What is brand mentions in LLMs?
A brand mention in an LLM is your name, or an obvious variant, appearing in the answer text. The mention may or may not include a link. It shows that the assistant brought the brand into the response. It does not show which source supported the sentence.
Why it matters for AI visibility
Mentions are the part a buyer reads. They matter for AI visibility because a recommendation can name you and send no click, or name you while citing a review. If you only count links to your domain, you miss recommendations. If you only count mentions, you miss whether a hostile or outdated page is the evidence underneath. Log both. Decide which name variants count, including the product name when it differs from the company, and ignore coincidental words that are not the brand. Note the wording enough to judge sentiment later. A mention in a list of ten alternatives is a weaker commercial signal than a mention that explains who the product is for, but both are mentions. Do not convert the count into a claim about revenue or about a model’s training data.
Example
ChatGPT answers “what should a small clinic use for scheduling?” with four product names and no links. Your product is second. That is a brand mention. A Perplexity answer that links only to a review, which itself names you, is a citation of the review plus a mention on that page. Record them as different events.
Related terms
An AI citation is the linked source. Share of voice compares mention counts across brands. Sentiment in AI answers describes whether the mention is favorable, neutral, or negative. Mentions are the raw material for both summaries.