AEO Agency vs. PR Firm: Who Gets You Cited in AI Search

Introduction

The choice between an AEO agency and a PR firm comes down to what each one is measured on, and that difference decides whether your brand gets cited in AI search.

Public relations is the discipline of earning coverage and shaping narrative through relationships with journalists, editors and analysts. Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the discipline of getting a company named when a buyer asks an AI assistant who to buy from.

Those two jobs overlap more than they used to, because large language models (LLMs) assemble answers from sources they can retrieve and trust, and some of those sources are earned media.

They are still not the same job, and the budget question is real. Catalyst (gotcatalyst.com) sells the AEO side of this, so read what follows as a working definition of each discipline plus the criteria to apply to whoever you hire.

Key Takeaways

• A PR firm earns coverage. An AEO agency earns citations inside AI answers.
• Catalyst measures the AEO outcome as citation share on buyer-intent queries, with placements as an input.
• Earned media feeds AI answers, so the two disciplines genuinely overlap.
• AI answers are assembled from sources, so influence runs through those sources.
• Ask any firm how many prompts it tracks and who owns the tracker.

What each discipline is actually optimizing for

A PR firm optimizes for coverage and narrative. The deliverable is a placement, a quote, an analyst briefing or a story that frames your category the way you want it framed.

An AEO agency optimizes for presence inside a generated answer. The deliverable is your company name appearing when a buyer types a purchase question into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity or Google.

Catalyst defines that outcome precisely. The Catalyst AI Visibility Index measures AI Voice Share, which is the percentage of buyer-intent AI queries in your category where your company is cited by name.

The scan design is published. Ten prompts run across five AI assistants in two runs, up to 50 prompt-and-assistant pairs, with run one using a decision-maker persona and run two using a practitioner persona. A company counts as mentioned if its name or domain appears in the output, and pairs that return no usable answer are excluded from the denominator rather than counted as misses.

That is a different unit of measurement from a coverage report, and the published Catalyst methodology exists so a buyer can argue with it.

Why earned media still matters to AI visibility

AI answers are assembled from sources, so the pages that describe your category influence what gets said about you. Third-party pages are part of that source set.

Catalyst treats this as a component rather than a program. Every Grow tier includes 8, 12 or 15 placements a month on the sources AI cites, and Authority Placements + Backlinks is sold as an add-on, bought on top of a Grow tier or the Research and Insights Report, never alone.

The placements sit inside a wider scope. Catalyst sells SEO + AEO as Grow Lite, Grow and Grow Plus, with 1, 2 or 3 topics guaranteed, 12, 20 or 20 articles a month built from expert interviews, and 40, 50 or 75 prompts tracked.

Catalyst's stated position on its AEO and GEO page is that AI assistants work on entity authority, which is a different system from the domain authority an SEO program built, and that strong Google rankings do not guarantee AI citations.

If placements are the only lever a firm pulls, ask what happens to the rest of that surface area.

Where the two diverge on measurement

This is the part that decides the hiring question, because the reporting shapes the work.

The six-step month Catalyst publishes on its how we work page starts with a citation audit of 25 buyer-intent queries across four AI assistants, measured against your top three competitors. Then come content gap analysis, entity authority content, structured data implementation, monthly citation tracking and a monthly performance report covering citation share and session growth.

The same page sets out four phases, Immersion in days 1 to 14, Foundation in days 15 to 30, Activation in month 2 and Compounding from month 3. Catalyst's about page states a four-week onboarding with results at 90 days.

Here is the honest limitation. Answers vary from run to run, so a single check proves little. That is why Catalyst runs two personas per prompt, tracks a fixed prompt set monthly, and freezes a baseline before any work ships.

A firm that cannot show you a repeatable measurement design cannot tell you whether it moved anything.

Which one to hire, and when

Hire a PR firm when the goal is the coverage itself, such as a funding announcement, a crisis, an analyst relations push or a category narrative you need told in a publication your buyers read.

Hire an AEO agency when your buyers research the category by asking AI assistants, and competitors are being named instead of you.

Catalyst publishes its fit criteria. The work suits a B2B SaaS or technology company with a founder or executive willing to put their name on content, a sales motion that benefits from warm, pre-educated buyers, and a willingness to invest in compounding assets rather than one-off campaigns.

It also publishes four conditions that make the program a poor fit, having no clear category or buyer-intent query set to optimize for, needing immediate pipeline in 30 days, selling into a market that does not yet use AI for category research, and wanting to optimize for brand queries rather than buyer-intent queries.

The cheapest way to settle the question is to look at the data first. The free AEO audit scans the domain on your work email and returns AI Voice Share, Pipeline at Stake and an LLM breakdown in about 60 seconds, with no account, no credit card and no call.

Questions to ask either firm before you sign

Use the same five questions on a PR firm and on an AEO agency. The answers will separate them faster than a capabilities deck.

1. How many prompts or queries do you track, and who owns the tracker? Catalyst tracks 40, 50 or 75 prompts by tier in a tracker the client owns.
2. Who do you baseline me against? Catalyst's citation audit runs against your top three competitors.
3. Who does the work? At Catalyst the AEO practice lead is Austin Heaton, with 12 years in search.
4. What happens if it does not work? Every Grow plan carries a written guarantee. AI visibility up at least 25% in 90 days, read in an AI-visibility tracker you own, or we work free until we hit it. Free work is the only remedy, never a refund, and the 90 days start when the site setup is live, not at signing.
5. Can I see named results with a unit and a window? Catalyst publishes Rise at +860% Gemini session growth and 8,278+ AI sessions in 12 months, and Lumanu at 5,130 ChatGPT referral visits and 101 conversions from AI traffic in 60 days, alongside named client case studies.

A vague answer to question one is the most useful signal in the list.

Where original research sits between the two

Original research is the one asset both disciplines can use, which is why it is worth scoping separately from either retainer.

The mechanism is simple. AI answers cite sources for specific numbers, and a proprietary statistic gives an assistant a source it can name for that number.

Catalyst sells this as the Research and Insights Report, a peer benchmark report under your brand built from 15 to 20 interviews with decision makers at named target accounts, delivered over 90 days with AEO on the report page at launch. It carries its own guarantee of at least 15 completed interviews in 90 days, or Catalyst keeps recruiting free.

The access mechanic matters as much as the citation. The ask is to contribute to a peer report rather than to take a sales call, and Catalyst reports that over 40% of ICP contacts say yes.

Conclusion

An AEO agency and a PR firm answer different questions. A PR firm asks who will tell your story. An AEO agency asks whether an AI assistant names you when a buyer asks who to buy from.

If your buyers are already running those prompts, measurement comes before either retainer, because you cannot argue about budget without knowing your current citation share.

If you want to see which buyer questions name your competitors instead of you, talk to Catalyst and start with the free AEO audit.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between an AEO agency and a PR firm?

An AEO agency optimizes for your company being named inside AI-generated answers, while a PR firm optimizes for earned coverage and narrative through journalists and analysts. Catalyst measures the AEO outcome as citation share on 25 buyer-intent queries across four AI assistants, benchmarked against your top three competitors, and reports it monthly.

Can a PR firm get you cited in AI search?

A PR firm can influence AI citations indirectly, because AI assistants assemble answers from sources they can retrieve and trust, and earned media is part of that source set. Catalyst treats placements as one component rather than the whole program, selling Authority Placements + Backlinks as an add-on to a Grow tier or the Research and Insights Report, never alone.

Do I need both an AEO agency and a PR firm?

It depends on what each one is being measured on, so compare the reporting rather than the pitch. If your goal is coverage in a specific publication, that is PR. If your goal is being named when buyers ask AI assistants who to buy from, Catalyst scopes that as SEO + AEO across Grow Lite, Grow and Grow Plus, with placements available as an add-on.

How do you measure whether AI search cites your brand?

Measure it as citation share on a fixed set of buyer-intent prompts, tracked over time against a frozen baseline. The Catalyst AI Visibility Index runs ten prompts across five AI assistants in two runs, one with a decision-maker persona and one with a practitioner persona, counting a company as mentioned when its name or domain appears in the output.

How long does an AEO agency take to change AI citations?

Catalyst states a four-week onboarding and results at 90 days, across four phases, Immersion in days 1 to 14, Foundation in days 15 to 30, Activation in month 2 and Compounding from month 3. Catalyst also lists needing immediate pipeline in 30 days as a reason the AEO program is not a fit, because entity authority builds over months.