Lexington, Ky. – September 15, 2026 -- A 14-year audit of 758 B2B press releases found that none scored above the 80-out-of-100 threshold required to be considered "AI wire-ready," according to research accompanying the launch of Pitch'd, a press release builder now live at www.pitchdapp.com.
Study finds AI-citation readiness in B2B releases nearly halved as AI search emerged
The report, titled "Why ChatGPT Doesn't Cite Your Releases," tracked the share of releases scoring well on AI-visibility metrics and found it fell from 21.5 percent in the pre-AI era to 10.8 percent in the AI era, driven by newly required scoring criteria tied to answer engine optimization (AEO). The findings underpin the case for Pitch'd, built by St. Nick Media Services, a B2B PR agency founded in 1998.
Platform grades releases on eight signals before export
Pitch'd runs a pre-finalize audit that scores releases against eight signals large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity use when deciding what to cite: Specificity, Quotability, Authority, Originality, Citation Potential, Readability, Timeliness, and Entity Disambiguation. The audit runs automatically before export, while text can still be edited.
"Companies today, especially B2B companies, are spending significant budget dollars on wire service releases they believe will gain them brand recognition, market awareness, and earned media opportunities," said Jennifer Overhulse, founder of Pitch'd and St. Nick Media Services. "The truth is, most editorial work today does not clear the bar when it comes to standards for answer engine optimization."
Single editorial revision pass delivers double-digit score gains
Releases scored at both draft and final stages showed a median lift of +22 points on Timeliness, +22 points on Authority, and +14 points on Specificity after one editorial pass, the study found. Overhulse said the improvements are available to any communicator willing to apply them, but most releases skip the step.
Five free tools accompany the paywalled builder
Alongside the paid builder, Pitch'd offers five free standalone tools requiring no account: Home Plate for boilerplate scoring, The Ump for newsworthiness checks, the Headline Analyzer, the AP-Style Coach, and the Cliché Detector. The Scout, the same scoring engine used in the launch study, is free to try and returns an instant AI-visibility score along with a release's weakest signal; the full eight-signal breakdown is available inside the paid platform. Paid plans start at $149 per release.
"Wire services and platforms have started adding AI features, but none have published independent proof that the basic optimization they are offering works," Overhulse said.