35+ Digital PR Statistics for 2026

The top Google result has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than the 2nd-10th places (Backlinko)

92.3% of the 100 top-ranking domains have at least one backlink (Semrush)

There’s a positive correlation between the number of websites linking to a page and its ranking position & search traffic (Ahrefs)

46.5% of SEOs spend $5,000 – $10,000 on link building every month (uSERP)

77% of journalists don’t include links when they publish content (BuzzSumo)

Every month in the UK, there are 21,070 Google searches that include the keyword ‘digital PR’. This is up from 8020 last year. (Energy PR)

14,203 posts included the term ‘digital PR’ across both X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit in 2024. These posts had a total reach of 735m. (Energy PR)

Long-form content gets 77.2% more links than shorter content (Backlinko)

80% of SEOs think brand mentions influence organic search rankings (Aira)

67% of PRs think LLMs will soon become a key part of standard PR measurement (PRmoment)

87% of PR practitioners are from a white ethnic background (CIPR)

45% of PR practitioners are aged between 16 and 34 years old (CIPR)

60% of PR practitioners are female and 40% are male, but at the Director group level, 46% of practitioners are female and 54% are male (CIPR)

13% of new PR agencies are founded by women (Instant Offices)

2% of PR agencies work fully in the office, 73% work hybrid and 25% are fully remote (Cision)

32% of communications teams are regularly using generative AI (Cision)

42% of agencies and 63% of corporations have a dedicated data analyst (Cision)

42% of comms leaders say they are heavily relying data and analytics this year (Cision)

85% of PRs will invest in strategic partnerships in 2025 (Prowly)

69% of PRs use generative AI in their workflows in 2025 (Muck Rack)

91% of PR pros say generative AI speeds up their work (Muck Rack)

Three fifths of in-house PR professionals are “quite confident” in their PR agency’s ability to navigate industry changes (PRmoment)

51% of PR agency leaders are confident about the PR sector’s growth in the next 12 months (PRmoment)

59% of PR pros say AI and automation is their priority growth area over the next five years (Muck Rack)

79% of students and graduates have experienced barriers to entering the PR sector (CIPR)

47% of PRs spend around a quarter of their time measuring and reporting on success (Muck Rack)

67% of PRs say producing measurable results is the number one way to increase the value of PR among company leadership or clients (Muck Rack)

PRs use 8 different measurement metrics on average (Muck Rack)

50% of PRs say the inability to measure impact effectively was one of the biggest challenges to their comms efforts in 2023 (Cision)

73% of journalists reject PR pitches because they’re not relevant enough (Muck Rack)

46% of journalists receive 6 or more pitches every day (Muck Rack)

49% of journalists rarely or never respond to PR pitches (Muck Rack)

64% of journalists don’t care which day they are pitched to (Muck Rack)

65% of journalists say that their main pet peeve is being spammed repeatedly by email or phone (BuzzSumo)

48% of journalists said that the main way PRs can get in their good books is to “Understand my current beat and position, and make their pitch relevant to this” (BuzzSumo)

62% of journalists say that up to a quarter of the stories they publish come from their own outbound requests for content (BuzzSumo)