How to Approach Editorial Sources in Prompt-Tracking Tools (An Earned Media Strategy for GEO)

If you’re using a prompt-tracking tool like Peec AI or Profound, you’ve probably seen Editorial domain types among the sources contributing to the chats associated with the prompts you’re tracking.

Editorial sources generally include news publications, industry websites, magazines, and other independently published media, as opposed to brand-owned or UGC sources.

As I said in a GEO vs. SEO post, off-site content strategies are one of the aspects of GEO that differentiate it from SEO.

Of course, we always cared about off-site signals in SEO, namely backlinks from relevant third-party sources, but now a big part of the game in GEO is about getting brand mentions from authoritative and relevant sources.

But why is it so important to get your Editorial content strategy right?

The data backs it up.

A study by Omniscient, for example, found that earned media (off-page citations) dominated branded citations in AI assistants.

We can also look at data for our own websites (in this case, I’ll look at data for EthanLazuk.com in Peec AI):

From the above screenshot, we can see that for the 50 SEO/GEO-themed prompts I’m tracking, Editorial content is the third highest domain type in terms of retrieval percentage.

The first question: how do you approach getting mentioned in Editorial sources?

Three strategies immediately come to mind:

1. Do digital PR (like publishing original research that Editorial domains would want to cover).
2. Reach out to journalists for coverage (offering them a story or an expert opinion for their article).
3. Pay for advertorials (many of those “best of” listicles you see in your AI visibility sources are pay-to-play).

The next question: which Editorial sources should you target for mentions?

To answer this, you can use your prompt-tracking tool.

Click into the Editorial sources section to see which domains are being retrieved the most for your tracked prompts:

In my case, it shows some big players in the SEO/GEO publishing space, including Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, and Search Engine Round Table.

If I were trying to get coverage, I could propose writing an article for SEL or SEJ, or I could find something new in Google’s SERPs, post about it on X or BlueSky, and tag the legendary Barry Schwartz to try and get mentioned in SER.

That’s still pretty broad advice, though.

To get more actionable, we can filter our prompt-tracking data by model and topic, then identify the most relevant sources contributing to the chats for those specific prompts. That’d give me a better idea of which type of article to pitch to SEL or SEJ, for example, based on my AI visibility goals.

I’ll start by filtering for AI Overviews chats relevant to my Generative Engine Optimization tag of prompts:

Immediately, we can see that the source domains changed a bit, with SEL and SEJ still prominent, but we also see domains like Evergreen Media, Solutions Review, and Forbes:

I’ve never heard of Evergreen Media, so let’s click into that domain and see which types of URLs are currently being retrieved as sources for my Generative Engine Optimization topic of prompts for AI Overviews:

The big source in terms of retrievals is a how-to guide about GEO.

It’s a good article written by the CEO of Evergreen Media:

While it has a lot of custom images and graphics and solid information, as well as personal takes from the author, something the article doesn’t have are third-party quotes from other GEO practitioners.

One opportunity might be to reach out to Alexander Rus and ask if he’d be willing to include an attributed quote in the article.

As for SEL and SEJ, we can look at their URLs specifically to get inspiration for the type of article we might propose to write if we wanted to be featured in those publications:

Just based on retrievals alone, this would be a good type of article to propose writing if I was trying to get visibility for the AI Overviews answers triggered by the Generative Engine Optimization prompts I’m tracking: “The SEO-GEO gap: How AI search traffic differs from organic traffic.”

We can also get specific at a prompt level.

Assume there was one prompt within my Generative Engine Optimization topic that I really cared about, let’s say it’s: “What is generative engine optimization and how do you optimize content to appear in AI-generated answers?”

I can then look at the source domains for that specific prompt, and again we find Evergreen Media and SEL:

For Evergreen Media, it’s that same GEO how-to guide appearing, so I would follow my original suggestion of trying to get mentioned in the article by proposing a quote.

For SEL, I might propose writing an article similar to the one being retrieved: “Optimizing content for generative engines: 17 actionable tips.”

(Of course, by “similar” I mean inspired by; your article should be totally original.)

I also see a couple of other domains being retrieved: Chitika and Gupta Deepak.

For Chitika, I might follow the same route as for Evergreen Media, and propose adding a quote to their existing article (which is great, by the way):

As for Gupta Deepak, this looks like a personal website (respect!).

The article is nice, but it’s also dated for 2025:

Maybe I could propose working with Deepak Gupta to update the article for 2026, and then be listed as a co-author or contributor.

Or maybe I could propose offering a guest post for his website.

The possibilities for Editorial content strategies are really endless, as long as you’re contributing value.

Let’s wrap up.

I’ve shown you how to analyze the Editorial sources in your prompt-tracking data for actionable takeaways, such as writing articles for publication, doing digital PR, reaching out to journalists for coverage, or paying for advertorials (which we didn’t cover, but it’s pretty straightforward).

The key is understanding which Editorial domains to target based on the URLs that are getting the most retrievals for your tracked prompts, as these are most likely to be relevant to your target audience and play a positive role in your AI visibility.

Before reaching out to an Editorial domain, you should also evaluate whether the page is actively maintained, outside contributors are commonly included, and your proposed addition would actually improve the article. Retrieval frequency identifies an opportunity, but it doesn’t automatically make the publication a good outreach target. That’s where strategy comes into play!

Factors to consider beyond bare retrieval count include:

• Relevance to the audience
• Editorial credibility
• Likelihood of accepting contributions
• Visibility across multiple prompts or models
• Whether the source is gaining or losing retrieval share
• Whether the article itself is current and high quality

Lastly, if you want a hand with your digital PR or overall GEO strategy, feel free to get in touch with me. I’m an independent SEO/GEO consultant helping brands and agencies.

Until next time, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing!

Related posts