How To Do the Research Needed to Optimize for AI Search

Plus, a surprise finding illustrating why research is important

Part 1 of this series described how GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) differs from SEO and how public relations plays a significant role in influencing AI search results. Part 2 is a mini case study (two actually) of the kind of information surfaced through GEO research.

Picking up from where I left off in Part 1, I ran two AI search exercises starting with analyzing how travel mug brands like Thermos fared in three AI search platforms. A real study needs to analyze several questions, but to keep this brief I use only one. Not only do you need more questions, you need to keep iterating to reflect how buyers are asking for information, and where you see opportunity based on the research. Needless to say, it can be a long process.

For this article, we’re sticking with one question and three search platforms starting with Google, which uses Gemini to produce “AI Overview.” Here’s the top-level answer for What’s the best travel mug? See the full response here.

The best travel mug depends on your priority, but top contenders consistently praised for insulation, leak-proof design, 
and ease of use include Zojirushi (best overall insulation/leak-proof), 
Contigo (great one-handed AutoSeal lid), Yeti Rambler (toughness, MagSlider lid), 
and Hydro Flask (pure taste, good all-around). Other strong choices are Owala, Stanley, 
and Fellow, though some models have specific pros and cons like cupholder fit or lid complexity, so check reviews for your needs. 

Google then cites several videos, all from various YouTube channels. Lesson number 1 is that YouTube is massively important. In several media webinars I’ve watched lately including Reuters Institute, publishers have stressed the vital importance of YouTube.

Lesson 1: Your pitching should prioritize media outlets that include YouTube in their distribution channels. Every influencer, every pitch, every podcast, and every story you pursue needs to either include video or lend itself to this medium.

Google’s AI Overviews then proceeds to describe different factors that make something the best and it categorized one brand for each.

Top-Rated & Versatile:

Zojirushi: Often cited as the top performer for heat retention and leak-proofing, simple to use, and durable.

Yeti Rambler: Excellent insulation, tough build, and convenient MagSlider lid (though some say it can leak).

Hydro Flask: Great for pure taste, good insulation, but some models don't fit cup holders well.

Contigo (AutoSeal West Loop): A leading choice for its reliable, leak-proof, one-handed operation.

Lesson 2: Pay attention to these differentiators because they give clues to figuring out how the decision about “the best travel mug” was made. Then, use these factors in your plan to improve performance in AI search.

Next, I tested What is the best travel mug? in ChatGPT 5.2. See the full ChatGPT result here. Here’s the top-of-the-page answer.

Here are some of the best travel mugs you can buy now — whether your priority is heat retention, leak-proof performance, 
durability, or everyday convenience. Travel mug reviews consistently highlight insulation, leak prevention, 
and ease of use as key features when choosing a top model. 

<>

For the sake of space, I’ll describe what comes next:  a carousel of mug images from various brands, some additional details about their desirable factors (or what the LLM has deemed desirable), and a summary about what shoppers should look for in choosing the best travel mug. From this information, I learned several things.

Lesson 3: There are nuggets of information in every level of answers that can improve the chances of being included in AI search.

Lesson 4: The AI search platforms rank factors differently so it is essential to test all the platforms: Google using Gemini, Microsoft Edge using CoPilot, and ChatGPT for people who search there instead of in the browser.

Lesson 5: There areother models: Perplexity and Grok, but if you try to land at the top for everything, you’ll end up diluting the strategy. Go with two or three workable metrics gathered from your research.

My research exercise surfaced the publications that were most often cited. This matters when prioritizing the outlets to cultivate more strongly than others. In the travel mug example, Serious Eats dominated. It’s clearly the number 1 media outlet for this purpose if I had a client that sold travel mugs. The others that were frequently cited were: Home and Kind, AP News, Pack Hacker, and People.com. These would also be on the top of my AI search plan.

This next bit, though, is a significant bit of information and while I didn’t register this fact when I started, it probably is something I would have known if this market were my specialty.

Because Serious Eats was cited in two of my searches, I dug further into the content about how travel mugs (and specifically Thermos) were covered in Serious Eats. I also wanted to see how Thermos stacked up against its competitors in terms of content.

This is how I discovered that thermos was a genericized just like xerox, flip phone, and escalator. On one page at Serious Eats, the term thermos (lowercase) appears 95 times! Furthermore and more startling is that the Thermos brand didn’t show up at all.

I assume that the marketing and PR team at Thermos knows this. It would be really interesting to study if genericization benefits or damages their SEO performance. I’m not an SEO expert and I don’t have a vested interest in figuring this out, however, seeing a brand washout in the top cited source in AI search would set me on a significant brand reputation audit. My second task would be to call Serious Eats and figure out how to bring brand clarity for Thermos to Serious Eats.

Case in point: this is screen grab from a Serious Eats page with the subheading of “Another Great Thermos” only it shows a Stanley product. This is how establish brands lose market share and how newer brands land move into that yawning space.

Back to testing search, I also asked my question about travel mugs using Microsoft Edge running CoPilot. If you’ve used Edge, you know that you can set default to “All” much like how Google presents results. This is the setting that is not running CoPilot. See those results here.

These are the results using CoPilot and it cites the New York Times and Serious Eats. There is a carousel that follows this general summary and it very democratically includes almost all the major brands: Fellow Carter, Ello Campy, Contigo, Thermos, Hydro Flask, Yeti and Zojirushi. Notice that the text answer though, only includes Zojirushi, Fellow Carter, and Contingo.

This is becoming a problem if your brand is Thermos.

The top travel mugs right now—based on expert testing and massive user ratings—are 
the Zojirushi Stainless Steel Mug, the Fellow Carter Move, and the Contigo Autoseal West Loop. 
Each excels in different ways: heat retention, sipping experience, or leak‑proof reliability.

<>

Traditional Edge without CoPilot search results are different

This whole exercise has been in B2C, however, I want this article to be relevant to those of us in education, which is primarily B2B. Therefore, I ran through this whole process asking “Which education conference will I find the most buyers for curriculum?” This is the kind of practical question clients and prospects frequently ask me and I was curious how AI search would respond.

I need to point out that results detailed here aren’t intended as commentary about which conference actually is the best for selling curriculum. Instead see this as an exercise and learn what we can about the process by noting that mix of publications cited. Here’s a preview: not a single top tier or general media publication showed up. This is somewhat expected, but pay attention to the other websites that get cited.

Here’s the response from Microsoft Edge using CoPilot when I queried it about conferences:

If your goal is finding the most buyers for curriculum, the conferences that consistently attract the highest 
concentration of district‑level decision‑makers, curriculum directors, principals, and purchasing authorities 
rise to the top. The search results you triggered list many education conferences, 
but only a few are truly strong curriculum‑buying markets.

Below is a clear, evidence‑grounded breakdown.

 <>

The second portion of CoPilot’s response is long and describes several of the conferences. For our purposes, though, what matters here is seeing that the sources that are cited include ASCD which is cited for both its eponymous conference and ISTE, and WeAreTeachers which is cited for FETC, TCEA, Bett, and ACTE. These are high authority websites from CoPilot’s perspective which happen to have the information the LLM needs to formulate its answer.

Lesson 6: Niche publications and corporate websites can significantly influence AI search.

Here are the results of the same question asked of ChatGPT 5.2.

If your goal is to find the most buyers specifically interested in curriculum products 
(whether print, digital, K-12 curriculum materials, higher-ed course materials, instructional design tools, etc.), 
you’ll want to focus on events where actual purchasing decision-makers and buyers attend — not just educators for 
professional learning.

Below are the top education conferences and trade shows in 2026 where you’ll find the most buyers 
(not just attendees) — ranked by likely purchasing intent and volume of curriculum buyers: 

<>

Notice how in CoPilot and ChatGPT, owned properties are cited? Also notice that WeAreTeachers has an outsized role in driving this answer for both platforms. If you are hoping to learn more about this on your own, I recommend back-tracking to see the cited page at WeAreTeachers and study the structure of the cited content. It will tell loads about how AI search wants to see information formatted.

Lesson 7: Owned properties can positively influence AI search when the content is structured in an ideal way for language models to consume the information.

Looking at Google Gemini’s results gives more evidence that owned properties matter especially in niche markets and B2B.

The conferences where you are likely to find the most buyers for curriculum are the AASA National Conference on Education, 
the ASCD Annual Conference, and the ISTELive conference. These events attract a high concentration of key decision-makers, 
such as superintendents and curriculum directors. 

<>

When I looked at the subsequent list of conferences further down in Google Gemini’s answer, I found that FETC doesn’t even rank there all (when it seemed important to the results in CoPilot).

AASA National Conference on Education: This event, hosted by the School Superintendents Association, 
specifically targets district leaders who make high-level policy and purchasing decisions, including curriculum adoption.

ASCD Annual Conference: The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development conference draws a large audience of 
instructional leaders, principals, and superintendents, making it a prime location to connect with individuals focused on 
curriculum and instructional strategies.

ISTELive: While focused on education technology, the International Society for Technology in Education conference attracts 
a global audience of education leaders and decision-makers exploring the latest tools and digital learning strategies, 
which often involves curriculum integration and purchasing.

National School Boards Association (NSBA) Conference for Public Education Leaders: This conference is critical for K-12 policy 
and governance, drawing school board members who are involved in the final approval of major purchases and 
district-wide initiatives. 

Notice how K-12 Dive stands out as an important outlet in Google when it didn’t appear at all in CoPilot. For professionals who specialize in education, that is prime information. If my client happened to be an education conference that catered to curriculum buyers, I would be remiss if I did not impress on them the importance of getting into K-12 Dive and WeAreTeachers. If I didn’t run this exercise in all three platforms, I might have missed that detail.

How to reach those publications and what to send them is what seasoned PR pros understand. We know those outlets and how information makes it into stories. For example, I know that WeAreTeachers is not a media outlet in the traditional sense, but rather it functions like a community with opportunities for paid content or submissions from teachers.

Equally important and apparent by this exercise is that owned properties matter in AI search results, but not in the same way they do for SEO. See Part 1 of this series how owned properties play a more significant role in GEO.

Finally while I don’t consider myself an expert on GEO yet, I hope that by sharing my learning journey you’ll start to experiment, too. PR pros, either in-house or external consultants, need to understand how AI search is affecting brands and how their public relations work can translate to better visibility.

This was originally published in PR in EdTech on LinkedIn on January 15, 2026.