Publisher Outreach

AI platforms lean on a set of third-party sites when they answer questions in your category: review sites, roundups, comparison pages, and industry publications. Publisher outreach finds the ones that are cited for your prompts but have never cited you, and helps you pitch them. It lives under Actions > Outreach.

Finding targets is automatic. A pitch is written only when you ask for one, and SurfacedBy never sends anything for you.

Which sites become targets

Once a day, SurfacedBy looks for sites that:

• AI platforms cited recently when answering your prompts
• did not appear in any of those answers that also mention you
• are newly cited, or cited more often than before
• are not your own site or a competitor's
• publish a kind of page that suits outreach, such as a review site, comparison page, best-of list, news site, or blog post
• fit your How forward to be setting (see Settings)

The search needs at least one confirmed competitor on the domain; without one, no targets are added. Up to 25 new targets are added each day. Each target shows which of your competitors AI platforms cite alongside that site.

The Sources tab on Citations shows the same citation data outreach works from.

Settings

Outreach settings are under Settings > Automation > Outreach and apply to every brand in the workspace. Only Owners and Admins can open and change them.

• Competitor source shift turns on the search for publishers that AI cites for your prompts but that have never cited you.
• How forward to be is Conservative (the default), Balanced, or Forward. Conservative surfaces only the strongest citation gaps; Forward surfaces more, including smaller gaps.
• Pitch voice describes how your pitches should sound.
• Contact limits can be made stricter than the defaults described below, never looser.
• What the pitches have learned lists the preferences picked up from your edits and rejections.

Reviewing and sending a pitch

1. Select Draft pitch on a target. SurfacedBy writes a pitch for that publisher, based on how AI platforms cite them for your prompts.
2. Review the pitch. Edit it, request changes, or reject it. Requesting changes writes a new draft.
3. Approve the pitch. Approving does not send it. If the contact email is unverified, or no email was found, you confirm the recipient before you can approve.
4. Send it yourself: copy the pitch, open it in your email client, or open the publisher's LinkedIn or X profile. Then select Mark as sent to record the send.

A target you do not want can be marked Not relevant, or muted with Stop surfacing for that recipient, publication, or source.

Finding a contact

SurfacedBy looks on the publisher's site for a contact: the author, an email address, a contact form, or a social profile. An email address published on the site is marked verified. When none is published, the target may show an unverified address instead, either one built from the author's name or a shared inbox such as editor@ or contact@. When there is no usable email, you can use the contact form or social profile, or copy the pitch and send it your own way. This search is free.

If you need a verified email, select Find a verified contact (or Verify this contact when an unverified email was found). This lookup runs only when you click it. It checks the address you have and, if that address would bounce, searches the publication for a better one. Each of those steps uses 1 credit, so one lookup uses at most 2 credits. Results for a publication are reused for 7 days without a charge. The lookup returns a verified or unverified address and leaves out addresses that would bounce. A result is not guaranteed.

Contact limits

To protect your sender reputation, these limits apply across every brand in your workspace:

• The same recipient can be pitched once every 90 days.
• A recipient you marked as They declined cannot be pitched again for 180 days.
• At most 2 people at one publication can be contacted in any 30-day window.
• A pitch too similar to one you sent in the last 60 days is blocked until you personalize it.

When a limit applies, the send is blocked with a message explaining why, and the target stays approved so you can send it later.

After you send

Record what happened from Track outcome: They replied, They mentioned us, They declined, or No response. If you have not recorded a response, SurfacedBy reminds you 7 and 14 days after the send. From then until 180 days after the send, whenever a newer Full Check has run, the target also shows how your Brand Coverage and Visibility Score moved since the pitch. That movement is shown as context: it happened in the same period, which does not prove the pitch caused it.

Plans and credits

Publisher outreach is included in the Professional and Agency plans. On Starter and the trial, the Outreach tab shows a locked preview. Working the queue takes the Editor role or above.

Pitch drafts and rewrites use credits, the same way engagement drafts do, and the contact lookup uses credits as described above. Finding targets and scoring them does not use credits. See Credits for how credits work.