Brand Mentions and How to Build Them to Win at AI Search

Ah, backlinks - they were THE thing in SEO for years, no matter how shady the tactics or poor the linking site. Well, there’s a next-generation version in the AI search age, and they’re the key to showing up on ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and the like. You’ll hear them referred to as “brand mentions” and sometimes “brand citations.” 

Whatever you call them, gaming the system isn’t the way to get them. They rely on your brand being THE expert in a subject area and demonstrating that expertise in a way the LLMs can’t help notice.

To signal your expertise, you’ll need to help your brand show up as a trusted source across the broader information ecosystem through authority signals like repeated references, contextual alignment, and corroboration across platforms. That’s great for more than AI search; it’s great for SEO in general.

In this post, I’ll cover:

• What authority signals matter most to LLMs
• How authority differs from traditional SEO “authority”
• Where these signals are actually formed
• How to earn them passively and actively
• When scale requires outside support

Let’s dig in.

What authority means in an AI search environment

In an LLM-driven world, authority is pattern recognition, not a score.

Models learn which brands to surface by observing:

• How often your brand is referenced alongside specific topics
• Whether those references appear in trusted, independent contexts
• How consistently your perspective aligns with established facts

Links still matter, but they’re no longer the sole proxy. Mentions without links, expert quotes, forum discussions, citations in long-form explainers, and repeated association with a topic cluster all contribute to authority modeling, which builds over time and in context.

Why authority signals outperform content volume

One of the biggest mistakes brands make in AI-era SEO is overproducing content before earning external validation.

You can publish endlessly, but if LLMs don’t see:

• Other entities referencing your ideas
• Independent sources echoing your conclusions
• Repeated co-occurrence of your brand and your target topics

…your content has limited surface area in AI-generated results.

Authority signals give models confidence that your content is worth synthesizing, quoting, or citing.

Where LLM authority signals are formed

Authority is built outside your owned channels. High-impact environments include:

• AI overview source links for competitive queries
• Reddit threads, forums, and Q&A platforms
• Industry publications and expert roundups
• Podcasts, webinars, and panel transcripts
• Research summaries and data-driven articles

These environments shape the training and retrieval layers that influence AI outputs.

How to earn authority passively

Passive authority is earned by producing POVs and content so good that outside entities reference them.

That means producing assets that others need to cite, such as:

• Original research, benchmarks, or proprietary datasets
• Clear, canonical definitions of emerging concepts
• Opinionated frameworks that help people explain complexity
• Tools, templates, or calculators that get reused and discussed

LLMs disproportionately favor sources that simplify, clarify, or quantify ideas, especially when those ideas are hard to find elsewhere.

How to actively accelerate authority

Active authority-building is relationship-driven, not transactional. Effective strategies include:

• Sharing new insights with writers before asking for coverage
• Participating meaningfully in discussions where your audience already is
• Offering expert commentary tied to current narratives, not generic pitches
• Showing up repeatedly in visible formats (AMAs, podcasts, panels)

The goal is to keep your brand’s name in third-party conversations. Authority compounds when the same names appear again and again in relevant contexts.

When to bring in outside support

Authority-building reaches an inflection point at a certain scale. It’s time to consider PR or external amplification when:

• You have strong ideas or data but limited distribution
• You need faster momentum in competitive categories
• Credibility from top-tier sources materially changes perception
• Your internal team can’t sustain ongoing relationship management

PR won’t produce anything new for you from whole cloth, but it can dramatically accelerate signals once you’re ready to be cited.

Final thoughts

Authority is no longer declared by your site structure or backlink count alone. It’s inferred from how often your brand shows up, in the right places, saying useful things consistently.

Brands that invest now in becoming sources, not just publishers, will benefit disproportionately as LLM-driven discovery matures through 2026 and beyond.