When a site selector asks Claude which mid-sized metros have the strongest manufacturing workforce, or a young family asks ChatGPT where they can find affordable homes and good schools within driving distance of a major city, the answer usually doesn’t come from any given community’s website. It often comes from the news. More than 84% of links cited by AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Google Gemini come from earned media (media coverage that is earned rather than paid for, such as news stories, reviews and rankings). More than a quarter come straight from journalism, and over half of those are from articles published in the past year (Muck Rack, What Is AI Reading?, May 2026).
More people are skipping the search results page and going straight to AI summaries from ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI Overviews. That includes the audiences every place competes for: visitors planning a trip, talent weighing a move, entrepreneurs looking for a place to grow and companies narrowing a shortlist of locations for relocation or expansion.
What does this mean for places?
Media coverage is no longer just an awareness play for a destination. It’s the raw material AI uses to describe your place to the world. If your city, county or region isn’t being cited in credible sources, it may not make the shortlist at all. AI tools may be suggesting your competitors instead.
This shift is driving a marketing discipline called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): making sure a place is accurately represented and cited when AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s AI Overviews generate answers. It’s becoming as important as SEO.
Like its cousin, GEO is about discoverability. But while SEO helps your website rank near the top of a list, GEO gets your place named in the answer itself when someone asks, “Where should I open my second location?” or “What’s a great weekend getaway within three hours of Atlanta?” And because these tools lean so heavily on journalism, you should pay close attention to what credible outlets say about you.
That makes earned media even more valuable. Coverage has always shaped a place’s reputation, but it is now central to building credibility and becoming the go-to answer in the AI era. For tourism bureaus, economic development organizations and community marketers, it raises the bar for securing high-quality coverage and makes it essential to act on strategic, timely opportunities.
AI is changing the rules of engagement for how places are discovered, but it isn’t removing the need for human strategy, insight and connection. If anything, it makes those skills more valuable. Earning coverage still takes a story only your place can tell, a relationship with the right reporter and the timing to step in when the news creates an opening. What’s different is the added benefits of earned media placements: that coverage now shapes the answer a family, visitor or site selector gets when they ask AI about destinations and regional economies.
