Expert commentary has undoubtedly overtaken the classic hero campaign as the leading Digital PR tactic of choice over the last couple of years. And it’s not hard to understand why.

Expert commentary stories are great for achieving PR results. With the right expert at your disposal, they can be lower budget with a quicker turnaround time than other formats, as well as being a huge trust signal, something that is as important to brand, as it is to SEO. 

But above all else, these are the type of stories that Journalists are looking for, literally every single day. Which means it’s a tactic that you can use to earn PR coverage at scale.

In order to help PRs understand which experts are most valuable from a PR pov, we set out to discover which experts were covered by Journalists in the most news stories during 2024.

What we did and how

• Using Ahrefs Content Explorer, we analysed the number of news stories that were posted in 2024, that mentioned 111 different types of experts

• I then filtered the results by a Domain Rating of 30+, and the “News” filter to only analyse pages from news publications

• In order to help ensure the pages being analysed were news stories referring each occupation as an expert, for example not just any news story about a doctor, I filtered by results that included any of the following phrases in the headline - according to, revealed, shared, reveals, listed, myths, why you should, we asked, tips to, hack for

• The search used was - "[EXPERT]" AND title:“according to" OR title:"revealed" OR title:"shared" OR title:"reveals" OR title:"listed" OR title:"myths" OR title:"why you should" OR title:"we asked" OR title:"tips to" OR title:"hack for”

• I then further cleaned up the exported news stories by eliminating common examples that mentioned the occupation but in a different context, e.g. articles referring to Doctor Who

• In total, 37,949 articles were analysed

• Data is correct as of January 2025. The full dataset of articles analysed can be viewed here

Caveats:

• The actual number of articles that use each type of expert will undoubtedly be higher than the numbers presented. The filters I’ve used lower the number of total articles with the aim of ensuring a higher degree of relevance to PR type stories

• Ahrefs obviously isn’t perfect at picking up every single article. Syndicated content tends to be ignored within the exported results

• There is a higher margin of error in terms of relevancy for occupations that don’t have the word expert in them, e.g. Doctor or Lawyer. However through ensuring relevant keywords are included in the headline, on top of manual analysis, the degree of certainty should still be high for all types of experts analysed

• Any experts with less than 50 articles returned from the search weren’t exported and therefore not included as part of the wider analysis 

Key Findings

• The most in demand experts by Journalists are Doctors, Chefs, and Therapists

• The Sun, Business Insider, and Women's Health Mag are the publications that cover the most expert commentary stories

• The most common terms used in expert commentary headlines are “how to”, “reveals”, and “according to”

I'll be sharing further insights from the data next week, exclusively in The Digital PR Observer Newsletter. If you want to see more Insights Including the top sites for every top expert in full, and the most common phrases used In headlines unique to the top 20 publications, sign up to get the newsletter for free each week below:

The Most in Demand Experts of 2024

The results of our research revealed that Doctors are the most in demand expert. In 2024, there were over 13,000 expert commentary stories that used a Doctor as the expert, the most of the 111 different experts that we analysed. The sites covering the most expert comments from Doctors were The Sun, Business Insider, and Everyday Health.

The occupation in second place was Chefs, covered over 4,400 times in the media last year. The sites covering expert comments from Chefs the most were The Sun, Business Insider, and Food & Wine.

Therapists were used in expert comment stories over 3,300 times, the third highest number of articles in 2024. The sites most likely to cover expert comments from a Therapist were Women's Health Mag, Business Insider, and Bustle.

In fourth place were Psychologists. We found over 2,700 news articles referring to expert tips from a Psychologist, with Women's Health Mag, Bustle, and Business Insider the most frequent publications.

And finally, in fifth place were Nutritionists, narrowly behind Psychologists with just 11 fewer articles. The sites covering expert comments from Nutritionists most often were Women's Health Mag, The Sun, and Mens Health. 

Also in the top 10 most in demand experts, were a Dermatologist, Personal Trainer, Interior Designer, Estate Agent, and Flight Attendant. 

ALSO READ: How to find experts for your Digital PR campaigns

The publications most interested in expert commentary PR stories

As well as researching the most in demand experts, we also analysed the results to reveal which news publications covered the most expert commentary stories in 2024. This analysis is based on the coverage from experts that had at least 50+ articles, 49 in total, and 37,949 articles.

Of the 2,900 publications included in the analysis, the site that covered the most expert commentary stories was The Sun (specifically, the UK site). Our searches found 1,695 articles published on The Sun in 2024.

The rest of the top five* were made up by Business Insider, Women's Health Mag, Bustle, and People Magazine. 

The top 20 publications are a mixture of national news publications and industry specific publications. Notably, a quarter of the top 20 were Health publications, showing the increased importance of expert commentary In this industry.

If you want to explore the top publications that cover expert commentary stories from each of the top 20 experts, you can jump to that section here.

*Since none of our audience are based in India, I omitted Indian news publications that publish in English from the top results tables. However, for clarity, Hindustrian Times was the fifth most common publication in the results. 

The top words used in expert commentary headlines

Next, we analysed the headlines from the 37,949 articles that we found, to reveal what the most common words/phrases used in expert commentary stories were. Due to the nature of the search looking for a set of keywords specifically in the page title, there is likely a small degree of bias towards the following phrases - “according to", "revealed", "shared", "reveals", "listed", "myths", "why you should", "we asked", "tips to", "hack for”.

One of the best tips I have for writing subject lines is to try and envision what the Journalist will write as their headline, and make that your subject line. This will differ from one publication to the next, but using these phrases in your expert commentary pitches should help to at least give your pitch a better chance of being opened. 

“How to” was the most common phrase used, featuring in a third of all articles. Which lets face it, is probably quite obvious.

What is more interesting however is how many headlines mentioned “reveals” or “according to”. “Reveals” was used in 16% of all headlines, and “according to” was used 12% of the time. 

Also in the top 10 were “shares”, “claims”, “revealed”, “explains”, and “warns”, all phrases you would expect to be followed by a reference to the expert. This shows the value of mentioning the type of expert you have in your subject line, replicating what a Journalist would do in their headline.

How different publications use different headlines

These results are very generalised due to the large number of different publications featured in the analysis. To really emulate the likely headline a Journalist would use for your story, you want to study the headlines which that specific publication uses for similar stories.

Here are a few examples of how some of these phrases are used significantly more/less by The Sun.

The phrase “I’m a” was used in 3% of all headlines, ranking just outside the top 10. However, that percentage jumped up to 11% when looking just at The Sun’s headlines, showing that The Sun Journalists like to use phrases such as “I’m a Doctor”, “I’m a Relationship Expert”, etc. 

However, The Sun are much less likely to use the phrase “according to” in their headlines. The phrase was mentioned in 12% of headlines overall, but only 3% of The Sun’s headlines. 

The Sun are also much more likely to use “reveals” or “revealed” in their headlines compared to other publications. Either term was used in 51% of The Sun’s headlines overall, compared to 17% for all other publications. 

Want to see how the most common phrases used differ for each of the top 20 publications that cover the most expert commentary stories? I’ll be sharing the full dataset exclusively in The Digital PR Observer Newsletter next Wednesday for subscribers, which will include a breakdown of the most common phrases used in headlines broken down individually for all 20 publications. 

Sign up below to ensure you don't miss out:

The publications that cover the most expert commentary stories for each expert

In this final section, I’ve listed the top 10 news publications that cover expert commentary stories for each individual expert featured in the top 20 most in demand experts. Click on the links below to jump straight to the expert you want to analyse in more detail.

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Doctor

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Chef

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Therapist

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Psychologist

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Nutritionist

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Dermatologist

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Personal Trainer

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Interior Designer

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Estate Agent

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Flight Attendant

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Astrologer

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Royal Expert

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Finance Expert

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Gardening Expert

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Relationship Expert

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Travel Expert

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Cleaning Expert

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Security Expert

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Dog Trainer

• The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Body Language Expert

*Since none of our audience are based in India, I omitted Indian news publications that publish in English from the top results tables for each expert to provide an extra degree of relevance to the insights.  

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Doctor

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Chef

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Therapist

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Psychologist

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Nutritionist

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Dermatologist

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Personal Trainer

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Interior Designer

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Estate Agent

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Flight Attendant

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Astrologer

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Royal Expert

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Finance Expert

The publications most interested in expert commentary from a Gardening Expert