“Forbes is heavily scraped by ChatGPT for our category, so get us in there.”
The client was right. We had data suggesting exactly this from Scrunch AI.
However, there’s a lot of nuance to how AI, specifically the RAG-bot army that goes and scrapes websites for answers to search queries, chooses and prioritizes the content it cites in answers.
By way of example, not all pages – and authors – on Forbes or sites like it are rated equal.
This is an important nuance for PR programs aiming to boost AI search presence, particularly as pertains to targeting journalists and websites for pitching.
RAG bots evaluate a range of page-level signals
These include:
1) Author position (staff journalist vs. unpaid contributor)
2) Content quality and originality
3) Engagement signals (backlinks, dwell time if bots can access it)
4) Schema markup (e.g. NewsArticle vs. BlogPosting)
5) Section labeling or subdirectory cues (e.g. https://lnkd.in/eMa5uvFt vs. forbes.com/news/)
Why?
Because some websites have well-known disparities in editorial rigour between staff-written and contributor content, and AI systems are fine-tuned to reflect this.
When you’re building a target list aimed at GenAI search presence, keep in mind that there can be significant variance in terms of what AI cites across pages on a site, authors and types of content.
The new era of media targeting is here.