By Sydney Donovan, EGC’s Director of Public Relations At Cannes Lions this week, Axios reported on a conversation that cuts to the heart of where earned media is heading. Concerns Over Google’s AI Crawler People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel stated it plainly: publishers can’t block Google’s AI crawler without also disappearing entirely from search results. The two are inseparable by design. Cloudflare’s Matthew Prince framed the solution simply: split the crawler, and you level the playing field. A recent UK regulatory ruling moved in that direction, giving publishers the ability to opt out of Google’s AI Overviews without losing search visibility entirely. The traffic numbers tell the larger story. According to Prince, getting referral traffic from Google is already 10x harder than it was four years ago. (From OpenAI, it’s 1,500x harder. From Anthropic, it’s 70,000x.) Publishers are responding in different ways. Some are suing, others are licensing, and there are those who are selectively opting out. Since 2023, the NYT has spent $20M on AI-related legal fees while simultaneously brokering a licensing deal with Amazon. We are all in the middle of a search revolution, which means there is no consensus playbook yet. What this Means for PR and Earned Media The value of a media placement is being recalculated in real time. For years, a hit in a top-tier outlet meant referral traffic, brand awareness, and a bump in search authority. That equation hasn’t disappeared, but it’s being quietly and quickly rewritten. As AI-generated summaries capture more of the search experience, the click is becoming less reliable as a measure of impact. What’s holding its value is credibility. A placement in a trusted outlet signals authority to both human and AI model readers. At prSuade, we track these shifts closely because they change how we build earned media strategies for our clients. The outlets we pitch, the narratives we place, and the content we help create are all operating in an environment where Large Language Models (LLM) are as much a part of the audience as human readers. The brands that understand this now will be better positioned as the rules continue to take shape. A partner that’s ready, willing, and equipped to shift with the market is critical in maintaining brand relevance and building reputation. Learn more about prSuade, EGC’s PR division.
