- AI summaries and answer engines don’t rank content — they cite it. If you aren’t cited, you’re invisible in the fastest-growing channel for stakeholder questions.
- Earned media and social media influence citations, with high-quality press coverage and high-signal social (notably YouTube and Reddit) being frequent sources.
- Our AEO Pulse Check, SEO/AEO Scorecard, and Optimization Blueprint can help to address the gaps and opportunities for biopharma companies.
Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed how people discover health information. Now, millions of people rely on AI-generated summaries to deliver a single, authoritative-sounding answer about their health-related questions. And not only are people finding answers, they’re also trusting what they find. In fact, based on one recent survey, one in three people who use online search for health information say the AI-generated summary often or always gives them “the answer they need.”
That shift presents both risk and opportunity for healthcare organizations, who are swiftly adjusting course — leveraging the emerging approach of AEO (Answer Engine Optimization, or sometimes called Generative Engine Optimization or Generative AI Optimization) to increase the chances their content is referenced by AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overview, and others.
One great example of AEO in action came up recently, as misinformation spiked online related to acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism risks. As claims spread, advocacy groups and medical associations went into action to provide clear, evidence-based content and relatable storytelling, such as one blog by Dr. Mary Nguyen that modeled core principles of answer-engine visibility. Through coordinated physician education, social storytelling, and earned media, these organizations showed how credible voices can influence both algorithms and audiences.
To help our healthcare clients navigate these new search dynamics, we’ve developed a structured approach to understand and improve their AI visibility — one that strengthens discoverability and reinforces their messaging in our shifting information environment.
How do you optimize for AI visibility?
In healthcare, trust and credibility are non-negotiable, so at Syneos Health Communications, we’ve built a simple, three-step offering that starts with a snapshot of your AI presence and ends with an action plan.
AEO Pulse Check: Are you cited by AI tools?
First, we provide an initial market visibility assessment to see how prominently and accurately a brand or therapeutic area is represented. We see if you’re being cited and who is filling the gap when you’re not, establishing a competitive baseline.
AEO Scorecard: What’s helping (or hurting) your visibility?
Next, we develop a comprehensive evaluation framework, powered by 30+ data inputs across owned, earned and social media, that measure the factors shaping your brand’s visibility, accuracy of messaging, and competitive presence in AI-generated answers.
Optimization Blueprint: How can you make improvements that build over time?
Finally, we map out and implement targeted fixes that include technical foundations, authority-building content updates, and earned and social media plans. All of this is meant to strengthen both your search and AI visibility. Over time, these changes start to compound across channels, which we track on a regular basis.
What types of content are being picked up most through AI search?
According to one analysis by Muck Rack, more than 95% of sources cited by AI came from non-paid sources, 27% of which were journalistic. Earned media improves the likelihood that AI picks up your content, and high-quality coverage in publications that are easier for AI to index relays authoritative third-party signals that AI systems (and humans) trust. Content that explains ideas using plain language with clear, credible, consistent sources matters more than ever.
Social media is also playing a role, with platforms like YouTube and Reddit frequently appearing in AI answer citations. Clear explainer videos (with captions), expert interviews, Q&As, and well-moderated community posts or AMAs can become powerful assets for information discovery, especially when they reinforce the messaging of your owned content.
The strategic mix of owned, earned, and social is the ideal loop: publish authoritative, AI-friendly content on owned channels, amplify with media narratives, and reinforce with social explanations and influential figures. The result is a more consistent, omnichannel body of your content that has a higher chance of being cited.
To help you see when and how this is working for you, we provide a quarterly audit with both the AEO Pulse Check and the SEO/AEO Scorecard that, over time, will move you towards:
- Increased AI citations on priority questions
- Greater share-of-voice in AI answers for you and/or your brand
- Improved brand safety in how AI answers represent your science and your story
Your first move is a simple one: see where you stand in the AI conversation, so you can effectively replace assumptions with evidence. Let us conduct an AEO Pulse Check and SEO/AEO Scorecard for you, so that you can clearly see if you’re part of the conversation and how your website, earned media outreach social media strategy is helping (or hurting) you.
The results of these two will then formulate an improvement plan to get you noticed and get you cited in the new search world of AI.
