$6 press releases are winning AI answers, for now
One SEO found a bulk newswire package feeding the same citation to three AI tools, and another says that site's AI visibility has already collapsed.
A cheap press release got one site named the best in its category by three different AI tools at once. Edward Sturm posted that when he asked for the best AI SEO newsletter for CMOs, ChatGPT said SEO Espresso, Perplexity said the same, and Google's AI Overviews (the AI written answer at the top of Google) said the same. All three cited a press release distributed by AB Newswire.
Where the $6 comes from
Sturm says AB Newswire charges $500 for 83 press releases. Divide one by the other and each release costs about $6. His point is that the price is low enough that marketers will start splitting a single $500 package between them, which makes the cost per release lower still.
A press release in this sense is a short company announcement pushed out to a network of sites that republish it. Those republished copies are pages on the web, so AI tools can read them and treat them as a source when someone asks a question.
The part that should slow you down
Glenn Gabe replied to Sturm saying that site's AI search visibility has plummeted over the past year. So the same tactic that won the answer in one screenshot does not look like it is holding up over time.
And their AI search visibility has plummeted over the past year.
That is the whole story. One SEO found a trick that works in a single test, another SEO showed the longer trend going the other way. Nobody in these posts says Google or OpenAI has acted against bulk newswire releases, and nobody says the drop is a penalty. The sources do not explain why the visibility fell.
What to do about it
Nothing, if you were not already considering buying a bulk press release package. If you were, treat this as a warning rather than a tip. Paying for 83 near identical announcements is the kind of mass produced, low effort publishing that tends to get cleaned up, and the one site people are pointing at as proof it works is also the site whose visibility is reported to have fallen.
If you want AI tools to name your business, the slower route is the one that does not depend on a vendor. Publish pages that actually answer the question someone would ask, on your own site, with a real person's name on them. Those pages are still yours when a distribution network stops counting.
Worth watching whether the AI tools start discounting newswire copies in general. Right now they clearly do not.
$6 press releases are hacking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google.
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