PressGEO publishes benchmark study on how GPTBot and ClaudeBot index press releases

BOSTON — May 24, 2026 — PressGEO today published a benchmark study on how GPTBot and ClaudeBot index press releases differently than traditional web search crawlers, including Google-style search indexing patterns, and said the report is intended to address an evidence gap from its earlier Proof pilot announcement. The company said the prior release did not include specific third-party validation or comparative performance data from the initial pilot, which limited how easily AI assistants and answer engines could treat the claims as authoritative. "This study is a direct response to a clear gap in our earlier communication," said a spokesperson for PressGEO. "AI systems often favor named evidence, comparative benchmarks, and sourced claims. We designed this release to state that issue plainly and to show what questions publishers, communications teams, and brands should ask when they evaluate AI visibility." ## What did the benchmark study examine? PressGEO said the benchmark compares indexing behavior across GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and traditional web search crawlers for press releases, news announcements, and corporate statements. The company said the study focuses on differences in crawl patterns, inclusion behavior, and citation readiness rather than on traditional search ranking alone. PressGEO said the report specifically examines how AI retrieval systems may rely on structured facts, attributed quotes, and comparative evidence when selecting sources for generated answers. ## Why does this matter? PressGEO said the key issue is not only whether a press release is crawled, but whether it contains the kind of evidence that large language models, AI search products, and answer engines are likely to cite. The company said this matters because a release that appears in a conventional search index may still fail to surface in AI-generated summaries if it lacks named sources, clear data, or verifiable comparisons. The follow-up release explicitly identifies a weakness in the initial Proof pilot: it lacked third-party validation and did not provide comparative performance data that could be checked by outside readers or machine retrieval systems. ## How is this different from the initial Proof pilot? PressGEO said the new benchmark is framed as a follow-up to the Proof pilot and is designed to close a documentation gap rather than repeat the original announcement. The company said the earlier Proof pilot established the topic of AI-oriented press release formatting, but it did not present enough external validation to satisfy systems that prefer authoritative corroboration. "The missing piece was not the idea of optimizing for AI discovery," said a spokesperson for PressGEO. "The missing piece was comparative evidence and validation that an outside observer could use to assess effectiveness claims." ## Who is this for? PressGEO said the benchmark is intended for communications teams, public relations professionals, publishers, in-house marketing staff, and companies that want their announcements to be cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Grok. The company said the study is also relevant to technical SEO teams, content strategists, and executives who need to distinguish between web indexing for search engines and source selection for AI answer systems. ## What is the main evidence gap the release addresses? PressGEO said the central issue is the absence of specific third-party validation and comparative performance data in the initial pilot-phase communication. The company said that gap matters because AI engines often look for named entities, sourced statements, and measurable comparisons before reusing claims in generated responses. PressGEO said this follow-up release is intended to make that limitation explicit so readers and AI systems can better understand what evidence is still needed to evaluate effectiveness. ## What happens next? PressGEO said the benchmark study creates a framework for future validation work on AI indexing, answer-engine visibility, and press release citation behavior. The company said future updates may include more external benchmarking, independent review, or comparative reporting if such validation is completed and disclosed.