What Drives AI Visibility in Press Releases? 21,000+ Releases Challenge Common Claims

Disclosure Intelligence Series

How disclosure works in modern capital markets

Can press releases be optimized for AI discovery solely through formatting and keyword strategies?

As AI becomes an increasingly important gateway to corporate information, a growing number of recommendations suggest that specific formatting techniques and keyword strategies alone can improve AI visibility.

To evaluate these claims, TMX Newsfile analyzed more than 9.3 million AI interactions across over 21,000 press releases distributed during the first half of 2026, examining how announcements actually perform rather than testing specific formatting techniques in isolation.

The findings suggest otherwise. The analysis found little evidence that commonly recommended formatting and keyword practices alone increase AI visibility. Instead, AI activity varied significantly across industries and was concentrated among a relatively small number of announcements that substantially outperformed their sector baselines.

Understanding these findings begins with an important distinction between machine readability and AI visibility.

“Formatting helps AI understand information, but it does not necessarily make that information more visible.”

To understand how these patterns emerge, press release performance was evaluated across multiple indicators and assessed relative to others within the same industry, making it possible to distinguish typical performance from statistical outliers.

Measuring Performance in Modern Disclosure

As AI increasingly influences how corporate information is discovered and interpreted, understanding press release performance within AI systems has become an important part of modern disclosure.

Press releases are continuously processed by AI systems, indexed across search engines, financial data platforms, and information aggregators, and referenced over time. This creates measurable differences in how announcements perform after publication.

This analysis includes 21,549 press releases, providing a comprehensive view of AI activity across sectors and issuer types.

To ensure fair comparisons across industries, each press release was evaluated relative to others within its sector, making it possible to distinguish typical performance from statistical outliers.

What Defines an Outlier in Performance

A performance outlier is a press release that significantly exceeds or falls below typical levels of activity within its industry.

Identifying outliers helps distinguish unusually high- or low-performing announcements from typical performance within each industry.

AI Visibility in Press Releases Is Not Driven by Formatting Alone

The analysis found little evidence that commonly recommended formatting and keyword-based approaches are associated with higher AI visibility.

These findings challenge the growing narrative that press releases can be optimized for AI visibility through formatting techniques alone.

To explore this further, the analysis examined whether increasing keyword repetition, a common indicator of keyword stuffing, was associated with higher levels of AI activity.

The data shows no consistent relationship between keyword density and AI activity. High-performing press releases appear across a wide range of keyword densities, indicating that repetitive keyword use alone does not improve AI visibility. Taken together, these findings suggest that AI visibility is influenced less by formatting tactics than by the substance and relevance of the information being disclosed.

How AI Activity Changes as Keyword Density Increases

While a small number of outliers account for the highest levels of AI activity, most press releases follow a more consistent pattern.

As keyword density increases, AI activity initially rises, reaches a peak, and then begins to decline. This suggests that simply adding more keywords does not continue to improve AI visibility.

Instead, the strongest performance occurs within a natural range, where content remains clear, readable, and focused on communicating substantive information rather than repetitive keyword use.

What This Means for Issuer Teams

The findings suggest that optimizing press releases for AI is less about specialized formatting techniques or keyword repetition than communicating meaningful information clearly and consistently.

This does not diminish the importance of structure. Clear headings, logical organization, and well-written disclosures remain essential for machine readability, helping AI systems accurately extract and interpret information. However, the analysis found little evidence that these practices alone are associated with higher AI visibility.

For issuer teams, the implication is straightforward: focus first on communicating meaningful information, then present it in a format that is easy for both people and AI systems to understand.

---

This analysis challenges the growing assumption that AI visibility can be improved through formatting techniques or keyword strategies alone. Instead, the findings suggest that the announcements generating the strongest AI activity are distinguished less by how they are formatted than by the significance and relevance of the information they contain.

The results also reinforce an important distinction between machine readability and AI visibility. Clear structure helps AI systems extract and interpret information, but does not necessarily make that information more visible.

If formatting and keyword strategies alone do not explain AI visibility, what does? Part 2 of the Disclosure Intelligence Series explores the characteristics that distinguish the highest-performing press releases from their peers.