Scroll to the bottom of almost any coach, consultant or agency homepage and you'll find it. A gray strip of logos. Big networks, national papers, a business magazine or two. "As seen in."
I work in this industry every day, so I'll say the quiet part plainly. A lot of those logos are technically true and practically meaningless.
That isn't a knock on anyone who has them. Most people put them up because someone told them it was how you build credibility. I just want you to know what you're looking at, on your own site and on everyone else's.
Where a lot of those logos come from
Here's the common path. Someone writes a press release and pays a distribution service to send it out. The service syndicates that release to a long list of partner sites, which often include the business or press release sections of local news and network affiliate websites.
The release shows up on those pages, word for word, usually labeled as a press release or sponsored content. Nobody at the outlet chose it. No reporter interviewed anyone. No editor decided it was worth their readers' time.
Then the logos go on the homepage. "As seen on" a network, because the release technically lived on a page with that network's name at the top.
Is that a lie? Not exactly. Is it what a reader assumes when they see that logo? Almost never. Most people see a big logo and picture a journalist writing about you. That gap between what's true and what people assume is the whole problem.
The test I use on any logo strip
When I look at someone's "as seen in" section, I ask three questions.
First, can I click it? A real feature has a URL. If the logo doesn't link anywhere, or links to a generic homepage, that tells me something.
Second, does the article read like journalism or like a release? If it's written in third person about how "the company is proud to announce," it's a release. If it has a point of view, quotes and context, someone with editorial judgment was involved.
Third, is it still findable? Syndicated releases on partner pages tend to disappear or get buried. Real articles on real publications tend to stick around and keep getting found.
Run your own site through those three questions. If your logos fail, I wouldn't panic. I'd just stop leaning on them as your main proof.
Why this matters more now that people ask AI
There's a second reason I care about this, and it's newer.
People don't only look at your homepage anymore. They ask ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity about you before they ever click. Those tools don't see your logo strip as proof. They read what's actually been published, where it was published and what it says.
A logo is an image on your own website. An article is an independent source saying something about you. To a person skimming, those can look similar. To a system trying to decide who to recommend, they're completely different things.
That's why I've stopped thinking of press as a badge and started thinking of it as evidence. Badges are for your homepage. Evidence is what gets you recommended when you're not in the room.
What I'd do instead
I'm not anti press release. Releases have real uses. They put a clean, dated record of your news on the internet, and that record can help. I just don't want anyone confusing a distribution receipt with being covered.
If you want the logo strip to actually mean something, here's how I'd approach it.
Lead with the articles you can link to. One real feature, linked, beats ten logos that go nowhere.
Be honest about what each one is. "Featured in" for editorial pieces. "Announced on" or a simple newsroom page for releases. People respect it more than you'd think.
Build toward coverage that explains who you are and why you're good at it. That's what readers remember, and it's what AI tools pick up when someone asks who to trust in your field.
Across the 1,600+ publications in our network, the placements that keep paying off for our law firms, clinics, brands and entrepreneurs are the ones with a real story in them. The ones that just add a logo usually don't move much.
So here's my question for you. If someone clicked every logo on your site today, what would they actually find?
