How to Build a PR Pitch List AI Can Actually See

To build a pitch list AI can actually see, score every candidate outlet's AI Placement Value before you add it to the list, not after the story runs. Price the placement you're negotiating for while it's still hypothetical, so you know which terms are worth pushing on. Once the story publishes, rescore the live URL and compare it against what you negotiated. Then roll every placement into one tracked group so the list's AI value shows up as a single number instead of a row-by-row guess.

Most media lists are still built the old way: masthead reputation, past coverage, a relationship with the right reporter. None of that tells you whether ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity can read the story once it runs. A study of the top 51 U.S. news outlets found that 61% block AI crawlers outright, which means a placement that looks great in a traditional media list can be structurally invisible to AI before you even write the pitch. On a typical 40-outlet target list, that screen alone can knock out a third of the names before you draft a single pitch. A list built on reach alone will always include outlets like this. A list scored for AI value catches them before you spend the outreach.

This guide works with any AI visibility setup; the callouts show how each step runs in Spyglasses.

Step	What you're doing	What tells you it's working
1. Score outlets	Checking AI Placement Value before pitching	Every candidate outlet has a tier, not just a reputation
2. Price the ask	Scoring a hypothetical placement before you negotiate	A target score for position, link type, and placement type
3. Score the result	Rescoring the live URL after it publishes	A real PQS to compare against what you negotiated
4. Track the list	Grouping placements into one tracked goal	One AI value number for the whole list, updated automatically

Score prospective outlets with Publisher Lookup

Before an outlet earns a spot on your pitch list, look it up. The AI Placement Value Score (AIPVS) combines a domain's organic authority with how accessible its content actually is to AI crawlers, so you get one number that answers the question a coverage report never asks: can AI even see this outlet.

The tiers give you a fast filter for a long candidate list.

Tier	AIPVS range	What it means	Pitch priority
Premium	75-100	High organic authority and AI assistants can read and cite it	Pitch first, worth negotiating hard on position
Strong	50-74	Solid on authority or accessibility, not maxed out on both	A good target, worth the outreach
Moderate	25-49	A real gap in authority or AI access	Pitch selectively; check per-platform access first
Limited	0-24	Little organic authority, or AI mostly can't reach it	Skip unless the relationship matters for another reason

Don't stop at the composite score. A Strong-tier outlet that's fully open to every major AI crawler can end up doing more work for you than a Premium-tier outlet that blocks half of them, so check the per-platform breakdown before you cross an outlet off the list.

Price the placement before you negotiate

Once an outlet clears the Publisher Lookup bar, the next question is what you're actually asking for. A prospective placement lets you score a hypothetical mention (its position in the article, the link type, whether it's a dedicated feature or a passing reference) before anything is written, so you walk into the negotiation knowing exactly which term moves the score the most.

This is where a pitch-list workflow earns its keep. The scoring engine can show a "what if you negotiated better terms" preview: what the score looks like if the mention moves from the middle third to the lead paragraph, or from a passing reference to a dedicated article, or from a nofollow link to dofollow. That turns a vague ask like "can we get a better placement" into a specific one backed by a number.

Score the placement after it publishes

A negotiated term is a promise, not a placement. Once the story runs, rescore the live URL and compare the real PQS against what you negotiated toward. Spyglasses fetches the page, locates the brand mention, and evaluates the same factors the prospective score used, position, chunk containment, link attribute, placement type, and sentiment, so the comparison is apples to apples.

Gaps between the negotiated ask and the published result are common and worth tracking. A writer might bury a promised lead mention in the second half of the piece during a final edit, or a CMS default might ship a nofollow link where dofollow was agreed. Catching that isn't about assigning blame; it's a specific, factual note for the next pitch to that same outlet or reporter.

A Premium-tier publisher doesn't automatically win. A weak mention on a strong domain and a strong mention on a merely solid domain can land close to each other once you multiply the two scores together:

Publisher	AIPVS	Placement	PQS	Total Placement Value
Major national outlet, blocks some AI crawlers	85 (Premium)	Mid-article passing mention	55	47
Trade publication, fully AI-accessible	65 (Strong)	Dedicated article, lead position	90	59

The trade publication wins here, even with the lower-tier domain, because the placement itself is positioned so much better. That's the kind of comparison a reach-only media list can't make, and it's the argument for scoring the placement, not just the outlet.

Roll placements into a tracked coverage group

A pitch list isn't static. Outlets get added, placements run, and the whole thing needs to answer one question over time: is this list actually delivering AI-visible coverage. Checking each placement by hand doesn't scale once a campaign produces more than a handful of hits, so add scored placements to a coverage group and let it track the list as a whole.

A coverage group ties every placement to a project goal with a single influence number: what share of your tracked prompts' AI citations came from this list. New placements can be added at any time, and the group picks up citation matches retroactively, so a URL added this week still gets credit for citations that happened before it joined the group. This is the same mechanism covered in how to connect earned media to AI visibility, applied here to the prospecting side of the work instead of a single campaign's results.

The list only works if AI can see what's on it

A pitch list built on reputation alone is still a guess about AI visibility, even when it's a well-informed guess. Score outlets before you pitch them, price the placement before you negotiate, confirm the real score once the story runs, and track the whole list as one group instead of a stack of one-off wins. The gap between a negotiated ask and a published result is where most of the value quietly leaks out, and it only shows up if you check.

If you're deciding whether an outlet is even worth the outreach in the first place, is AI blocking your best media placements covers how common crawler blocking actually is across major publishers. Once a pitch turns into an actual draft, structuring a press release the way AI reads content is the other half of getting it cited. And if you haven't checked how AI currently describes the brand at all, a free AI Visibility Report is the fastest way to see where you're starting from before the next pitch list goes out.