Advice and answers from the Advanced Web Ranking Team
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AI Brand Mentions: See When Your Brand is Mentioned, Linked, or Cited in AI Search
With AI Brand Mentions in AWR, you can now see how your brand and competitors appear in AI search results, whether name-dropped, linked, or cited as trusted sources.
As the online search evolves with innovations like Google’s AI Overviews and Google AI Mode, it’s no longer just about where you rank. It’s about whether you get mentioned, linked, or cited as a trusted source. With AWR’s new AI Brand Mentions, you can see whether your brand and competitors are keeping pace in the AI era.
Using the AI Brand Mentions, you’ll be able to:
Spot when your brand is referenced in AI results, even without an associated link.
Track inline links to understand when AI not only mentions your brand but also points to your website.
See which of your pages are cited as trusted sources in the AI summaries.
Compare with competitors to identify missed content opportunities.
What counts as a mention in AWR
In both AI Overviews and AI Mode results, mentions occur when a brand is referenced in the generated AI summary. AI Mentions can be classified into three categories:
Plain text mentions - references to your brand name that appear in the AI-generated summary without a hyperlink. These show awareness and recognition, even when no link is provided.
Inline links - clickable anchor links that appear in the AI summary text. They show that Google not only references your brand but also links it to a specific page, providing users with a direct path to your site.
Citation URLs – the list of sources used when generating the summary. When your pages are included here, it signals that Google considers your content trustworthy enough to support its answer.
AWR keeps mention counts clean by trimming out duplicates:
Plain text mentions are counted once per brand, no matter how many times the name shows up in the AI answer.
Inline links are counted once per unique URL, even if the same link repeats in the summary.
Citation URLs follow the same rule, with only one count per unique source link.
Where to see your mentions
You’ll find your AI Brand Mentions inside the Keyword Ranking report as an optional column. Switch this column on to see how often your brand (or a competitor) gets named, linked, or cited in AI summaries.
The AI Brand Mentions column shows:
The total number of mentions for each keyword, including plain text mentions, inline links, and cited URLs.
The change in mentions compared to the start date chosen in the date picker.
An inline link indicator showing if the keyword is also mentioned with a clickable hyperlink in the AI result.
When you hover over the total number of mentions, you’ll see the full breakdown with the exact plain text mentions, inline links, and cited URLs for that keyword.
You can dig deeper using the new AI Brand Mentions filter. Click Add filters → AI Brand Mentions, then choose whether you want to see only keywords that have/do not have mentions, or go even more specific by showing those with achieved link citations.
That way, you can quickly scan your data to spot wins, track shifts over time, and focus on the mentions that actually drive authority.
Setting up brand references (recommended for accurate mentions reporting)
To ensure plain text mentions (and not just links) are being reported by AWR, it’s necessary to add your brand references as aliases to the project. You can select them manually or let AWR do it for you using the built-in AI-powered suggestion tool.
Setting up brand references can be done:
Either when creating a new project:
Or later on, for an existing project, via the Project Settings > Overview section:
Brand references can also be set for competitors, to track how often they get mentioned in AI results:
How mentions are matched based on the references selected
When checking the brand references you’ve set against the AI results retrieved from Google, AWR uses an exact match mechanism.
For example:
If you add Samsung as a brand reference, AWR will report only the plain mentions of “Samsung.”
If you add Samsung Electronics, then only “Samsung Electronics” mentions will be picked up, not the shorter “Samsung.”
This means it’s important to add all the references you’re interested in tracking. Using the example above, if you want to capture mentions of both brand names, you’ll need to add Samsung and Samsung Electronics separately as brand references.
Go beyond brand names
You’re not limited to just your company name. You can also add product names or other important entities from your organization that matter for visibility.
For example:
A company like Samsung might add Galaxy Z Flip or Galaxy S24 as references, alongside the main brand name.
A retailer could add both its brand name and its popular product lines.
This way, you’ll get a fuller picture of how not only your brand but also your key products show up in AI results.
Do you have any further questions or need more information about this product update? Don't hesitate to get in touch with our dedicated support team.
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