AI Mentions: How to Get LLMs to Mention Your Brand

What Are AI Mentions?

AI mentions are references to brands in AI-generated responses—like those provided by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode.

AI mentions can appear in various conversational contexts, and their tones can be positive, negative, or neutral. Mentions can also be linked or unlinked.

Your brand’s visibility and portrayal in AI-generated responses depends on three main factors:

Your brand’s visibility and portrayal in the model’s training data
Your brand’s visibility and portrayal in any supplementary data sources (e.g., web results)
The tool’s understanding of the user and their prompt

AI Mentions vs. AI Citations

AI citations are references to specific sources or pages used to generate AI responses, rather than general references to brands in AI responses.

Generative AI tools (commonly known as LLMs) sometimes include AI mentions and AI citations in the same response. Like this:

Why Are AI Mentions Important?

AI mentions are important because they can influence users’ buying decisions. This is largely because LLMs can provide personalized and human-like responses that users trust.

Basically:

If an LLM mentions your brand favorably or neutrally, users may be more likely to engage with your business
If an LLM mentions your brand unfavorably, users may be less likely to engage with your business
If an LLM doesn’t mention your brand in relevant contexts, users might not even hear about your brand

LLMs are also highly influential because they can guide users through the entire buying journey, eliminating the need for users to engage with other marketing touchpoints.

To reach and influence target audiences during these centralized buying journeys, you must secure favorable AI mentions. And try to get an edge over any mentioned competitors.

Linked AI mentions may be particularly valuable because they can encourage users to click through directly to your website.

How Visible Are AI Mentions?

AI mentions can be highly visible to your target audience because AI responses are becoming more widespread:

Google displayed AI Overviews on 13.14% of search results pages in March 2025 (Source: Semrush AI Overviews Study)
Google's Head of Search, Liz Reid, described AI Mode as "the future of Google Search" (Source: Google via YouTube)
ChatGPT attracted almost 600 million unique visitors in May 2025 (Source: Traffic Analytics)
AI search could drive more web traffic than traditional search by 2028 (Source: Semrush AI search study)

And AI mentions are highly prevalent within AI-generated responses.

AI models include brand mentions in 26% to 39% of responses, according to a Semrush analysis of 1 million varied, non-branded queries across five LLMs.

Here’s a breakdown of AI mentions’ prevalence by LLM:

LLM	AI Mentions’ Prevalence
ChatGPT	26.07%
ChatGPT Search	39.36%
Google AI Overview	36.93%
Perplexity	30.55%
Gemini	31.14%

You can get a feel for the prevalence of AI mentions for all brands in your niche by using LLMs for yourself.

How Do AI Assistants Decide Which Brands or Products to Mention?

AI assistants (like ChatGPT) typically mention brands or products that appear most relevant, trustworthy, and well-documented for a given query/problem.

When a user asks for recommendations, comparisons, or “best of” lists, AI assistants look across their training (and/or live web sources) to find brands that are clearly associated with the query and consistently positioned as good fits for that use case.

Here are the main factors that influence which brands AI assistants mention:

Relevance to the query. AI systems first try to understand the user’s query: Are they looking for a beginner tool, an enterprise solution, a budget option, or a niche use case? Brands and products that are relevant are more likely to be recommended.
Authority and trust signals. Brands that appear on reputable websites and are generally popular in their niche tend to be treated as more reliable options—and therefore surface more often in AI-generated answers. This creates a bias toward established brands with larger marketing budgets and stronger SEO.
Personalization. Factors like location and language can influence which brands or products get mentioned. For example, a user searching for “best dog food items near me” in Park Slope, Brooklyn may see different recommendations than someone searching in another neighborhood.
Safety and policy filters. AI assistants also apply safety and policy rules. Brands associated with risky, misleading, or low-quality experiences are less likely to be highlighted.

If you’re a business owner or marketer and want to find out if your brand is getting mentioned in AI assistants, you can use Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit.

How Do AI Assistants Handle Emerging Brands with Little Footprints?

AI assistants (like ChatGPT) are less likely to mention emerging brands with a small digital footprint in their responses.

This creates a significant challenge for new brands. AI systems favor brands with extensive digital presence and media coverage. Without this, emerging brands may largely remain invisible in AI-generated recommendations.

Here's how AI typically handles emerging brands:

Default to category leaders. When users ask for recommendations, AI systems typically suggest well-known brands with extensive online presence
Provide minimal or generic information. If emerging brands do appear, AI often lacks specific details about their features, pricing, or differentiators, making them seem less credible than established alternatives.
Group with "other options." Emerging brands may get lumped into generic mentions like "and several smaller competitors" rather than receiving individual consideration and description
Lack confidence in recommendations. AI responses about lesser-known brands often include hedging language ("might be worth considering" vs. "highly recommended") that undermines credibility

For example, a new project management software might not appear in AI recommendations simply because established players dominate the training data and online discussions.

Breaking through requires aggressive digital footprint building—creating authoritative content, earning media coverage, building presence on commonly cited websites, and generating authentic user discussions about your brand.

If you’re an emerging brand and wondering whether or not you’re getting mentioned in AI assistants, you can use Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to find out.

How Can I Know If AI Assistants Recommend My Brand for the Right Reasons?

You can know if AI assistants (like ChatGPT) recommend your brand for the right reasons by reviewing the surrounding context around your brand mentions in AI answers.

AI assistants form opinions about brands based on publicly available information across the web, and so the reasons for which they recommend (or don’t recommend) your brand depend directly on the overall digital footprint.

Broadly, there are two ways to evaluate if AI is recommending your brand correctly and for the right reasons:

Manually test platforms with relevant queries. Search questions like “best [product category] for [use case]” to see whether your brand shows up in relevant conversations. If your brand appears, then AI is recommending you for the right reasons.
Use an AI monitoring tool like Semrush Enterprise AIO. This tool automatically tracks your mentions in AI assistants, helping you review each snippet and confirm that you’re mentioned in the right context and for the right reasons.

How to Get More AI Mentions

Based on our current understanding of how AI systems work, there are two main ways to get more AI mentions for your brand:

Get brand mentions in context-rich content
Publish in-depth content about your brand

Get Brand Mentions in Context-Rich Content

Getting brand mentions in context-rich content means motivating people to talk about your brand within substantive and topically relevant online content. Such as blog posts, news articles, social media posts, Reddit comments, and Quora questions.

This can lead to more AI mentions because LLMs may cite this content when searching the live web.

Plus, the content may be used as LLM training data in the future. More frequent, context-rich mentions make your brand appear more prominent and help LLMs understand your relevance to user needs. Which can lead to you getting more AI mentions.

How to Get Brand Mentions

You can generate brand mentions that may be valuable for LLM optimization by:

Writing guest posts for reputable sites in your niche
Responding to relevant media inquiries
Contributing to relevant online communities and social discussions
Listing your brand on relevant, high-quality directories
Creating useful and engaging content that people want to share or cite
Using affiliate marketing and influencer marketing to generate buzz around your brand
Launching campaigns, events, and products that get people talking
Pitching your brand, product, or content for inclusion in relevant blog posts

Use a tool like Brand Monitoring to track your brand mentions across the web.

Where to Get Brand Mentions

Pursuing brand mentions on relevant websites and webpages that LLMs already cite could be the most effective way to get more AI mentions.

For example, if ChatGPT recommends products from an industry listicle, you could benefit from getting your product featured in that listicle.

Just bear in mind that LLMs can cite different webpages depending on the user, the conversational context, and other factors.

You can discover the most commonly cited websites and webpages in your niche with Semrush Enterprise AIO. The tool identifies and submits prompts relevant to your brand, then analyzes the responses for mentions and citations.

If an enterprise tool isn’t right for you, you can do this with Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit (formerly known as the AI SEO Toolkit).

Explore the Visibility Overview report to find your Topic Opportunities. These are the exact sources and domains where your competitors are being mentioned but your brand isn’t.

Generally, aim to get your brand featured on reputable websites that may have more influence on LLMs, search engines (which LLMs may retrieve information from), and users.

Publish In-Depth Content About Your Business

Publish diverse, in-depth content about your business, products, and services to give AI systems more information to learn from and use.

This content can lead to more AI mentions by making it easier for LLMs to associate your business with individual users’ needs, which can be highly specific.

For example, Semrush’s content may help ChatGPT understand our products’ relevance to highly specific prompts like this one:

The prompt asks for a list of tools that meet certain criteria, and AI mentions Semrush first.

What Type of Content to Create

You can give AI systems more nuanced information about your brand by:

Creating custom-made content for each target audience
Covering product specifications in-depth
Providing direct comparisons between different solutions you offer
Describing specific use cases for your products and services
Writing detailed guides about your unique selling points
Publishing content about your brand values
Making specific landing pages for each product, service, or location

For insight into the kinds of prompts your target audience uses in LLMs, use the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit.

The toolkit identifies relevant prompts from a vast prompts database and categorizes these queries based on intent.

Just bear in mind that these prompts aren’t exhaustive. Many people use highly specific and unique prompts in AI tools.

You can also view your brand visibility with our free AI search visibility tracker.

How to Make Your Content Accessible to LLMs

If you want your content to influence LLMs, make sure it’s accessible to AI crawlers and search engine crawlers (since LLMs can sometimes retrieve information from search engine databases).

Check that the pages you want to be crawled and indexed:

Prioritize server-side rendering over JavaScript rendering
Aren’t blocked by robots.txt or robots meta tags
Are publicly accessible (i.e., not hidden behind a paywall or registration wall)
Are included in your XML sitemap

You can check your website for potential crawlability issues by using Semrush’s Site Audit tool.

How to Improve the Sentiment of Your AI Mentions

You may be able to improve the sentiment of your AI mentions by improving and protecting your brand’s reputation with the following activities:

Strengthen your brand messaging. Clearly and consistently communicate your brand’s unique value propositions (UVPs).
Manage online reviews. Solicit reviews from happy customers or clients and respond to your reviews tactfully.
Create case studies. Publish content that proves the success of your products or services, using data to back up your claims.
Plan a crisis management strategy. Determine how you’ll respond to any negative stories or comments about your brand—just in case.
Gather and act on feedback. Collect feedback from your target audience and use it to improve your business practices.

You can monitor the sentiment of AI mentions with the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit. As we’ll discuss in the next section.

How to Track Your AI Mentions

To track AI mentions for your own brand and competitors’, use a third-party tool like the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit.

(A third-party tool works best because Generative AI providers don’t offer native tools for this yet. Manual tracking often leads to misleading data, since LLM responses vary by user, query, and prompt history.)

The Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit works by:

Searching its vast prompts database to find prompts relevant to your brand
Running these prompts through LLMs, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini
Analyzing the AI responses for brand mentions and sentiment

Inside the toolkit, you’ll find several reports that analyze different aspects of your AI visibility.

Start with the Visibility Overview to see a list of prompts where your brand and competitors are mentioned. You can also identify topics where competitors appear but your brand doesn’t, helping you uncover new content opportunities.