How to Leverage Brand Mentions for LLM Visibility

While the GEO debate rages on LinkedIn, I’m sure there’s one thing we can agree on; if you do SEO well, you likely do GEO well.

Much of what we’re doing from an SEO standpoint has put our clients in a great position to feature in AI overviews and AI model conversations, but there are some tactics you can leverage that have more power than others.

Recent studies show that brands winning in AI Overviews share one thing: they get mentioned by other people online. A lot. So if you’re wondering why your perfectly optimised content isn’t showing up Vs your competitors in AI summaries, this might be why.

Data Shows That Brand Mentions Fuel AI Citations

Ahrefs conducted a study based on 75k brands and found that brand mentions has the strongest correlation (0.664) with visibility in AI overviews. They also found that “Web mentions (0.664) correlate much more strongly than backlinks (0.218).”

The data highlights that if you’re in the bottom 50% of brand mentions online Vs your competitors, you’re basically invisible to AI overviews. Ouch.

The brands that showed up most? Government sites, news outlets, and established consumer brands. The pattern here is authority through recognition.

What This Means for Your Brand

If you’re running SEO for an enterprise brand, this changes everything. Your homepage ranking #1 doesn’t guarantee AI Overview inclusion. Google’s AI systems are looking at your entire digital footprint, especially third-party mentions.

Traditional SEO metrics like domain authority and keyword rankings matter less here, so you have to flip the way you report and your KPIs on their head. Backlinks, according to the study, have a lower correlation with AI overview visibility than brand mentions. Traffic through brand queries have an even lower correlation! This is very clearly about one core principle: other people (not necessarily publications) talking about your brand online. As many as posisble, whether it’s on social media, forums like Reddit, reviews, listicles by relevant sites – get people talking about you and you win.

Reddit threads about your product or news articles mentioning your company can be more valuable for AI visibility than your own content marketing efforts.

How This Changes Your SEO Strategy

You need what we’ll call “narrative equity” – being part of conversations happening across the web. This means your brand needs to exist in contexts beyond your own website.

Digital PR becomes crucial here. Getting mentioned in industry publications isn’t just about building links anymore as those mentions feed directly into AI training data. When journalists write about your sector and include your brand, that becomes part of the knowledge base AI systems reference.

Forums and community discussions deserve more attention to – AI systems scan Reddit threads, Quora answers, and niche community forums for authentic voices. A mention in a relevant subreddit discussion can end up in an AI Overview summary for a key product query that you might have been trying to rank for for years!

Social platforms are increasingly important as well. Twitter threads, LinkedIn posts, and even Instagram content get indexed and referenced by AI systems. The line between social media and search is blurring.

Your New Framework for AI Visibility

Here’s how to structure your approach for AI Overviews:

Focus on external mentions. Get your brand mentioned in press coverage, podcasts, industry panels, and conferences. Each mention adds to your recognition footprint.

Treat digital PR as AI seeding. Every piece of earned media coverage is potential training data for AI models. Quality publications mentioning your brand in context builds authority.

Engage with community discussions. Find where your audience hangs out online and contribute meaningfully to conversations. Don’t spam, but be present where relevant discussions happen.

Create content AI systems can understand. Use clear, factual language. Structure information logically. Make your content easy for AI to parse and reference.

Maintain technical SEO basics. Site speed, crawlability, and structured data still matter. They help AI systems access and understand your content.

The brands winning in AI Overviews are those that others talk about. You can optimise your website perfectly, but if nobody mentions your brand outside your own channels, AI systems won’t consider you authoritative enough to cite.

The Reality of AI-First Search

Google’s AI Overviews represent a shift from ranking pages to curating information. The algorithm looks for consensus and validation from multiple sources.

This means visibility becomes a team sport. Your SEO success depends partly on earned media, community engagement, and third-party validation. You can’t control it completely, but you can influence it.

The brands that understand this early will have an advantage. Start building your mention footprint now, because AI systems are already learning who to trust based on who gets talked about most.

Get mentioned, or get missed. It’s really that simple.

Remember, our GEO audit is a great starting place. We find out where your weaknesses are and help you fix them.