AI brand mentions: how to get your brand named in more AI answers

AI brand mentions are the times an AI answer names your brand, and other websites mostly decide them: in our study, 80.69% of the links next to brand mentions in Google’s AI Overviews went to other websites, not the brand’s own site. So getting named more often depends less on your own pages and more on what the rest of the web says about you.

Mentioned, linked or recommended: what counts

An AI answer can show your brand in three ways. They are not worth the same.

• Mentioned. The answer names your brand in its text. The buyer sees your name, even if they never click.
• Linked. The answer links to a page. That page might be yours, or it might be a review or a list that talks about you. A link can also sit next to your name and go to someone else’s page.
• Recommended. The answer names your brand as a good pick for the buyer’s question and says why. This is the one that leads to sales.

All three count, and they build on each other. A mention puts you in the answer. A recommendation puts you near the top of the buyer’s list. A link helps, but it isn’t needed. Many answers name brands with no link at all.

Each answer can hold a lot of names. In our study, AI Overviews linked 4.94 pages per keyword on average, and ChatGPT linked 2.35. Your goal is to be one of the names for the questions your buyers ask. Together, these mentions make up your brand’s AI visibility. For the bigger picture, read what is AI visibility.

Why other websites decide what AI says about you

AI checks what other websites say about you. It leans on those pages more than on your own site.

In our 10,000-keyword study, we looked at the links next to brand mentions on 601 keywords. In Google’s AI Overviews, 80.69% of those links went to other websites. Only 19.31% went to the brand’s own site. ChatGPT leaned on brand sites more, but other websites still led: 57.58% to 42.42%.

Your own site will always say you are good. Reviews, “best of” lists and comparisons are how AI checks that claim. When many of those pages name you for the same need, AI is more likely to name you too.

The two AIs also read different pages. AI Overviews and ChatGPT shared only 3.33% of their linked pages on average. So you need a plan that covers both.

How to get more brand mentions in AI Overviews

To get more brand mentions in AI Overviews, get your brand onto pages that rank near the top of Google for your buyers’ questions. Google’s AI leans hard on Google’s own results.

In our study, 49.83% of the pages AI Overviews linked were also in Google’s top 10 for the same keyword. And 74.44% were in the top 100. The typical linked page ranked #6.

Rank makes a big difference. A page ranked #1 in Google was also linked in that search’s AI Overview 49.19% of the time. At #10, that fell to 9.83%. At #20, it was 3.05%.

That gives you two jobs:

1. Rank your own pages. Write clear pages that answer your buyers’ questions, and work to move them toward the top of Google.
2. Get named on the pages that already rank. Search your buyers’ questions. List the pages in the top 10 and the pages the AI Overview links to. Those are the pages Google’s AI reads. If they don’t name you, that is the gap to close.

For the full steps, read how to rank in AI Overviews.

How to get your brand mentioned in ChatGPT answers

To get your brand mentioned in ChatGPT answers, be known before the question is asked and easy to find when ChatGPT searches the web. ChatGPT draws on two sources: what it learned in training (its memory) and live web search.

Memory matters a lot. We asked the same questions to an AI model with web search turned off. 82.22% of ChatGPT’s answers named at least one brand that the no-search model also named. And 61.07% of the brands on those no-search lists showed up in ChatGPT’s answers too. The brands AI already knows keep coming back.

Those mentions often come with no link to the brand. Of the brands both named, 85% of ChatGPT’s mentions had no link to the brand’s own website.

Memory is built from what the web has said about you over time, so being named on many trusted pages helps in ChatGPT too.

Live search works a bit differently from Google’s AI. Only 10.87% of the pages ChatGPT linked were in Google’s top 10 for the same keyword, and the typical match ranked #21. So ChatGPT reads further down the web than Google’s AI does. For the full steps, read how to rank in ChatGPT.

LLM seeding: getting named on the pages AI reads

LLM seeding means getting your brand named on the pages AI reads, so AI picks up your name when it answers. (LLM stands for large language model, the kind of AI behind these answers.) It is how you show up on the other websites that decide most mentions.

These are the pages that matter most:

• Reviews. Honest reviews that say what you do and who you serve.
• “Best of” lists. Pages that rank the options for a buyer’s question, like “best accounting software for small teams.”
• Comparisons. Pages that put you side by side with the brands buyers weigh you against.
• Trusted industry pages. Trade groups, industry guides and the directories people in your field use.
• Videos. Google’s AI links to videos often. In our study, 50.81% of AI Overviews linked at least one YouTube page. ChatGPT did so in only 0.16% of answers.

Here is how to do it well:

1. Start with your buyers’ questions, not a list of sites. Ask each question in Google and ChatGPT.
2. Note the pages the answers link to, and the pages that rank near the top of Google.
3. Check whether each page names you. If it doesn’t, ask to be included and give the writer accurate facts.
4. Keep your facts the same everywhere: your name, what you do, who you serve and where you work.

Guest posts aren’t a shortcut. Many sites sell guest posts, but AI rarely links to them. In our study, only 2.00% of the sites AI Overviews linked to were in a guest-post-selling catalog. For ChatGPT, it was 2.36%. Buying a pile of guest posts puts your name on pages AI mostly skips.

How to track your mentions

AI answers change, so one check tells you very little. We searched the same 1,000 keywords in Google three times. The linked pages stayed fairly steady, overlapping 90.96% on average. But the brands named overlapped only 60.06%. The same question can name you on one run and a competitor on the next.

So track mentions the way you would track rankings:

• Use your buyers’ real questions, grouped by stage: researching, comparing and buying.
• Check each question more than once, in both Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT.
• Write down what you see: whether you are mentioned, linked or recommended, which competitors are named, and which pages are linked.
• Watch the trend, not one answer. Your share of mentions over many runs tells you more than a single screenshot.

Doing this by hand takes a lot of time. For methods and tools, read our guide to AI brand monitoring. We obsessively track these answers for our clients, so we can see what is working and fix what is not.

Get your free AI visibility audit

Getting named in more AI answers takes one complete plan. Get your brand onto the pages AI trusts and the pages that rank, keep your facts the same everywhere, and obsessively track the answers. As an AI SEO agency, we do all of it for you. To see where you stand first, get a free AI visibility audit. It shows whether Google’s AI and ChatGPT name you or your competitors, what your buyers ask, and how to close the gap.