Understanding Mentions

The short version

Mentions is a simple tally: how many times AI assistants named your brand across all the answers analyzed in this audit. It's a raw count, not a percentage, so there's no fixed ceiling — bigger audits can produce bigger numbers.

More mentions is generally better, but the number only means something when you read it next to your AI Visibility Score.

What "Mentions" actually counts

Every time an AI answer says your brand's name, that's one mention.

The audit sends many questions to AI assistants, reads every answer, and counts each time your brand shows up by name. Add those up, and you get your Mentions total.

That's all it is — a headcount of name-drops. It doesn't judge whether the mention was positive, prominent, or persuasive. It just confirms you were named.

An analogy

Think of a dinner party where people are swapping recommendations. Mentions counts how many times someone says your name out loud — "oh, you should try [your brand]." It doesn't care whether they raved or shrugged, or whether anyone remembered why your name came up. It only counts that you were spoken of.

Being named a lot is good. But if guests keep describing what you do using someone else's words, your name is floating free of the ideas that should anchor it.

How the number is calculated

In plain terms:

Mentions = every named appearance of your brand, added up across all analyzed answers.

If your brand is named twice in one answer, that's two mentions. Across a 200-question audit, those add up fast. The product does the counting for you — you never tally anything by hand.

Because the total scales with audit size, don't compare a raw count from a small audit to one from a large one. Compare like with like: this audit versus your last audit of similar size.

How to read your count

There are no universal "good" and "bad" numbers, because the total depends on how many answers were analyzed. Read your count in context instead — against your own past audits and against your AI Visibility Score.

These are guidelines for interpretation, not scored bands. The number itself has no built-in "pass" line.

The one catch: named a lot isn't the same as owning your space

A high Mentions count can look like a win while hiding a weak position. Being named often without owning the vocabulary — the words and ideas AI reaches for when describing your space — means your name is being repeated, but the concepts behind it belong to someone else.

That's why Mentions is only half the picture. Pair it with AI Visibility:

• High Mentions + high AI Visibility — strong. You're named and the language leans on you.

• High Mentions + low AI Visibility — fragile. Your name travels, but the ideas don't stick to it. Easy for a competitor to absorb.

Read a high count with low visibility as an opportunity: the attention is already there, so the work is connecting your name to your ideas.

What to do with this count

• Mentions rising with AI Visibility — keep doing what's working; track the trend across audits.

• Mentions high, AI Visibility low — focus on the language, not the name-drops. Publish content that ties your distinctive terms and concepts to your brand so AI learns the connection.

• Mentions flat or falling — check whether competitors are being named in the answers where you're absent, and target those question types.

• Mentions low across the board — start with visibility basics: make sure your brand and its vocabulary appear clearly in the sources AI draws on.