A mention is the naming of a brand, a product or a company in the text of an AI answer. It is independent of a source reference: a brand can be named without any page being cited, and a page can be cited without the brand appearing in the answer text. Mentions are the metric for the question “Does my company appear in the answer?”.
How does a mention arise?
In two ways. First, from model knowledge: the model has seen the brand in connection with a topic often enough during training and names it from memory. Second, from grounding: an extracted passage, from your own website or from a third-party site, contains the brand name, and the model carries it into the answer. In practice both ways work together; brand-neutral questions (“Which providers are there for …?”) are mostly decided via third-party sites and model knowledge.
Why do mentions matter for AI visibility?
Because the user’s decision hinges on the name. Someone looking for a service is given a few providers by the AI and continues working with that list. The study “AI Blind Test 2026” shows the scale: in 55% of buyer questions the name of the company examined does not come up, and in 47% of questions the AI recommends competitors instead. A company that is not mentioned loses the enquiry before it arises, and sees nothing of it in its website figures.
What does this mean for your website?
Mentions rarely arise on your website alone. Ensure a consistent brand image on third-party sites (brand mentions, trade media, comparison articles, review platforms) and name your brand and products explicitly in your own texts instead of “we” and “our solution”. Measure the mention rate with a fixed prompt set and check the sentiment: mentioned is not recommended.