E1164: It cost just $72 in press releases to get Google's AI Overview to call James Dooley the "King of AEO."
I break down how two cheap press releases created enough relevance and third-party confirmation for Google to repeat the claim directly inside an AI Overview.
The first press release cost $66 through an EIN Newswire package. The second cost $6 through AB Newswire. Both placed "King of AEO" in the locations that matter most for relevance: the headline, page title, URL slug, and opening sentence.
Google then cited those releases when answering the query "Who is the king of AEO?"
I break down:
- How $72 in press releases influenced a Google AI Overview
- The exact press releases Google cited
- How the phrase "King of AEO" appeared in the title, H1, URL slug, and first sentence
- How direct, unambiguous language matters when building entity associations
- How one $66 EIN Newswire press release became the first citation in the AI Overview
- How a $6 AB Newswire press release syndicated to USA Today became another supporting source
- Why repeating the same entity association across multiple sources creates consensus
- Why Google's AI Overview confidently repeated a claim about a crowning ceremony that never actually happened
- How the press release image also started appearing in Google Images for "King of AEO"
- What happened after I posted videos about the experiment across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube Shorts
- How other SEOs then started publishing their own "King of AEO" press releases
- Why the SERP turned into an SEO battleground
- Why James Dooley still remained the dominant entity associated with "King of AEO"
- How relevance and consensus work together when multiple people compete for the same entity association
- Why press releases still matter for both traditional Google Search and AI-generated answers
- What this experiment shows about influencing the information Google uses to construct AI Overview responses
Before the competition started, James had a major advantage: most of the highly relevant pages around "King of AEO" pointed to him.
Once more people entered the SERP with their own press releases, social posts, videos, images, and websites, Google started acknowledging the competing claims while still naming James as the person most widely associated with the title.
This is a clear look at how the sausage gets made inside modern search.
If you understand how relevance, entity associations, third-party mentions, syndication, and consensus work together, a bizarre AI Overview like this becomes much easier to explain.
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00:00 Do Press Releases Still Work
00:59 EIN Newswire Case Study
01:30 Keyword Placement Breakdown
02:55 AB Newswire For Six Bucks
04:13 The Fake Crowning Event
04:44 Google Images Impact
05:05 Blowing Up The SERP
05:38 New Challengers Appear
07:51 Why This Works
10:48 Wrap Up And Goodbye
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
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