Best Of lists and traditional public relations both put a brand in front of audiences through third-party sources. That surface similarity can make them look interchangeable. They are not.
Traditional PR is strongest when the problem is awareness, reputation, newsworthiness, stakeholder perception, or media relationships. Best Of content is strongest when the problem is commercial consideration: being present when buyers or AI systems compare options and ask who belongs on the shortlist.
PR helps the market know and understand your brand. Best Of content helps the market evaluate your brand as an option.
Both can create third-party validation. The difference is the buyer problem, content format, and decision stage each is best equipped to influence.
Best Of Content and PR Solve Different Marketing Problems
Public relations has a much broader mandate than securing rankings in recommendation content. The Public Relations Society of America defines PR as a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics. Its own description emphasizes engagement, stakeholder relationships, public perception, and communication across many channels. PRSA's overview of public relations is useful context for why traditional PR should not be reduced to "getting mentions."
A strong PR program can support a product launch, introduce an executive, establish a point of view, respond to a crisis, earn news coverage, strengthen reputation, or build long-term journalist relationships. The resulting coverage may also create links, branded mentions, referral traffic, and material that AI systems can discover.
Best Of content addresses a narrower but commercially important question: Does your brand appear in the content buyers use to compare and choose? That includes ranked lists, vendor roundups, "best X for Y" articles, buyer guides, and similar recommendation-oriented formats.
Build awareness and reputation
- Earn news and feature coverage
- Build relationships with journalists and stakeholders
- Support launches, announcements, and executive visibility
- Shape public understanding and brand narrative
Build recommendation presence
- Appear in commercial comparison environments
- Establish category and use-case relevance
- Close gaps where competitors are recommended and you are absent
- Create third-party evidence for shortlist-oriented prompts
Why Best Of Content Matters More at the Decision Stage
Commercial queries are structurally different from informational questions. A buyer asking "What is enterprise SEO?" needs an explanation. A buyer asking "What are the best enterprise SEO agencies?" needs a set of options.
That distinction is visible in AI citation research. Wix Studio and Peec analyzed more than one million citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity and found listicles represented 40.86% of citations for commercial-intent prompts. Within the professional-services listicle sample they examined, 80.9% of citations came from third-party lists rather than self-promotional lists.
The finding does not mean every Best Of placement will produce an AI citation or recommendation. It shows that recommendation-oriented list content appears frequently in the information environment surrounding commercial queries.
LinkedIn and Meltwater found a similar pattern from a different dataset. In their analysis of 9.5 million AI citations, ranked vendor or tool listicles appeared in 54% of the 24 most-cited LinkedIn URLs they examined. That 54% applies to the top-cited sample, not to all 9.5 million citations.
Share of commercial-intent citations attributed to listicles in the Wix/Peec dataset.
Share of analyzed professional-services listicle citations coming from third-party lists.
Ranked vendor/tool listicles among the 24 most-cited LinkedIn URLs analyzed.
More brand mentions from comparative prompts than informational prompts in Semrush/Kevin Indig research.
Traditional PR Is Better When the Story Is the Asset
PR becomes the stronger tool when the company has something newsworthy or reputation-sensitive to communicate. A funding announcement, acquisition, leadership appointment, original research study, product launch, regulatory development, local initiative, crisis, or major company milestone is fundamentally a story problem.
In those cases, the desired outcome is not simply to appear beside competitors. The goal may be awareness, legitimacy, narrative control, stakeholder trust, executive visibility, or broader earned-media distribution.
Traditional PR can also help create a wider brand footprint across the web. That matters in an AI-search environment. Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands found branded web mentions correlated between 0.66 and 0.71 with AI visibility across the systems it studied. Ahrefs explicitly cautions that correlation is not causation, but the result supports a broader principle: visibility around the web matters beyond direct links to your site.
Best Of Content Is Better When the Shortlist Is the Asset
A Best Of opportunity becomes more strategically useful when the buyer question itself requires naming companies. That is where a brand can be well known yet still have a meaningful recommendation gap.
Semrush and Kevin Indig's research makes this distinction particularly clear. Their study of brand appearances across AI search engines found comparative prompts such as "best," "vs," and "recommend" produced 2.4 times more brand mentions than informational prompts. Comparative questions force the system to identify market participants rather than simply explain a topic.
If your competitors consistently appear in the ranked lists, comparisons, and buying guides associated with those questions while your brand does not, a traditional press hit may improve awareness without closing that specific gap. The problem is not that nobody has heard of you. The problem is that third-party decision content does not consistently include you.
| Marketing problem | Traditional PR | Best Of content |
|---|---|---|
| Low brand awareness | Strong fit — create broader visibility around a newsworthy story or point of view. | Secondary — useful only if buyers are already researching the category. |
| Product or company launch | Strong fit — announcements, briefings, interviews, and feature coverage. | Later-stage support once the product legitimately belongs in comparison sets. |
| Reputation or crisis issue | Primary tool — stakeholder communication and narrative management. | Poor fit. Recommendation content is not crisis communications. |
| Competitors dominate "best" queries | Helpful for general authority but may not close the shortlist gap. | Strong fit — directly targets the comparison environment. |
| Weak third-party validation | Useful — earned coverage can validate expertise, news, and leadership. | Useful — validates category fit and comparative relevance. |
| AI rarely recommends the brand | Can strengthen the wider web footprint. | More direct fit when the gap exists in commercial recommendation content. |
Where the Two Strategies Overlap
The strongest brands usually do not choose between PR and Best Of content as if they were substitutes. They use each where it is structurally strongest.
A PR campaign might earn coverage around a research study, product launch, or executive insight. That coverage can strengthen awareness, create new branded mentions, and give the company more third-party evidence. Separately, recommendation-oriented placements can put the brand inside the content buyers encounter when evaluating options.
Those signals can reinforce one another. A company that is well known but absent from buyer guides has a recommendation-coverage problem. A company included in Best Of lists but invisible in broader industry conversations may have an awareness and authority problem.
Use PR when you need the market to understand why your brand matters. Use Best Of content when you need the market to include your brand when choosing among options. Use both when you need awareness and consideration to reinforce each other.
How to Decide Where to Spend the Next Dollar
Start with the visibility problem, not the tactic. A useful diagnostic is to examine four questions.
Are buyers aware of us?
If awareness, legitimacy, or category education is weak, PR may deserve priority.
Are we present where buyers compare options?
If competitors dominate Best Of, comparison, and buyer-guide content, recommendation coverage deserves attention.
What does AI actually do with our brand?
Measure mentions, citations, recommendation frequency, share of voice, and the sources appearing around those answers.
Which evidence layer is missing?
News coverage, expert validation, buyer comparisons, reviews, directories, and ranked lists solve different evidence gaps.
Do Not Turn Best Of Into a Fake PR Shortcut
There is an important quality boundary here. A Best Of strategy should not mean buying arbitrary rankings, manufacturing awards, or claiming superiority that the publisher cannot substantiate.
Strategic recommendation content should have real category relevance, credible editorial context, accurate brand information, transparent commercial relationships where required, and a defensible reason the brand belongs in the piece. Being included can be valuable without being ranked number one.
The goal is to strengthen legitimate recommendation presence, not to manufacture a false market position.
PR and Best Of Content Need Different Scorecards
Traditional PR metrics
- Quality and relevance of earned coverage
- Message pull-through and sentiment
- Share of media attention
- Branded search and referral activity
- Executive or company visibility
Best Of / recommendation metrics
- Relevant third-party recommendation coverage
- Brand recommendation frequency across AI prompts
- Competitive AI share of voice
- Citations and source patterns
- AI referral traffic, leads, and revenue
The measurement layer matters because a tactic can succeed at one job while doing very little for another. LSEO AI is designed to help brands measure AI visibility, including mentions, citations, clicks, leads, and conversions, so teams can see whether recommendation visibility is actually changing.
The Better Strategy Is Usually Portfolio-Based
Best Of content is only one recommendation format. A healthy third-party footprint may also include comparisons, alternatives pages, buyer guides, reviews, expert roundups, directories, use-case recommendations, and decision frameworks.
Likewise, PR is not one type of media hit. It is an ongoing communications discipline that can include media relations, thought leadership, research promotion, executive communications, events, reputation management, and other stakeholder work.
The useful question is therefore not "Should we do PR or Best Of lists?" It is: Which information environments are missing the evidence our buyers and AI systems need?
Build the Third-Party Content PR Does Not Specifically Target
If your brand already has awareness and authority but competitors keep appearing in the Best Of lists, comparisons, buyer guides, and other recommendation content surrounding your category, the gap may not be a PR problem.
Mention Engine helps brands systematically build visibility within third-party content AI systems frequently use when researching, comparing, and recommending companies, products, and services.
Explore Mention Engine Visit the Mention Engine Research & Resources HubFrequently Asked Questions
Are Best Of placements a replacement for traditional PR?
No. PR has a broader role spanning awareness, reputation, stakeholder relationships, news, launches, and crisis communication. Best Of content is narrower and better suited to commercial comparison and recommendation visibility.
Can traditional PR improve AI visibility?
Potentially. Earned coverage can create third-party brand mentions, citations, links, expert context, and broader web visibility. But a general news article may not solve a specific gap in commercial recommendation content.
When does a Best Of placement make strategic sense?
It is most compelling when the publisher and category are relevant, buyers use recommendation-oriented queries, competitors already appear in similar content, and the brand legitimately belongs in the consideration set.
Does a brand need to rank number one in a Best Of list?
No. Inclusion itself can create useful category and comparative context. The strategic objective is legitimate presence in the recommendation environment, not an unsupported claim of being the best.
Should brands use both PR and Best Of content?
Often, yes. PR can build awareness and authority while recommendation content strengthens presence at the evaluation stage. The right mix depends on whether the brand's biggest gap is awareness, reputation, category inclusion, competitive consideration, or some combination.
Related Resources
Research cited in this article describes observed patterns in AI citations, brand mentions, and visibility. It does not establish that a specific placement, PR campaign, or volume of coverage causes an AI system to recommend a brand.