What Are AI Mentions? A Quick Guide for SEO (2026)

Did you know that traditional backlinks are losing their dominance due to AI search? What really matters now is how often your brand is mentioned online.

Brand mentions are about three times more powerful than backlinks for showing up in AI overviews. This shift means that authority is no longer just about your backlink profile. It’ about being talked about.

If your brand falls into the lower half of web mentions, you’re practically invisible to AI. But if you understand what AI mentions are and what makes a brand “mentionable,” you can reclaim your visibility and become the go-to recommendation of answer engines.

What Are AI Mentions?

AI mentions are unlinked references to your company, product, or expert within an AI-generated answer. It signals that your brand is so synonymous with the topic that it has become part of the conversation itself.

You’ll often see these in AI chatbots that recommend a brand by name as a solution to a user’s problem.

AI mentions are different from AI citations.

Citations are direct proof that your content was used as a source, whereas AI mentions are a broader signal of top-of-mind authority.

→ This is incredibly valuable, as over 70% of consumers say they trust brand discussions more than traditional advertising.

What Makes a Brand Mentionable to an AI?

AI mentions are related to a brand’s authority and presence. The more your brand is discussed across the web, the more likely an AI is to mention it. This is part of AI search visibility.

AI models learn from the vast amount of text on the internet. They identify the entities (the brands, people, and concepts) that are consistently associated with certain topics. To become “mentionable,” your brand needs to focus on four principles.

1. Authority and Recognition

AI models default to mentioning brands they recognize as established leaders. The data shows that brands in the top quartile for web mentions receive, on average, 169 mentions, while the next quartile receives only 14.

If you aren’t a known entity, you’re unlikely to be mentioned.

→ For example, when a user asks an AI, “What’s a good tool for marketing automation?” The model is far more likely to mention established players like HubSpot because their brand recognition is very high.

2. Presence in Third-Party Conversations

Your own website isn’t enough. A recent study found that approximately 85% of brand mentions that appear in AI systems originate from third-party sources.

The AI is learning about your authority from what others say about you on news sites, review platforms, forums, and industry blogs.

→ For example, an AI learns that Figma is a top design tool not just from Figma’s website but from thousands of articles on sites like TechCrunch, design blogs, and tutorials on YouTube that keep praising and discussing its features.

3. Focus on a Specific Niche

To become synonymous with a topic, you must own it.

Brands that publish exhaustively and authoritatively on a specific niche build a “content moat.” This signals to the AI that they’re the definitive source of information for that subject. Naturally, they become the default choice for a mention.

→ Ahrefs has published hundreds of in-depth guides, studies, and tutorials on the topic of “backlinks.” Because of this deep content moat, AIs often mention them when asked about advanced backlink analysis.

4. Recognizable Entity

Most importantly, the AI needs to have a clear and unambiguous understanding of who your brand is and what it’s known for.

This is often reinforced by having a strong, well-defined presence in Google’s Knowledge Graph and a consistent brand name and messaging across all platforms.

→ When a user asks about project management software, an AI can confidently mention Asana because it has a clear entity in Google’s Knowledge Graph, a well-defined Wikipedia page, and consistent product descriptions across all platforms. The AI knows exactly what “Asana” is.

We go over these principles and more in our Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) guide.

3 Steps to Start Earning AI Mentions

Earning AI mentions is a long-term strategic effort that focuses on building your brand’s authority, not just optimizing a single piece of content.

The goal is to become so integral to the conversation in your niche that AI models can’t help but talk about you. This process can be broken down into three steps.

Step 1: Establish Your Expertise

Instead of being a generalist, focus your content strategy on owning a specific, defensible niche.

Go deeper and be more comprehensive than anyone else on one topic. This is how you build a “content moat” and become the go-to authority that AI models will eventually recognize and mention.

Step 2: Build Your Off-Page Presence

Since approximately 85% of AI mentions originate from third-party sources, your off-page strategy is just as important as your on-page content. You need to actively work to get your brand discussed on other reputable websites. This includes:

• Guest posting on respected industry blogs.
• Appearing as a guest on podcasts.
• Providing expert commentary for news articles and industry reports.
• Encouraging customer reviews on trusted third-party sites.

Pro Tip: Don’t just promote your brand; promote your people. Having your CEO, Head of Product, or other internal experts mentioned by name in third-party content is a great way to build entity recognition. The AI will begin to associate your brand with credible, named individuals, and that strengthens your authority.

Step 3: Track and Analyze Your Brand’s Narrative

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. It’s not enough to hope you’re being mentioned; you need to track the frequency, context, and sentiment of those mentions.

This requires a specialized GEO platform that can monitor AI conversations at scale and show you how your brand is being perceived, how that perception is changing over time, and how you stack up against your competitors.

To learn more, read our definitive guide for AI search optimization.

How to Track the AI Mentions You Earn

Building the authority to earn AI mentions takes time and effort.

The only way to prove its ROI is to measure it accurately. Traditional brand monitoring and analytics tools aren’t built to track the conversations happening inside AI models, which puts you in a blind spot.

This is why we built GetMint. It’s a specialized GEO platform designed to make your AI mentions visible, measurable, and actionable. It monitors the major AI platforms to show you:

• How often your brand is being mentioned and how that trend is changing over time.
• The sentiment and context of those mentions, so you can understand how AI perceives your brand (negatively/neutrally/positively).
• How your share of voice compares to your competitors, so you know exactly where you stand.

Your brand’s authority is your most valuable asset, and your competitors are already optimizing for answer engines. GetMint gives you the data you need to measure it.

Run your AI visibility audit today and see what the conversation is about you.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)