---
title: "Digital PR"
url: https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/digital-pr
type: Page
---

# Digital PR

Digital PR explained: how it differs from traditional PR, what Google has said about it, where it crosses into link spam and why it matters for AI search.

Digital PR glossary

## Digital PR

Digital PR is the practice of earning coverage, brand mentions and links from online publications by giving journalists stories, data and expert comment they want to publish. It combines media relations with search goals, so success is measured in relevant links and visibility as well as audience reach.

## How is digital PR different from traditional PR?

Traditional PR aims for coverage and reputation, often in print and broadcast, and is judged on reach and sentiment. Digital PR targets online outlets and also records what each piece does for search: whether it links to the site, which page it links to and whether the publication is relevant to the brand's audience.

Campaigns are usually built around something a journalist can't get elsewhere: a survey, an analysis of public data, a tool, or an expert who is available on the day a story breaks.

## What does Google say about digital PR?

On 23 January 2021 Google's John Mueller wrote that he loved some of the things he saw from digital PR, that it was a shame it often got bucketed with the spammy kind of link building, and that it was just as critical as tech SEO, probably more so in many cases.

The line Google draws is about how links are obtained. Its spam policies list advertorials where payment is received for links that pass ranking credit, and links with optimised anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites, as link spam. Coverage a journalist chooses to write, linking where it helps the reader, is neither.

## Why it matters for AI search

AI assistants draw on the same publications that journalists write for. In a May 2025 Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, branded web mentions had the strongest correlation with brand visibility in Google AI Overviews (0.664), well ahead of the number of backlinks (0.218). Correlation is not causation, but it means coverage that names a brand has value even when it doesn't link.

## Example

A bicycle insurer ranks UK cities by recorded bike theft using street-level crime data from police.uk. National outlets cover the overall ranking, regional papers cover their own city's position, and each article names the insurer and can link to a methodology page, so one dataset produces many relevant pieces of coverage.

## Related terms

- [Earned media](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/earned-media)
- [Data-led PR](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/data-led-pr)
- [Link building](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/link-building)
- [Unlinked brand mentions](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/unlinked-brand-mentions)
- [AI citations](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/ai-citations)

## Further reading

- [What is Digital PR? Strategy, Benefits & Launching a Campaign](https://marketingsignals.com/insights/what-is-digital-pr-strategy-benefits-launching-a-campaign)
- [How to Master Digital PR in the US](https://marketingsignals.com/insights/how-to-master-digital-pr-in-the-us)
- [The must-have tools for any Digital PR pro](https://marketingsignals.com/insights/the-must-have-tools-for-any-digital-pr-pro)

Our [Digital PR](https://marketingsignals.com/service/digital-pr) service puts this into practice for brands in the UK and US.

## Sources

- [Google: Digital public relations is not spammy link building, Search Engine Roundtable (January 2021)](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-digital-public-relations-link-building-30810.html)
- [Spam policies for Google web search, Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies)
- [An analysis of AI Overview brand visibility factors (75K brands studied), Ahrefs (26 May 2025)](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/)

## Ready To Earn Coverage That Counts?