Why Link Building Agencies Are Losing Access to Journalists(And Why PR Agencies Will Own What Comes Next)
For several years, link building agencies enjoyed unusually easy access to journalists. That access translated into a steady supply of high-DA, high-authority backlinks, increasingly rebranded as “PR” or “media” links and positioned as the most valuable links available.
Between roughly 2021 and 2025, the economics worked. Newsrooms were stretched, digital output was prioritised, and contributor pipelines were often lightly policed. A steady flow of “experts”, commentary, and ready-made copy was welcomed — and links followed.
For many operators, it was a golden era.
At its peak, the barrier to entry was remarkably low. A laptop, a branded email address, and a journalist request (JR) subscription were often enough for a single operator to build a highly profitable business. With the right timing and enough volume, it wasn’t unusual for individuals — not agencies, but individuals — to generate hundreds of thousands of pounds a year simply by pitching at scale.
What few fully appreciated at the time was the power that access represented.
Journalist attention is not an infinite resource. Many operators treated it as if it were. Volume replaced judgement. Speed replaced care. Access was used, overused, and in many cases abused — quietly burning bridges in the process.
That era is now over.
Across UK and international media, access is tightening. Outreach is being ignored. JR platforms are banning users. Contributors are being scrutinised. Entire approaches that once worked quietly are now being questioned publicly.
This isn’t a temporary correction. It’s a structural shift.
In a world increasingly shaped by automation and AI, real has become the most valuable commodity of all — and it’s exactly what journalists are now protecting.
The Model That Worked — Until It Didn’t
The issue was never link building in principle. It was what happened when it scaled without guardrails.
Over time, journalists began encountering:
Experts who couldn’t be verified beyond a landing page
Experts who existed, but hadn’t written — or even approved — the commentary
Quotes produced entirely by third parties
AI-generated content passed off as lived expertise
The same contributors appearing everywhere, on everything
Individually, some of this slipped through. Collectively, the patterns became impossible to ignore.
Journalists are professional pattern-spotters. Once credibility is questioned, it doesn’t reset with a better subject line.
Journalists Know the Game Now
Outreach tactics became recognisable: the same framing, the same “expert available” language, the same urgency, the same follow-ups.
What agencies viewed as optimisation, journalists increasingly experienced as automation — even when a human technically pressed send.
As a result, many journalists stopped engaging altogether. Not with rebuttals or rejections, but with silence.
Ignored inboxes are now the default outcome for large parts of the link building industry.
The 2021–2025 Payday — and the Reckoning After
It’s important to be honest about this period.
From 2021 to 2025:
Editorial throughput was prioritised
Contributor checks were lighter
AI made content faster and cheaper
Link firms scaled aggressively
Margins were strong
But those same forces exposed the weaknesses of the model.
As AI-written content became easier to detect, as questionable experts appeared across multiple outlets, and as trade press began scrutinising editorial integrity, publishers responded — not with warnings, but with enforcement.
Naming, Shaming, and Shared Accountability
In some cases, operators are now being named and shamed — not in isolation, but alongside the media outlets that accepted the “experts” or published questionable commentary.
What was once treated as a back-office SEO tactic is now being examined as an editorial failing, with responsibility falling on both sides of the transaction.
Once credibility becomes a reputational issue rather than a private inconvenience, tolerance disappears quickly. Behaviour changes. Rules harden. Access closes.
JR Platforms, AI Sensitivity, and the New Bar
Several JR platforms are now enforcing strict rules around authorship, repetition, and AI usage. Accounts are being declined, suspended, or removed outright. Many contributors explicitly state they will not accept AI-written responses.
This creates a difficult environment, because many legitimate experts — particularly academics and technical specialists — naturally write in a way that is informative, neutral, structured, and cautious. In other words, exactly the style now associated with AI.
As a result, some genuine experts are being caught in the crossfire. Sensitivity to AI is understandable, but in many cases it has become deliberately conservative.
From a newsroom perspective, credibility must be protected — even if that means over-correcting.
Verification Is Now the Norm
Alongside AI scrutiny, journalists are increasingly asking for proof.
LinkedIn profiles. Companies House records. Company email addresses. Employers or clients copied into threads.
This level of verification would have been unusual a few years ago. It’s now routine.
For agencies built on speed and volume, this is a serious constraint. For genuine experts, it’s survivable. For constructed personas, it’s fatal.
Brands Are Caught in This Too
This isn’t just an agency problem.
Many brands adopted the same tactics internally — creating experts, outsourcing commentary, leaning on AI, and pitching at scale. They are now facing the same resistance.
The backlash doesn’t discriminate by sender. Intent matters more than logo.
The Market Signal: Struggle, Pivots, and Declining Economics
You can see the pressure elsewhere too.
Many link building firms are quietly leaning on newswires again — a tactic long considered low-value — simply because journalist access has dried up.
Public filings tell a similar story. Flattening sales. Shrinking margins. Profitability under strain.
The economics that supported the old model no longer hold.
The golden era is over.
When the Advantage Shifted — and Shifted Back
There was a period where link builders thrived while traditional PR agencies struggled.
PR often felt abstract. Intangible. Hard to measure. Meanwhile, link builders offered something clear: links, authority, and visible outcomes.
That mattered. And it taught the market an important lesson — that credibility and visibility can be measured.
But as scrutiny has increased, the advantage has shifted back.
The very qualities that once made PR feel slow — verification, accountability, human oversight — are now what make it safe.
The Future Belongs to PR — If PR Evolves
What happens next isn’t a return to old-fashioned PR.
The future belongs to PR agencies that understand convergence.
PR is no longer an abstract discipline. It delivers credibility. It delivers brand awareness. It delivers SEO value through earned backlinks. And increasingly, it delivers GEO value — visibility in AI-driven search and answer engines.
PR, SEO, and AI searchability are merging into one ecosystem.
Brands are no longer choosing between awareness and outcomes. They expect both. And PR, done properly, can deliver both.
This means PR professionals must become more rounded marketers. They must understand how editorial coverage feeds SEO, how authority feeds AI discovery, and how credibility compounds across channels.
If the link building boom taught the industry anything, it’s that tangibility matters.
PR can offer that — without cutting corners.
A Necessary Reset for PR and the Media
This shift also forces a deeper reflection on the role of PR and the media more broadly.
The public relies on the media as a trusted resource. When an expert is quoted, there is an assumption they have been vetted and that their opinions carry real weight.
PR professionals and media organisations share responsibility here.
While this reset may feel like a setback for some link builders or SEO agencies, it is an important step forward for the industry.
In an era of AI, automation, and deepfakes, trust is no longer optional. It is the currency.
A Final Thought
Link building using PR isn’t dead. But the version that allowed a single operator with a laptop, an email address, and a JR subscription to make a fortune is.
What replaces it is slower, stricter, and more human.
PR agencies that evolve — that understand SEO, GEO, and credibility as one system — will own this space.
Those that don’t will watch it pass them by.