Earned media for AI citations: how to get into the sources Google already cites (without astroturfing)

Google's AI Overviews describe most brands through other people's pages. This playbook shows how to find the pages that shape your answers, how to earn a place in each type without faking anything, and why the fake route got riskier in 2026.

Last reviewed September 18, 2026.

The short answer

—AI Overviews talk about you mostly through third-party pages. On September 7, 2026, Google's AI Overviews named Notion in 42 of 50 US answers but cited a Notion-owned page in only 7. YouTube was cited in 36 and Reddit in 17 (our captures).

—Start with a citation inventory: the domains cited for your own queries, grouped by type. That list is your media list.

—Every source type has an honest way in: accounts that say who you are, disclosed sponsorships, review invitations sent to every customer, corrections and data for comparison sites, and dated comparison pages of your own.

—Astroturfing is a bad bet. Since May 2026, Google's spam policy covers "attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search". Since March 2026, Reddit makes suspected bot accounts prove a human is behind them. Fake reviews are illegal in the US, the UK and the EU.

—Measure with the same queries, captured before and after, with dates.

Why do other people's pages decide what AI Overviews say about you?

Because most of the answer is built from them. On September 7, 2026, we captured Google's AI Overviews for 50 queries about Notion and its category, from the United States, signed out. Notion was named (it appeared in the answer text) in 42. A Notion-owned page was cited (a linked source) in 7. In the 25 best-of and alternatives queries, where a buyer is choosing a tool, Notion was named in 21 answers and no Notion page was cited. Every exhibit is in our Notion study.

Other research points the same way, with different definitions. Most of it comes from companies that sell SEO, PR or distribution software; we cite each study with its sample and date.

• —McKinsey wrote in October 2025 that "a brand's own sites only comprise 5 to 10 percent of the sources that AI-search references", sourced to "Google AI Overview; McKinsey analysis" (McKinsey). It does not publish the sample or the method.
• —Muck Rack found that "earned media accounts for 84% of all AI citations" in more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini (May 7, 2026). Google AI Overviews are not in that dataset.
• —Ahrefs, in a study of 75,000 brands (May 2025, updated April 2026), found that branded web mentions correlated with brand visibility in Google AI Overviews at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks. That is correlation, not cause: well-known brands tend to have more of both.

Google's own guide (updated July 10, 2026) states both halves of this article. Its generative AI features "can show what's being said about products and services across the web, including in blogs, videos, and forum discussions". But "seeking inauthentic "mentions" across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem. Our core ranking systems focus on high-quality content while other systems block spam; our generative AI features depend on both."

Step 1: Build your citation inventory

Before you pitch anyone, list the sources Google already cites for your queries. Grouped by type, that list becomes your plan.

1. 01Fix a query set a buyer would type: best-of lists, comparisons, alternatives, and trust questions about pricing, refunds, security and support.
2. 02Capture each AI Overview in the country you sell in, signed out, and date it.
3. 03Record every cited source: domain, page, position, and whether it names you, names competitors, and describes you correctly.
4. 04Count and group by source type.

This is the shape of the Notion inventory:

Google AI Overviews for 50 queries about Notion, United States, signed out, captured September 7, 2026. 110 distinct domains were cited, 83 of them in only one overview.

Two things stand out. One platform dominates: YouTube appeared in 36 of the 50 answers. And the tail is long and specific: rock.so, the site of Rock, a smaller team-chat and project-management app, was cited in 10 overviews, all of them Notion comparison, alternatives or pricing queries. Your targets are the sources cited often for your queries that don't mention you, or that describe you wrongly.

Step 2: Match each source type to an honest tactic

The common rule: say who you are, disclose any payment, and give people facts they can check.

YouTube: publish videos, and let creators judge

YouTube was cited in 36 of our 50 Notion overviews, including 14 of the 15 best-of queries. In Ahrefs' September 2026 data for more than 3 million US queries, YouTube accounted for 22.9% of the citations among the 50 most-cited domains in AI Overviews. A separate Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands (December 2025) found YouTube mentions had the strongest correlation with AI visibility, about 0.737; again, correlation, not cause.

• —Your own channel. Publish videos that answer the questions in your inventory: comparisons that say where the competitor is better, pricing walk-throughs, security settings, migration guides.
• —Independent creators. Offer creators who already cover your category access, a briefing and an expert to question. Then let them reach their own verdict.
• —Disclosure. YouTube's rule: "If you feature branded content, sponsorships, endorsements, or other commercial relationships in your videos, you have to let YouTube know by selecting the paid promotion button in your video details." The FTC's 2023 Endorsement Guides warn that "a platform's built-in disclosure tool might not be an adequate disclosure", so say it in the video too.

Reddit and forums: answer as yourself

Reddit was cited in 17 of 50, and it shaped the trust answers most visibly. For "is Notion safe and secure", the sources were two Reddit threads and a YouTube video, and no Notion page (exhibit 43). For "Notion customer support reviews", the sources were a Reddit thread dated August 4, 2023, Trustpilot and notion.com (exhibit 44).

Exhibit 44. Google AI Overview for "Notion customer support reviews", United States, signed out, captured September 7, 2026, 09:47 UTC.

• —Post from accounts that say who you are: a brand account, or staff who name their employer.
• —Answer questions people already asked, including the uncomfortable ones about security, refunds and outages. Follow each community's rules.
• —Keep links to yourself rare. Reddit's spam policy (updated May 19, 2026): "If your contributions to Reddit consist primarily of links to a business that you run, own, or otherwise benefit from, please be thoughtful about the frequency of posting".
• —Fix what the threads complain about. In exhibit 44, a 2023 thread was a source for a 2026 answer.

Review platforms: invite every customer

Review sites appeared in few answers, but they were quoted when cited: g2.com in 3 of 50 overviews and trustpilot.com in 2. Exhibit 48 ("Notion reviews") opened: "Notion holds a strong G2 rating of 4.6/5 stars, praised as a powerful all-in-one workspace for documentation and wikis, though users frequently cite a steep learning curve and limited automation depth."

Invite everyone, the same way, and let the rating be what it is. Trustpilot's guidelines for businesses (version 7.2, June 2026) ask for "inviting everyone in the same way, and at the same point in the customer journey, regardless of whether they've had a positive or negative experience with your business", and ban incentives. G2 "limits the value of any incentive offered in exchange for a review to $100 USD" and tags incentivized reviews. Both forbid inviting only happy customers.

Comparison sites and the long tail: correct facts, offer access

In our Notion sample, zapier.com was cited in 11 overviews, rock.so in 10, and taskrhino.ca and zenpilot.com in 5 each. Many of the pages behind them are comparison guides and alternatives lists on software companies' and small specialist sites, not big media.

• —Check what each frequently cited page says about you: prices, plan names, limits. Send the author a correction with a link to your public source.
• —Offer what a reviewer needs: a test account, current screenshots, a dated pricing sheet and an expert who answers questions.
• —If you pay for a listing, the publisher labels it as paid. Don't pay for a ranking in a list that presents itself as independent. The FTC's review rule bans passing off a company-controlled review site as independent.

Journalists and trade press: pitch the outlets already cited

Muck Rack's December 2025 analysis of more than one million links cited by AI models found: "When comparing the most pitched journalists on Muck Rack with those most cited by AI engines for a particular brand, the overlap is only 2% on average." It does not cover Google AI Overviews. In our Notion sample, tech press appeared in a handful of answers (TechRepublic in exhibits 06 and 16, PCMag in 13, MakeUseOf in 03).

Build the media list from your citation inventory, not from the biggest names. Pitch what those outlets can check: data with a method, a customer who will speak on the record, an expert who can explain a trade-off.

Your own pages: be the source for facts about you

Notion's own pages were cited where the question was about Notion's policies: refunds, pricing, support and uptime (exhibits 41 and 44 to 47). Comparisons went the other way. For "Notion vs ClickUp pricing" (exhibit 50), the three sources were rock.so, zenpilot.com and a ClickUp help-center page titled "ClickUp vs. Notion: Docs, Wikis, and Project Management", and the answer opened by calling ClickUp "consistently 30% to 40% cheaper than Notion".

Publish comparison pages a neutral reader would accept: current prices by tier, the date you checked them, the competitor's real strengths and who should pick which. Put policy facts (refund windows, security practices, uptime history) on plain pages, in text.

Don't publish "best X" lists that rank you first. On February 3, 2026, SEO consultant Lily Ray documented US organic visibility drops of 29% to 49% from mid-January 2026 at SaaS and B2B sites that had published many such self-promotional lists, and quoted Glenn Gabe: "For sites dropping with the latest volatility, they are dropping in AIOs as well." She notes that drops "can stem from many factors"; it is an observation, not a controlled test.

Step 3: Give people something worth citing

Mentions follow material. Original data, specific numbers and a named expert give journalists, creators and forum users something to repeat. Google's guide puts this first: "Creating content that people find unique, compelling, and useful will likely influence your website's presence in generative AI search in the long run more than any of the other suggestions in this guide."

What to make: a dataset only you hold (aggregated and anonymized), an annual survey with its method published, a price or benchmark index, and an expert who is available for comment. Put the number, the date and the method on one page that others can link to.

Why is astroturfing a bad bet in 2026?

Because Google, Reddit and regulators in the US, UK and EU have all moved against it, and the payoff is unstable even when nothing goes wrong. In Ahrefs' tracking of 43,000+ keywords (November 2025), an AI Overview had "a 70% chance of changing from one observation to the next". A planted thread buys a citation that may not survive the week; the accounts, reviews and paperwork behind it remain.

What Google and Reddit changed

Google's guide adds that creating separate content for every fan-out query "primarily to manipulate rankings or generative AI responses in Google Search violates Google's scaled content abuse spam policy". More myths are checked in our llms.txt and schema article.

A channel you don't control can disappear

The ChatGPT row is about dependence, not Google. Promptwatch measured Reddit's share of all ChatGPT Search citations at 3.83% from July 18 to August 7, 2026, and 0.52% from August 14 to 17, a relative drop of 86.4%. Promptwatch itself says "a data-collection issue cannot be ruled out, so treat the size of the drop as provisional". Over the same tracking period, Reddit's share of citations in Google AI Overviews moved only from 2.37% to 2.10%.

Reddit's chief communications officer, Adam Collins, told Axios: "If you're a brand looking at Reddit merely as a way to hack your presence on an AI platform, you risk frustrating your consumers here with no guarantees of a positive result elsewhere." A real answer in a real thread still helps a customer. A planted one is worth only what an AI system decides to cite.

What the law says in the US, UK and EU

This is not legal advice.

United States. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials has been in effect since October 21, 2024. It bans fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones; incentives conditioned on a particular sentiment; undisclosed insider reviews; company-controlled review sites passed off as independent; and buying or selling fake social media indicators. Asked whether "advertising agencies, public relations firms, review brokers, or reputation management companies" can be liable, the FTC answers: "Yes. These entities are not immune from liability under the rule." When it warned 10 companies on December 22, 2025, it cited "civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation". In May 2026, the FTC and Illinois took action against Premium Home Service over thousands of fake business listings and fabricated five-star reviews.

United Kingdom. Since April 6, 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has banned "submitting, or commissioning another person to submit or write, a fake consumer review or a consumer review that conceals the fact that it has been incentivised", and offering services that commission or facilitate such reviews (summary by law firm CMS). The CMA can impose "fines of up to 10% of global turnover". On March 27, 2026, it opened investigations into five businesses, including Dignity (whether staff were asked to write positive reviews) and Pasta Evangelists (whether undisclosed discounts were offered for 5-star reviews).

European Union. Since May 28, 2022, EU consumer law has blacklisted "Submitting or commissioning another legal or natural person to submit false consumer reviews or endorsements, or misrepresenting consumer reviews or social endorsements, in order to promote products" (Directive (EU) 2019/2161). National authorities enforce it; for widespread cross-border infringements the maximum fine must be at least 4% of the trader's annual turnover in the member states concerned. A Digital Fairness Act proposal, expected to cover influencer marketing among other things, is due in the fourth quarter of 2026 (European Parliament, as of June 20, 2026).

The honest line: a do and don't checklist

How do you know it's working?

Re-run the same queries in the same country and compare dated captures, before and after. For each query, record whether an AI Overview appeared, whether you were named, whether your domain was cited, and whether your target sources now mention you correctly. This is what our report records for every query, with a dated screenshot.

Capture more than once before claiming a change. Which domains are cited is steadier than which pages: in SISTRIX's study of 82,619 prompts in six countries (December 2025 to April 2026), in 53% of AI Overview prompts "not a single source changes over 17 weeks". Our guide to reporting AI visibility to clients covers the method.

What we don't know yet

• —Whether earned mentions cause AI Overview citations. The evidence is correlation (Ahrefs). We have not found an independent study that isolates the effect on Google AI Overviews.
• —How much of the earned-media research applies to Google. Muck Rack's datasets exclude AI Overviews, and McKinsey's 5–10% has no published method. Definitions decide results: Yext, which sells listings management, counted listings and reviews as "brand-managed" and reported 86% of citations from sources brands manage (ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, July to August 2025).
• —How Google enforces its spam policy inside AI Overviews. Google says the policy applies; we have not seen enforcement figures for AI responses.
• —Why ChatGPT stopped citing Reddit in August 2026, and whether it will last.

FAQ

Does Google penalize attempts to manipulate AI Overviews?

Google's spam policy has covered "attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search" since mid-May 2026, and its guide says its generative AI features depend on both core ranking and spam systems. Google has not published how often it acts on this inside AI Overviews. Seeded mentions also carry platform bans and, for fake reviews, legal risk in the US, UK and EU.

Can we pay creators or bloggers to review our product?

Yes, if it is disclosed and you don't buy the verdict. On YouTube, the creator must select the paid promotion setting; in the US, the FTC says a platform's built-in tool might not be enough on its own, so the video should say it too. In the UK, reviews that conceal an incentive are a banned practice.

How do we get into "best X" lists?

Find the lists already cited for your queries, then give their authors what an honest reviewer needs: accurate facts, a test account and access to an expert. If a publisher sells placements, buy only labeled ones. Don't publish your own list with you at the top.

Sources

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See what Google's AI Overview says about your brand, in the country you sell in. Nordcite's AI Visibility Report runs a query set written for your brand in the markets you choose and photographs every AI Overview: who is named, which sources are cited, dated. A person approves your queries before anything runs and reads the report before it ships. Each report is scoped and quoted for the brand it describes. See a sample report · Ask for a quote