Best Digital PR Metrics and Tools to Track Performance

Ask five PR teams how they measure campaign success and you’ll get five different answers. 

Some of this variation makes sense, as the metrics you measure depend on your campaign goals. For example, SEO or thought leadership campaigns might prioritize backlinks and high-authority mentions, while brand awareness efforts could focus on impressions, press clippings, social media engagement, and share of voice.

In some instances, however, the variation could indicate that a PR team struggles to identify which digital PR metrics matter most for their specific goals or doesn’t quite know how to match up metrics with meaningful business outcomes. And let’s be honest: sometimes it takes a little experimentation to determine which levers to pull where.

As the adoption of AI and the emergence of new software tools accelerate, these challenges become increasingly complex. In fact, more than 70% of PR professionals say they find the digital PR landscape more complex than they did a year ago.

“I always say it’s the bane of our existence,” notes Gini Dietrich, founder of Spin Sucks. “You know if you have great PR, and you know if you have bad PR. But you don’t know how to measure it.”

Stuck? In this article, we cover the key metrics PR professionals should track, how those numbers connect to real impact, and the best digital PR tools to help you measure success effectively.

What are digital PR metrics?

Digital PR metrics are the data points and performance indicators used to measure the success and impact of your PR campaigns. 

Most metrics (e.g., impressions, click-through rates, or number of backlinks) are quantitative. However, top PR teams also use qualitative metrics, such as sentiment analysis and the context and placement of brand mentions (e.g., a headline versus being included in a list of brands), to measure success.

Which digital PR metrics should we use?

To win at digital PR in 2025 and beyond, you must be familiar with the most important PR-related metrics, be able to interpret their meaning, and know how to link your findings back to specific business outcomes.

Let’s take a closer look.

Media coverage

The primary yardstick for most public relations teams is still how many, and which, publications run with your stories. When trustworthy sources cite your material, it amplifies your digital PR impact and increases the likelihood of your brand appearing in search results.

Monitoring your media coverage can also give you a sense of the platforms where your brand gets attention (e.g., social media platforms, business blogs, or Reddit conversations), which makes it easier to refine and focus your digital PR strategy for greater impact.

Backlinks

Coverage that links back to your website is beneficial for SEO and visibility in AI-powered search engines. But context matters. 

Strong backlinks (i.e., links to your site from well-established, reputable sources) tell search engines that your content is trustworthy and credible, which helps your web pages achieve higher rankings.

There are several key aspects to track here:

• Number of backlinks: Organic (naturally acquired) backlinks are generally more effective in building trust.

• Referring domains: The number of websites that link back to your site is also important. Check which of these pages carries the most authority, as this can guide your future outreach strategies.

• Top linked pages or content: Track the articles or resources that consistently give you the highest number of backlinks. These highlight the types of content that resonate with audiences and authoritative sources.

If you perfect your backlink strategy, you’ll do well in search. As a result, you may be able to gradually decrease your paid media spend. 

Insider tip: A tool like CoverageImpact, which maps business outcomes to digital PR efforts, can help you track these results.

Referral traffic

When a user lands on your website after they click on a link on a different website, like a news outlet, social media platform, or industry blog, this is counted as referral traffic. It’s a direct measure of which placements, organic or otherwise, drive traffic to your website. 

Referral traffic is one of the best ways to connect public relations activity to business outcomes, such as leads, conversions, or brand awareness. 

Insider tips:

• Tools like Google Search Console (more about this later) can help you track the sites that drive most traffic your way. 

• If you work with media contacts or partners, be sure to add UTM parameters to your links. These parameters help you to track precisely where traffic originates and make it easy to evaluate the success of specific placements.

Time on page

This metric measures the time it takes a user to transition from one page to another.

More time spent on a page indicates that your digital PR efforts attract the right audience, your content is engaging, and that your backlinks drive traffic as intended. 

Google Analytics can help you track this metric alongside bounce rate and session duration, giving you a fuller picture of how audiences interact with your content once they arrive

Social media engagement

Social shares serve as a good indicator of your content’s success on social media platforms. The more your content is shared, liked, or commented on, the better (unless, of course, you’ve made a PR faux pas and you’re getting bad press).

If your PR campaign goes viral for the right reasons, you not only earn credibility with your audience, but you’re also more likely to catch the attention of journalists. This attention can translate into valuable media coverage and amplified impact for your brand.

If there’s discontent brewing about your brand or PR campaign, social channels are also where you’ll hear it first. These platforms are, therefore, also essential for early reputation management and damage control.

Owned media click-through rates (CTRs)

If you have a PR.co-powered digital newsroom, run email campaigns, or pitch stories to the press, CTRs are a direct measure of success. 

It’s important to always view CTRs in the context of your business objectives. For instance, if you measure clicks on lead magnets, such as webinars or downloadable e-books, a high CTR indicates that your content successfully drives lead generation. 

If your CTR is high but people don’t spend much time on your page, it may mean that your message doesn’t align with what visitors expect. Refine your content to accurately reflect what visitors will find. This way, CTR data can help you fine-tune messaging for your next PR campaign and increase its overall effectiveness.

Note that CTR benchmarks differ widely by platform (e.g., email campaigns vs. Facebook) and industry, so do your research accordingly.

Unlinked brand mentions

Brand mentions don’t always include backlinks, but they still contribute to your share-of-voice. 

For example, if your brand is mentioned in podcasts or forums in a positive context, it could be a sign that your PR campaign is resonating with your audience. If you closely monitor these unlinked mentions, it can also help you stay ahead of trends or sentiment shifts.

Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis provides a clear picture of your brand’s reputation and emotional impact. 

Unlike many of the metrics already listed, sentiment analysis digs into tone and context, instead of pure numbers, to answer questions like: 

• What do consumers say about our brand or latest PR campaign? 

• Do they use positive, negative, or neutral language when they discuss our brand? 

• Are there any recurring themes or concerns we need to address? 

Regular sentiment analysis is one of the strongest tools in every public relations professional’s toolkit. This analysis can help you avoid a potential PR crisis or provide an early indication of campaign effectiveness. 

AI citations

Tools like Google AI Overviews, which pull information from across the web, are the future of search. If your public relations team doesn’t already track AI citations and visibility in these overviews, they should be.

We covered this topic extensively in a recent article on Google AI Overviews, but here’s the quick takeaway: As zero-click search increases, it’s wise for brands to pay attention to how AI selects and highlights sources. 

Fortunately, AI optimization aligns closely with techniques PR professionals already use. If you create high-quality backlinks, organize your content clearly, and address your target audiences’ questions in your content, your brand should show up in the content generated by LLMs.

Insider tip: To check if you meet AI search performance goals, do a web search for a question related to your industry or brand. Use informational queries like: “How to…?” or “What is…?” to see if your brand’s content pops up. Alternatively, use a dedicated AI visibility tool to track citations.

Which PR measurement tools should we use?

You now have a clear sense of the digital PR metrics you should focus on. But which tools are best for the job? 

Here are six great options that will help you measure the success of your PR efforts (note that this is just a handful of choices among dozens):

Google Search Console (GSC)

Google’s free Search Console tool monitors search traffic, backlinks, and website performance. It’s often the first stop for PR pros. 

At its most straightforward, GSC shows you what people search for, how those searches lead them to your site, and which pages they visit. You can use this information to refine your SEO strategy, tailor your page content and backlink strategy, and evaluate the impact of your brand’s media placements. 

Let’s say you’ve just launched a PR campaign that spotlights your brand’s sustainability efforts, which results in coverage across several outlets. A week later, you review your Google Analytics data and notice a marked increase in clicks for searches like “[your brand] ESG goals.” This signals interest in the topic and suggests it’s a smart time to publish more related content on your owned channels to capitalize on this momentum.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers a whole suite of PR and marketing tools. These tools enable you to check everything from backlink authority to SEO optimization, keyword competition, domain authority, brand mentions, website traffic, and AI citations. You can also get into the details of content performance (e.g., which of your materials gets linked to the most).

Additionally, Ahrefs provides insight into what your competitors do right. For example, you can use it to analyze where competitors have been featured, and which topics or angles perform well for them. This intel can help you refine your own PR strategy. 

Peekaboo

Peekaboo focuses on AI search performance and GEO. It allows you to analyze your site for free and reports back on whether your pages are “findable” by LLMs such as Claude and ChatGPT. It’s compatible with all major LLMs, which makes it a reliable way to track AI citations and visibility, wherever your audience searches for your brand.

Peekaboo also breaks down geographic trend data, like regional market demands and location-based audience behavior. 

Insider tip: Use Peekaboo to identify hidden opportunities and areas where your strategy may fall short. Since the tool is still in beta, it’s best to pair it with other PR solutions to get an accurate picture of AI visibility. 

Perplexity

Perplexity provides detailed research on virtually every topic under the sun and also gives you insights into AI search performance. In fact, many top PR execs already use the platform to track what competitors are up to and where their brand has been mentioned on a given day. 

We love the versatility Perplexity offers. PR teams can use it to:

• Track sentiment, spot trends, and identify high-performing content. 

• Analyze uploaded data sets. 

• Generate custom dashboards and graphs to visualize changes in specific PR metrics (e.g., share of voice) or to map out sentiment shifts over time.

Note, however, that some of the more advanced features require a Pro subscription to access Perplexity Labs.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT offers many of the same basic capabilities as Perplexity. PR teams can also use it for data analysis, to dig into specific PR metrics, and to monitor mentions or sentiment across the web. 

With that said, Perplexity is generally a better option for focused, real-time research. Additionally, it draws from a broader range of sources.

ChatGPT is, however, a great tool to help you shape content that matches the PR insights you’ve uncovered with other tools. For example, if your analysis reveals that recent placements have generated positive sentiment and new search terms, you can use ChatGPT to help refine your content to meet audience expectations. 

This platform can also help you to:

• Refine pitches, press releases, and other PR materials.

• Identify new content opportunities from existing successful placements or media coverage.

• Analyze content for theme or tone.

PR.co

PR.co’s branded newsrooms feature integrated PR analytics tools that monitor various metrics, from which pitches are opened to CTRs and sources of referral traffic. Our newsrooms are also built to structure your news content for maximum visibility, which drives SEO, AI, and local search performance. 

Additionally, your PR.co newsroom provides data on bounce rates, time on page, visitor geographic location, and more. All these features provide the perfect combination of digital PR metrics to help you fine-tune your efforts and keep your brand at the cutting edge of digital PR. 

Put your brand in every search result, AI or organic

Armed with knowledge about the right tools and digital PR metrics, you’re now equipped to measure your PR impact accurately. A PR.co newsroom enables you to create structured, high-quality press assets that are discoverable by both journalists and search engines. Additionally, our platform provides you with the insights to determine what works and what doesn’t.

Keen to learn more about PR.co? Let’s chat.