched it on — and Farmiloe thinks that understates the real level of objection, because nobody is nudged into it:

“I’d say it’s even higher. Like I said, the submission form has that box unchecked by default.” — Brett Farmiloe

The practical consequence for you is specific and slightly brutal. If you paste a query into a chatbot and send what comes back, roughly a third of the journalists you’re trying to reach never see it. Not see it and pass over it. Never see it. Your expertise, your credentials, the fact that you’re the right source — none of it gets evaluated, because the reply was filtered before a person looked at it.

That’s not a moral argument about AI. It’s a deliverability problem.

Do journalists still want to hear from small businesses?

Yes — and this is the encouraging half. Farmiloe described two distinct camps, and the second one may not care how your first reply was drafted:

“And then you’ve got the journalists who actually optimize for getting connected with the best source for their story, and they don’t care if that initial response was AI generated as long as they get connected with someone that they could speak with.” — Brett Farmiloe

So the filter isn’t a rule. It’s a distribution of preferences, and about a third of it is a hard no. Which means the safe play — writing it yourself — costs you nothing with the permissive camp and everything with the strict one.

What journalists are short on isn’t sources. It’s time. Farmiloe relayed one line from a journalist that he called blunt:

“I don’t want to hear from you until I want to hear from you.” — a journalist, quoted by Brett Farmiloe

A query is that journalist telling you, specifically, that right now they do want to hear from you. That’s the whole value of the channel. It’s the rare moment when the usual dynamic is inverted, and it’s worth twenty real minutes.

What should you actually write?

Farmiloe’s framework is the HARO name read as instructions:

be Helpful,

be Authentic,

be Relevant,

be On time.

Translated into things you can check before hitting send:

Helpful. Answer the question that was asked, not the one you wish had been asked. If the query is about hiring and you sell software, your answer is about hiring.

Authentic. In Farmiloe’s words, “use the humanity that you have instead of the AI generation tools at your disposal.” The specific thing that happened at your company last quarter is not something a model can generate, and it’s the only reason a journalist would pick you over the other forty replies.

Relevant. “Look at the instructions that a journalist has put out there and follow those instructions to a T.” If they asked for two sentences, send two sentences. If they asked for a title and a company, include both.

On time. “Know that a journalist is on deadline. The quicker and faster that you could help them do their job, the better.”

There’s an obvious tension between on time and write it yourself, and it resolves in one direction: answer fewer queries, properly. Farmiloe’s read on why so much AI-generated volume exists is that people are playing the wrong game.

“I think that the misconception that a lot of PR pros sometimes have when they approach a platform like HARO is that it’s a numbers game.” — Brett Farmiloe

Three genuine answers a week from someone who is actually the right source will outperform thirty templated ones. That is good news if you’re a founder without a PR budget, because it means the constraint is judgment rather than headcount.

Does it still count if you get covered somewhere small?

This is the shift most likely to change how you spend your time, and it favours smaller players.

The reason earned media is having a resurgence is that AI systems draw on it when they assemble answers. Farmiloe put the change in target this way:

“The front page used to be the newspaper and then it was a search engine result page and now it’s a AI answer summary.” — Brett Farmiloe

Which reopens a question most people had settled. If what you want is to be the company named when someone asks an AI assistant for the best option in your category, the size of the publication matters less than whether that publication gets cited.

“The TechCrunch journalist that she once pitched, it might just be as valuable to approach the mom and pop blog that’s based out of Spain.” — Brett Farmiloe

The test Farmiloe proposed isn’t domain authority. It’s citation: “Does the mom and pop blog in Spain actually get cited in AI search engines?”

You can check this yourself in about fifteen minutes. Ask an AI assistant the questions your buyers would ask — “best X for Y” in your category — and note which sites get named. Some will be publications you assumed were out of reach. Several will be niche outlets you’d previously have dismissed as too small to bother with.

That list is your target list. And the wins accumulate rather than arriving all at once:

“But what really makes your business is a continuation of all of these earned media hits that now accumulate into the big win.” — Brett Farmiloe

If you’ve been holding out for one prestige placement to change things, that’s the expectation worth updating.

What happens after you get quoted?

Most people treat the published story as the end. Farmiloe’s argument is that the journalist’s job isn’t over at publication, and neither is yours.

He’s been asking journalists how many sources of income they have. The answer is rarely one:

“The common answer that I get holds two hands up, eight fingers.” — Brett Farmiloe

Multiple publications, a Substack they’re growing, paid consulting. The person who quoted you is running a small business, often measured on whether the piece travelled rather than on column inches.

“It is a starting point, not a finish line anymore when the story actually gets published.” — Brett Farmiloe

So share the piece from your own account with a real comment about why the argument is right. Send it to your newsletter list. If they have a Substack, subscribe to it. This takes ten minutes and it is the single cheapest way to stop being a stranger the next time that journalist needs a source — which is how you end up on the short list instead of in the queue.

If you run an agency or a comms team

Two things from the conversation aimed at you specifically.

First, the client conversation has changed. Farmiloe says the problem clients now bring is “how do I appear in AI?” — and most agencies don’t yet have a case study to answer it with. His suggestion: “you need to become the case study.” Run the experiment on your own firm, where you control the site and the reporting, then take the results to clients.

Second, do the research step. Farmiloe cited the RPIE framework behind APR accreditation — research, planning, implementation, evaluation — and named the failure mode: “I think too often we just jump to implementation.” For query response, research means reading what the journalist has recently published before you answer.

What to change this week

Stop sending anything you didn’t write yourself. A third of journalists filter it out unread.
Cut your response volume and raise the quality. Three real answers beat thirty templated ones.
Read the query twice and follow the format instructions exactly.
Spend fifteen minutes finding which sites get cited in AI answers for your category. Add the small ones to your list.
When a story runs, share it and support the journalist who wrote it.

The takeaway

“Focusing on quality relationships with journalists, focusing on replying back to queries that are relevant to clients, I think those are the PR professionals that are winning in today’s environment.” — Brett Farmiloe, founder and CEO of Featured

The tools got cheap. Judgment didn’t. That’s the opening.

Brett Farmiloe is the founder and CEO of Featured, which owns and operates HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and Connectively. He spoke with Sherry Goldman, president of Goldman Communications Group, on Let’s Talk PR & More. Listen to the full conversation here.

Why Media Monitoring Matters Even If You’re Not a PR Pro

If you’ve ever spent time trying to earn media coverage, you probably know the feeling: You finally land the mention, interview, link, podcast appearance, or feature you’ve been chasing—and then move on to the next thing.

But what happens after the coverage goes live?

For a small business owner, it might be a mention you didn’t know existed. For a founder, it could be an opportunity to turn one interview into several more. For a PR professional, it’s a way to understand whether a campaign is actually gaining traction. And for a marketing team, competitor coverage can reveal topics, publications, and narratives worth paying attention to.

That’s where media monitoring comes in.

Featured, the AI co-pilot for PR and the company behind HARO, recently launched a Media Monitoring capability designed to make that process easier. But the bigger takeaway for anyone involved in PR, marketing, communications, or business development is this:

Getting media coverage is only half the job. Knowing what’s being said—and what happens next—can be just as valuable.

Why should you care about media monitoring?

The obvious answer is that you want to know when your company is mentioned.

The more useful answer is that media coverage is data.

Every article, interview, quote, backlink, podcast, and competitor mention can tell you something about how your business is being perceived, what journalists are interested in, which topics are gaining traction, and where opportunities may exist.

Here are a few practical ways that information can be useful, depending on what you do.

If you own or run a small business: Find the coverage you might otherwise miss

Not every media mention arrives in your inbox.

A journalist might mention your company in an article without notifying you. A local publication might link to your website. A customer story might include your business. Or your founder might be quoted in a piece that gets picked up by other publications.

If you’re not actively monitoring for those mentions, you may never see them.

That matters because a media mention can become an asset.

You can share it with customers, add it to your website’s press page, reference it in sales conversations, include it in investor materials, or use it as social content.

The first step, however, is knowing that the coverage exists.

If you’re a PR professional: Don’t stop tracking when the placement lands

For PR teams, monitoring coverage is less about vanity and more about measurement.

You may want to know:

How much coverage did a campaign generate?
Which publications picked it up?
What messages or talking points appeared in the resulting coverage?
Was the coverage positive, neutral, or negative?
Did additional publications link to or reference the original story?
Which competitors are getting attention that your client isn’t?

That last question can be particularly useful.

If a competitor is repeatedly being quoted in stories about a particular topic, that’s a signal. It may indicate that journalists associate the competitor with that subject—or that there is an opportunity for your client to establish its own expertise.

If you’re a founder or entrepreneur: Turn one media win into more opportunities

A media placement shouldn’t necessarily be treated as a one-and-done event.

Suppose you’re quoted in an article about artificial intelligence, hiring, cybersecurity, consumer behavior, or your particular industry.

That coverage can give you clues about what the media is currently interested in. It can also provide social proof when responding to future journalist requests.

More importantly, monitoring can help you identify momentum.

If several publications begin discussing the same topic, that may be a signal to pitch your expertise while the subject is still receiving attention.

The question changes from:

“Did I get coverage?”

to:

“What can I do with the coverage I just got?”

That’s a much more useful question.

Competitor monitoring may be even more valuable

Brand monitoring gets most of the attention, but keeping an eye on competitors can provide a different kind of intelligence.

Imagine discovering that your competitor has recently been featured in five publications for a topic you’ve been working on for months.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you should copy their strategy.

It does give you information.

You can investigate:

Which publications are covering them?
What topics are generating coverage?
Which journalists are writing about those topics?
What expertise are they being quoted for?
Are there publications covering the competitor but not your company?
Are there emerging story angles where your business has a stronger perspective?

In other words, competitor monitoring can help turn “Why are they getting coverage?” into a more actionable question: “What can we learn from where and why they’re getting coverage?”

The timing of monitoring matters

There’s also a practical reason to monitor coverage quickly: fresh coverage creates opportunities.

If your company is mentioned in an article today, you might have an opportunity to:

Share it while the story is still circulating
Thank the journalist
Engage with the publication
Repurpose the coverage for social media
Add the mention to your website
Use the new credibility in sales or business development
Identify journalists covering related stories
Look for follow-up opportunities

A month later, many of those opportunities may be harder to act on.

This is why automated monitoring can be more useful than occasionally searching your company name on Google.

Featured’s new Media Monitoring capability allows paid users to create automated workflows that check for coverage hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly and send the results through email or Slack.

The underlying principle is simple: don’t make someone remember to check.

What should you actually monitor?

You don’t necessarily need to monitor everything.

A useful monitoring strategy could include several categories:

Your brand:
Track your company name, product names, executives, and other terms closely associated with your business.

Your competitors:
See which competitors are getting coverage, where they’re appearing, and what topics they’re being associated with.

Your industry:
Monitoring important industry terms can help you identify emerging conversations before they become mainstream.

Your executives and subject-matter experts:
A founder or executive may receive coverage independently of the company. Those mentions can be valuable for both reputation and personal brand building.

The right setup will depend on the size and goals of your organization. A solo founder may only need a handful of searches. An agency managing multiple clients may need a much broader monitoring system.

Media monitoring isn’t just about finding good news

One of the less glamorous, but important parts of monitoring is finding negative or potentially problematic coverage early.

Media monitoring can help teams identify whether coverage is positive, neutral, or negative, giving them a faster way to understand how their brand is being represented.

That’s particularly important for businesses that operate in highly visible or highly regulated industries.

You don’t want your first awareness of a negative story to be when a customer, investor, employee, or journalist sends it to you.

Early awareness doesn’t automatically solve the problem. But it gives you something valuable: time to decide what to do.

How this fits into a broader PR strategy

It’s tempting to think of PR as a funnel:

Find opportunity → Pitch → Get coverage → Done.

In reality, there’s another loop after the coverage:

Monitor → Analyze → Amplify → Learn → Find the next opportunity.

That feedback loop can make earned media more strategic.

For example, if monitoring shows that your company consistently gets coverage when discussing a particular subject, that could become an area to build more thought leadership around.

If competitor monitoring shows that several competitors are receiving coverage around a topic where your company has strong expertise, that could inform future pitches.

And if coverage consistently uses language that doesn’t reflect how you want the company positioned, that’s useful information, too.

The bigger lesson for HARO users

Whether you’re a PR agency managing 20 clients, a founder trying to build credibility, a marketer looking for competitive intelligence, or a small-business owner trying to make the most of your first media mention, the principle is the same:

Don’t treat earned media as the finish line. Treat it as a source of information.

The most valuable media strategy isn’t simply about getting more mentions.

It’s about understanding:

Who is talking about you? Where are they talking about you? What are they saying? Who else are they talking about? And what can you do with that information?

That’s ultimately what media monitoring makes possible.

Featured’s new Media Monitoring capability brings those questions into its platform, allowing users to search recent media coverage through its chat and, for paid users, automate recurring monitoring through email or Slack.

For anyone already investing time in earning media, that can turn coverage from something you occasionally celebrate into something you continuously learn from.

Best PR Tool for Startups in 2026

For most startups, PR has always been one of those things that feels important but hard to operationalize. Founders know they need visibility. They know earned media can drive credibility, inbound leads, and investor attention. But in practice, PR often gets pushed aside because it feels slow, expensive, and unpredictable.

That’s starting to change.

In 2026, the best PR tool for startups is no longer a media database or a spreadsheet of journalist contacts. It’s not even traditional HARO-style platforms that once dominated the category. Instead, startups are moving toward AI-powered systems that actively help them identify opportunities, craft pitches, and land placements faster than manual workflows ever allowed.

This shift is redefining what PR software actually is.

The Problem With Traditional Startup PR

Historically, startups have had three options when it comes to PR.

They could hire an agency, which is often too expensive for early-stage companies. They could try to do it themselves using media databases and outreach tools, which requires time and expertise most founders don’t have. Or they could rely on platforms like HARO-style services, where they respond to journalist queries in a reactive way and hope something lands.

All three approaches share the same weakness: they depend heavily on manual effort.

Founders end up spending hours scanning opportunities, trying to guess what makes a good pitch, and competing with hundreds of nearly identical responses. Even when they do everything right, results are inconsistent. One week might bring a mention in a small blog; the next month might bring nothing at all.

For startups trying to grow quickly, that unpredictability is a serious problem.

Why the Definition of “PR Tool” Is Changing

What’s changed recently is not just tooling, but expectations.

Startups today operate in a faster, more competitive media environment. Journalists receive more pitches than ever. Attention spans are shorter. And relevance matters more than volume.

That means the old model—where PR tools simply provided access to journalist lists or query boards—is no longer enough.

The new expectation is simple: a PR tool should actively help you get featured.

This is where AI has started to reshape the category entirely. Instead of just surfacing opportunities, modern platforms now help startups decide what to pitch, how to frame their expertise, and how to increase the likelihood of being quoted.

In other words, PR tools are becoming PR copilots.

What Makes the Best PR Tool for Startups Today

When evaluating the best PR tool for startups in 2026, the difference between “useful software” and “growth infrastructure” comes down to one thing: how much execution it replaces.

Startups don’t need more dashboards. They need outcomes.

The most effective tools now share a few key capabilities, even if they don’t advertise them in the same way. They help founders move from opportunity discovery to actual media placements with minimal friction. They reduce the time between seeing a journalist request and sending a high-quality response. And most importantly, they use AI to improve the quality of pitching itself, not just the speed.

This is where the category begins to diverge sharply from traditional PR software.

Featured.com and the Shift to AI PR Copilots

One of the platforms leading this shift is Featured.com, which approaches PR less like a directory and more like an AI assistant for earned media.

Instead of requiring startups to manually search for journalist opportunities and write responses from scratch, it helps match relevant expert insights with active media requests. The system then supports the creation of pitch responses, effectively reducing the gap between opportunity and execution.

More recently, Featured has expanded beyond opportunity matching with Workflows, a feature designed to automate repeatable PR and content marketing processes.

Rather than treating every media opportunity as a one-off task, startups can build structured workflows that help manage activities such as content creation, expert contributions, response generation, review cycles, and publishing coordination.

This allows teams to turn successful PR processes into repeatable systems instead of rebuilding them each time. Workflows are increasingly becoming a way for lean startup teams to scale visibility without adding headcount.

What makes this approach notable is that it doesn’t treat PR as a static workflow. It treats it as a continuous loop: identify opportunities, generate strong responses, automate repetitive execution steps, refine based on outcomes, and repeat.

For startups, especially those without dedicated communications teams, this model removes much of the guesswork that traditionally comes with earned media.

Why AI Works So Well for Startup PR

The reason AI has become so influential in PR isn’t just automation. It’s contextualization.

Most startup founders already know their story. What they struggle with is translating that story into something that fits what journalists are actively looking for. AI bridges that gap by aligning internal expertise with external demand in real time.

Instead of asking founders to constantly interpret what a journalist “might want,” AI tools can surface relevant opportunities and suggest how to position a response in a way that fits the publication’s intent.

This fundamentally changes the workflow. PR becomes less about chasing coverage and more about responding strategically to demand that already exists.

What the Best PR Stack Looks Like for Startups

In practice, startups are increasingly moving toward a simplified PR stack. Rather than juggling multiple tools for outreach, tracking, content creation, approvals, and media lists, they’re consolidating around platforms that combine discovery, execution, and automation.

In this new model, AI PR tools sit at the center. They handle opportunity matching, pitch creation, response optimization, and workflow automation. Instead of relying on spreadsheets and manual coordination, teams can build repeatable processes that move opportunities from discovery to publication with fewer bottlenecks. Modern workflow systems help ensure that content gets reviewed, approved, and distributed efficiently while keeping founders focused on growth.

This consolidation is part of why AI-first platforms like Featured.com are gaining traction among early-stage teams. They reduce both the tooling overhead and the strategic uncertainty that has traditionally made PR difficult to scale.

By combining AI-powered pitching with workflow automation, they move closer to functioning as a complete earned media operating system rather than a standalone PR tool.

Final Thoughts

Calling something the “best PR tool for startups” used to mean choosing between media databases, outreach platforms, or HARO-style services. But that framing is quickly becoming outdated.

The real shift happening in 2026 is that PR tools are no longer just systems for managing outreach, they’re becoming systems for generating outcomes.

Startups don’t need more places to look for journalists. They need better ways to get quoted by them.

And that’s why AI-powered platforms like Featured.com are increasingly being viewed not just as tools, but as PR infrastructure for modern startups trying to build visibility at speed.

Connectively is Back, and HARO Isn’t Going Anywhere

If you’ve been following along on the HARO journey, you know we don’t take this community lightly. When Featured acquired HARO a year ago, we made a promise: bring it back and make it better than before. That promise stands.

So when we say we’re bringing back Connectively, we want to be upfront about what that name means, and what it doesn’t. We know what Connectively once represented.

When Cision shut down HARO and rebranded it as Connectively, it felt like the end of something that many PR professionals and journalists had come to rely on. We get it. That history is real, and we’re not asking you to forget it.

But here’s what’s also real: Featured now owns both brands. And just like we revived HARO, we think Connectively deserves a second life.

HARO isn’t going anywhere. It will continue to be the free, three-times-a-day newsletter you’ve counted on. We’re still growing it, still improving it, and still deeply committed to the community that makes it work.

So what is Connectively?

Think of it as HARO’s sister brand. The platform-based experience for people who want more than a newsletter. If you’ve ever wished HARO came with filtering, response tracking, a clean UI, or a way to manage opportunities in one place, that’s exactly what Connectively is built for.

It’s also the home for what was previously the Featured app. Every media opportunity, profile, subscription, and workflow has now moved under a brand that has real history in this space and a clear path forward of its own.

On June 2nd, Featured relaunches as the first AI co-pilot for PR. With this, we’re creating a single interface built to surface opportunities across journalist requests, podcasts, bylines, speaking engagements, awards, and more. It’s a bigger vision, and it needed a clean runway.

Connectively gives the existing community exactly that, while HARO keeps doing what it’s always done best.

Whether you reach for HARO, Connectively, or Featured, the core value is the same. Everyone’s an expert at something, and earned media should be within reach.

We’re excited for this next chapter. We think you will be, too.

HARO Launches Journalist Profiles to Add Verification, and Help Reporters Out

New profiles help journalists showcase their work, diversify income streams, and bring more transparency to HARO’s daily queries.

Help a Reporter Out (HARO), the iconic platform that connects journalists with expert sources, today announced the launch of HARO Journalist Profiles – a new, free tool designed to help reporters display their work, attract assignments, and strengthen HARO’s verification process. The new feature gives journalists a platform to build their professional brand and monetize their expertise, while helping HARO highlight the reporters behind every query.

With HARO Profiles, journalists can create, claim, and customize a personalized page to present their bylined work in a portfolio that automatically stays current as new stories are published. Reporters can also attract new assignments and signal their availability by activating an “Open to Write” badge visible to editors and audiences.

“Journalists today are creators, educators, employees, entrepreneurs and freelancers — sometimes all at once,” said Brett Farmiloe, CEO of HARO and Founder of Featured.com. “HARO Profiles help journalists organize and feature their work, amplify their income streams, and grow their audience by leveraging the authority and reach of the HARO platform.”

Profiles also include tools to support and expand a journalist’s readership — from a Buy Me a Coffee widget that allows supporters to contribute directly, to a Substack integration that builds distribution, to drag-and-drop options for selling digital products, getting booked for consulting, or earning affiliate income — all while keeping 100% of their revenue.

“Having a HARO journalist profile makes it easy to showcase my work, track bylined articles, and create visibility for my passive income-generating projects, all in one place,” said Rosie Bell, Travel Journalist with bylines in Fodor’s, Lonely Planet, BBC Travel, and National Geographic.

The introduction of Journalist Profiles directly enhances HARO’s core service — the daily media opportunities that connect journalists with expert sources. Each HARO email will link directly to a journalist’s profile, allowing sources to easily research and verify reporters before pitching. Queries from HARO-verified journalists will appear at the top of every HARO edition, signaling credibility, improving trust, and helping reporters get the sources they need faster.

HARO Journalist Profiles are fully customizable, free forever, and ad-supported — ensuring every journalist can build and grow their presence without platform fees or revenue splits. More than 75,000 journalists have used HARO to connect with expert sources, and now they can use the same trusted platform to strengthen their professional identity and build new opportunities for their work.

Journalists can create or claim their profile today at www.helpareporter.com/journalist-profiles

About Help a Reporter Out (HARO)

Founded in 2008, Help a Reporter Out (HARO) connects journalists with credible sources to make reporting faster and easier. Acquired by Featured.com in 2025, HARO continues to serve as a trusted, journalist-first platform — now modernized with tools that help reporters showcase their work, grow their audience, and drive passive income.

About Featured.com

Featured.com is a knowledge-sharing platform that connects subject-matter experts with leading publishers to create quality, ready-to-publish content. With a community of over 200,000 experts and more than 2 million answers submitted, Featured powers articles across a network of 2,500+ media outlets, unlocking the full potential of human expertise — one insight at a time.

HARO Partners with Outdoor Writers Association of America to Support Outdoor Journalists

September 17, 2025 — HARO (Help a Reporter Out) today announced its partnership with the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA), the nation’s largest organization of professional outdoor journalists.

Recognized as “The Voice of the Outdoors,” OWAA represents writers, photographers, videographers, broadcasters, digital storytellers, and artists dedicated to covering outdoor experiences and conservation. Since its founding in 1927, OWAA has worked to enhance the professional skills of its members, uphold the highest ethical standards, and encourage public enjoyment and preservation of natural resources.

“It’s so great to have HARO back,” stated OWAA Executive Director and freelance writer Chez Chesak. “I can say that I’ve used the new HARO both as E.D. of OWAA and as a writer now and I’ve found success as both. We’re excited to bring this to our more than 600 vetted outdoor media members to connect them to just the right sources for their own work too.”

The partnership will provide OWAA members with streamlined access to HARO’s extensive network of expert sources, empowering journalists to find credible voices quickly and produce well-sourced stories that inspire people to enjoy and protect the outdoors.

About HARO
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a leading platform that connects journalists with expert sources across industries. By facilitating fast, reliable connections, HARO helps journalists produce credible, well-rounded stories while providing experts with valuable media opportunities.

About OWAA
The Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) is a nonprofit professional organization representing more than 600 outdoor communicators. Founded in 1927, OWAA supports journalists through professional development, ethical standards, and community while encouraging the enjoyment and conservation of the natural world.

OWWA Linkedin

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HARO Partners with South Asian Journalists Association to Expand Access to Expert Sources

September 15, 2025 – HARO (Help a Reporter Out) announced its partnership with the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), a nonprofit dedicated to fostering community, professional growth, and nuanced coverage of the South Asian diaspora.

Through this collaboration, SAJA’s members will gain streamlined access to HARO’s vast network of expert sources, making it easier than ever to connect with credible voices for their reporting. The partnership underscores a shared commitment to supporting journalists, expanding access to expert perspectives, and amplifying diverse voices in media.

“As a former journalist and Edelman alum, I’ve seen how helpful HARO’s mission of connecting journalists with expert sources is from both sides of the pitch,” said Kiran Khalid, Vice President of SAJA. “It’s an amazing resource that, frankly, has saved me from missing deadlines.“

Founded in 1994, SAJA provides mentorship, scholarships, training, and networking opportunities for journalists covering South Asia and the diaspora. With this partnership, members will have new tools to strengthen their reporting and produce well-sourced stories that reflect diverse perspectives.

The partnership reflects HARO’s broader mission to strengthen journalism by connecting reporters with the right sources at the right time.

About HARO
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a leading platform that connects journalists with relevant expert sources. With a global network of professionals across industries, HARO enables reporters to access timely, credible insights that power great storytelling.

About SAJA
The South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting professional development, community, and the coverage of South Asia and the diaspora. Since 1994, SAJA has supported journalists through mentorship, scholarships, training, and networking opportunities.

SAJA Linkedin

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Help a Reporter Out (HARO) Is Back

I have some exciting news to share: Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is officially back.

Featured.com has acquired HARO with one simple goal — to bring back everything that made it great.

You’ll start seeing HARO emails again starting April 22nd. And just like before, it will remain free for both journalists and sources, supported by relevant newsletter sponsors.

Why now?

AI-generated content is everywhere, and your voice matters more than ever. HARO was built on the belief that everyone is an expert at something. We’re proud to revive that mission and help your insights power meaningful stories.

You can sign up for HARO by inputting your email address on the Help a Reporter Out homepage at www.helpareporter.com.

Looking for more ways to get featured in the press? Visit www.featured.com.

We’re honored to carry the HARO legacy forward, and excited to support you in this next chapter.

Warmly,

Brett Farmiloe

Founder & CEO, Featured.com