# What Is Earned Media? Definition and Role in AI Search **Definition:** Earned media is coverage of your brand that other people publish without being paid, such as press articles, reviews, forum discussions, social posts, and mentions in industry roundups. It sits alongside owned media (channels you control, like your website) and paid media (advertising). **How Searchable measures this:** Searchable's Sources view classifies every page AI engines cite for your tracked prompts by type, including editorial, review, forum, social, competitor, and your own site, so you can see which third-party pages shape answers in your category and which ones leave you out. **Published:** October 16, 2026 **Author:** Connor Lahey --- ## Earned vs owned vs paid media Marketers usually split media into three types by who controls it and who pays for it. The split matters for AI search, because each type plays a different part in what an AI engine says about you. | Type | Who controls it | Examples | Role in AI answers | |---|---|---|---| | Owned | You | Your website, blog, docs, and email list | Main source for your own facts, such as pricing and features | | Earned | Other publishers and users | Press, reviews, forums, roundups, and social posts | Main source when engines compare and recommend brands | | Paid | You, through a purchase | Search ads, display ads, and sponsored posts | Separate from organic answers, though some engines now show ads beside them | Some marketers add a fourth type, shared media, for social posts and reshares. In AI search it's usually grouped with earned media, because someone other than you published it. ## Why earned media matters in AI search When a buyer asks an AI engine which tool or product to choose, the engine tends to answer from pages that already compare options. Your own site describes one product, while a review, roundup, or forum thread covers several at once, so earned coverage often decides which brands make the shortlist. Our own data shows how small the brand's own site is in these answers. We analyzed more than 30 million citations for roughly 8,700 brands from August 17 to September 27, 2026, and [a brand's own site made up 4.2% of citations](https://www.searchable.com/blog/llm-seo) in answers to unbranded category prompts. Editorial sites made up 19.8%, and competitors' sites made up 41.7%. The 41.7% figure shows that earned media isn't the only lever. Competitors' own pages, such as comparison and alternatives pages, are cited heavily too, and from your point of view they're neither owned nor earned. ## Which earned media AI engines cite Engines don't treat all earned coverage the same, and each one leans on different source types: - Editorial and review sites are cited often on comparison and "best" questions, because they cover several brands in one place. - Forums and Reddit show up for questions about real-world experience, though engines differ widely. Reddit was cited for 4,814 brands across all six engines in our data, but for only 882 on ChatGPT. - Video is cited heavily by Google AI Overviews, which cited YouTube for more than 4,000 of the brands in our analysis, and much less by other engines. - Social posts made up only 3.1% of citations in the same data, though Perplexity cites LinkedIn for more brands than any other engine does. The practical step is to look at what's cited for your own prompts on each engine, instead of assuming one source type matters most everywhere. ## How to earn coverage that AI engines use Earning coverage for AI search uses the same methods as digital PR, with one change in what you aim for. The test for a placement is whether AI engines cite it for the questions your buyers ask, which a big publication doesn't guarantee. 1. **Find the pages already cited.** Run your buyers' prompts and list the third-party pages each engine cites. These pages shape the answer, whether or not they mention you. 2. **Get onto the lists that leave you out.** If a roundup cited on your prompts names your competitors and skips you, contact the publisher with what's new and why you belong. 3. **Give people something to cite.** Original data, clear benchmarks, and expert commentary give journalists and creators a reason to mention you. 4. **Fix wrong facts in existing coverage.** An outdated review can teach an engine the wrong price or feature list, so ask publishers to update it. A mention without a link still counts here. AI engines read the brand name in the text, which is why [unlinked brand mentions](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/unlinked-brand-mentions) matter more in AI search than they did for link building. ## How to measure earned media in AI search Traditional earned media metrics count coverage: articles, reach, and estimated audience. For AI search, the better question is which earned pages are cited in answers to your prompts, and whether those pages mention you. Track the source types cited for your prompts over time, per engine, and compare how many cited third-party pages mention you against how many mention your competitors. Our [earned vs owned decision tree](https://www.searchable.com/blog/aeo-strategy-earned-owned-decision-tree) walks through choosing between building your own page and earning coverage for a given prompt. ## Frequently asked questions ### What are examples of earned media? News coverage, product reviews, ratings on review sites, mentions in industry roundups and comparison articles, forum and Reddit discussions, podcast appearances, and social posts by customers or creators. The common thread is that someone else decided to publish it, and you didn't pay for the placement. ### What is the difference between earned, owned, and paid media? Owned media is anything you control, such as your website, blog, and email list. Paid media is advertising you buy. Earned media is coverage other people choose to publish about you. Shared media, meaning social posts and reshares, is sometimes counted as a fourth type. ### Is a sponsored article earned media? No. If you paid for the placement, it's paid media, even when it looks like editorial content. Disclose it, and keep it out of your earned coverage numbers. ### Why do AI engines cite earned media? When someone asks which product to choose, an engine looks for sources that compare options. Brand websites describe one product, so engines lean on reviews, roundups, and editorial articles that cover several brands at once. ## Related terms - [AI citations](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/ai-citations): AI citations are the links an AI engine attaches to its answer to show which web pages the information came from. Each citation credits a specific URL. A brand mention is different: the engine names a company in the text, even when it doesn't link to that company's site. - [AI brand mentions](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/ai-brand-mentions): AI brand mentions are the times an AI engine like ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews names your brand in an answer. A mention counts whether or not the answer links to your website. That's the difference from a citation, where the engine credits a specific page as its source. - [Unlinked brand mentions](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/unlinked-brand-mentions): An unlinked brand mention is any place your brand is named without a link to your website: in an article, review, forum post, or AI-generated answer. In SEO, unlinked mentions are a link-building opportunity. In AI search, they count on their own, because AI engines read brand names in text whether or not they're linked. - [Generative engine optimization (GEO)](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/generative-engine-optimization): Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of shaping your content and your presence on other sites so AI engines such as ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews include your brand in their answers and cite your pages as sources. The name comes from a 2023 research paper, and in practice it means much the same as answer engine optimization (AEO). - [Sources vs citations](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/sources-vs-citations): In AI search, sources are the pages an AI engine used to write its answer, and citations are the links that actually appear in the answer for the reader to see. The two overlap, but they aren't the same: an engine often reads more pages than it shows, so a page can shape an answer without being credited in it. - [AI share of voice](https://www.searchable.com/glossary/ai-share-of-voice): AI share of voice is the percentage of all brand mentions in AI-generated answers that belong to your brand, measured across a fixed set of prompts. Each brand counts once per answer it appears in. If brands are named 200 times across your tracked answers and 50 of those mentions are yours, your share of voice is 25%. --- [AI Search Glossary](https://www.searchable.com/glossary) | [Searchable Homepage](https://www.searchable.com)