How to Structure a Press Release So It’s Recognized and Cited by AI Models

PR isn’t just back – it’s officially running the show. This year marked a definitive moment for our industry. We shed our “nice-to-have” label and became the must-have engine behind every successful business. The catalyst: the widespread adoption of AI. And while we all heard the fear-mongering about robots taking over our jobs, the opposite happened. AI didn’t replace PR jobs, it just proved that what we do, securing credible, third party endorsements, is now the ultimate high-value asset. 

Today, AI visibility is becoming just as important as SEO. PR teams now aim not only to get media coverage but also to ensure their press releases are recognized and cited by AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini.

So, how can you make sure your brand’s story is accurately represented in AI-generated answers? In this article, we’ll break down 7 ways to structure your press releases so that Large Language Models (LLMs) can read, understand, and cite them correctly.

1. Use a clear, structured format

Just like in SEO, you have to make your news easy to find and interpret. LLMs rely on structured, predictable layouts to interpret and extract information.

Here's how you should structure your press release for maximizing AI visibility:

1.1. Add a headline (H1): Your headline should summarize the announcement clearly, using specific names, products, or data points. This helps AI models understand the topic and relevance of your story.

2. Add a subheadline (H2): Use your subheadline to expand on the headline, adding context, outcomes, or supporting data. This information will provide additional context to help AI understand relationships between entities mentioned in your press release (like companies, industries, professionals) and also extract more accurate summaries.

3. Include a dateline with the city, country, and most importantly, date: The date line helps AI determine the relevance and recency of the announcement, both being critical factors for AI credibility.

4. Your intro paragraph should answer who, what, when, where, why: Your first paragraph should summarize the entire story in one or two sentences. LLMs and search engines scan the opening lines first to extract key facts. A structured intro ensures your core message is correctly interpreted and cited.

5. Structure your press release with subheadings: Break your main content into short sections with descriptive subheadings. This structure helps both humans and bots understand the logical flow of your announcment. Plus, having structured text with subheadings improves the way AI platforms will read, scan and understand your story.

6. Don't forget your boilerplate: At the end of your press release, remember to add a concise "about" section that describes your company and your vision. This statement will provide essential information that helps LLMs connect your announcement with your broader brand profile.

7. Media contact info: Last, but certainly not least, don't forget to include your media contact information like your name, job title, email, and phone number. This signals transparency and authenticity, making it easier for AI-machines to distinguish real press releases from unverified sources or promotional content.

2. Publish in an Indexed, Crawlable Newsroom

If you want your press release to be found and indexed in AI-generated answers, it needs to live somewhere visible, like your online newsroom. This online newsroom should include:

• Markup schema: Implement schema.org/NewsArticle or PressRelease markup so that AI platforms can understand the structure of your press release.

• Meta tags: Include a clear title, description, and canonical URL. This ensures that AI machines will treat your press release as a structured, authoritative source, increasing the chances it's found and cited directly from your site.

Do Newswires Hurt Your AI Visibility?

Publishing press releases through newswires first can definitely limit your visibility in AI-generated results. Because the primary version of your press release will live on the newswire's website (and it's often duplicated across multiple plaforms and sites), AI models may not recognize your brand as an authoritative source. Another downside of using newswires for AI visibility is that these sites often lack structured data, contextual signals and don't generate backlinks to your site, which are all key elements for AI credibility and discoverability.

If you want to maximize your AI visibility, publish your press release in your owned channel first, then send it out to newswires after that.

3. Use Plain, Factual Language

Ever see so many abbreviations it's hard to keep track? No one likes jargon, especially not AI. If you want your news to be cited in AI-generated answers, avoid marketing and sales fluff. Stop using "game-changing" or "revolutionary" to describe your latest launch. The more objective and evidence-based your text is, the more likely it is your news will be picked up by LLMs.

4. Include Context

LLMs use contextual signals in your press release to map out relationships between entities, like companies, people, products, places. So in order to make your news more AI friendly, you should:

• Mention relevant organizations, partners, and industries using consistent names.

• Link to authoritative external sites like company websites or media outlets to help AI models understand the context and cross-reference the information.

5. Add Quotes That Provide Unique Insights

Another way to get your press release cited is by adding human-ness. That's right, to increase your AI visibility, you should include insightful quotes from credible spokespeople. This could be your CEO, an industry expert, a partner, or anyone with credentials that can add a unique perspective to your story. LLMs are trained to pick up on human insight, so well-crafted quotes can make your story stand out in AI summaries.

6. Use Descriptive, Machine-Readable Media Assets

Rich content: humans enjoy it machines love it (and index it). Your press release should include images, videos, infographics, and more. Remember, when embedding visuals you should add alt text and caption metadata that describe the image or chart. Another important tip is to avoid posting images of text. LLMs (and search engines, for that matter) can't interpret text within images, unless it includes descriptive metadata. So whenever possible, make sure to convert those tables or charts into actual, machine-readable formats.

7. Link Internally to Related Content

As mentioned earlier, AI relies on contextual signals to connect your story to your broader brand, industry, location, and other relevant factors. To improve your chances of appearing in AI-generated overviews, it’s important to link your content to related materials like:

• A previous announcement

• A related blog post, whitepaper, or guide

• An “About” or newsroom home page: this is especially important in showing machines (and humans) that your newsroom is a trusted, authoritative source on a specific topic.

How a PR.co online newsroom can help increase your AI visibility

Your newsroom is more than a repository for press releases and for journalists. Today, it’s the foundation of your AI strategy. A branded, well-organized newsroom signals to LLMs that you're an authoritative source and it makes your content easy for AI models and human readers to understand. By keeping your releases, reports, and whitepapers structured and consistent, you increase the chances of being recognized and cited by LLMs. Combined with a PR approach that earns mentions and media coverage, your newsroom becomes a central hub that amplifies your brand in the AI-driven information landscape.

Curious how we can help your brand be cited in LLMs? Let’s connect and make it happen.