Remember when link building was all the rage in SEO?
Although it never disappeared, its role evolved as Google introduced clear guidelines and placed more emphasis on quality, relevance, and purpose.
Today, as AI searches change the nature of organics, link building has shifted to a more relevant – and more important – first step: product mentions.
You might think of brand mentions as “citations,” but in the context of AI search, citations describe how brands are referenced by LLMs.
Brand mentions are inputs that lead to those quotes. To avoid confusion, this article uses specific terms to describe the strategy itself.
Besides their role as a leading – if not the leading – factor influencing AI search citations, product mentions are also gaining weight in traditional SEO algorithms.
To build strong organic visibility for your brand or clients, brand mentions should be a priority in 2026.
Let’s analyze how it looks in practice.
How and why to prioritize product mentions
The brand’s buzz has come from a smart strategy to have infrastructure in the AI search space.
LLMs look beyond links, so this is not a return to the backlink strategies that once dominated SEO.
Instead, they examine the mentions, context, and frequency of occurrences between your product and the topics you want to target.
What the sign means is the moat part of the level.
They add up over time, and are even more important when competitors aren’t investing in the same signals.
From a prioritization perspective, brand mentions should come:
- Just after the technical and content essentials are in place, including clarity, structured data, and clarity on the page.
- Prior to the expansion of heavy long form or content produced for you. You can publish 200 articles, but without citations, LLMs have little reason to publish them.
Dig deep: In GEO, product mentions do what links alone can’t
How to find the most valuable brand speaking opportunities
Like backlinks, brand mentions vary greatly in influence depending on their source.
At my agency, we look beyond standard SEO tools to identify the most valuable opportunities, including:
- Using Profound to reveal existing brand names combined with key keywords.
- Reviews links from AI Overview for important SEO questions.
- Examining Reddit threads that rank on page 1 to see which organizations appear most often for important keywords.
In AI Review, you can find links to the source articles by clicking on the chain-link icon shown here:
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How to call brand names
Artificial product communication occurs when something produced fills a gap in the broader information ecosystem.
The goal is to make your brand an easy reference source.
They are obtained by creating assets that can be referenced, not just content. Examples include:
- Original data or information: Think about the drop in micro-research, annual reports, or proprietary trends. This stands out on the general web, and LLMs are effective in finding and citing them even when the overall citation volume is limited.
- The most scanned descriptions or descriptive pages: When a product becomes a formal definition of a concept, it is cited differently. The goal is to be the primary source, as I’ve been saying for a long time now.
- Useful tools, templates, or calculators: This encourages regular interaction from blogs, forums, and communities, helping brands get more exposure on relevant questions.
- Active participation in virtual platformsincluding Reddit and industry forums, which are addressed as an experienced participant rather than a product board. These conversations are disposable and can appear in LLM training data.
Dig deep: Reddit’s smart strategy for organic search visibility and AI
How to actively solicit brand mentions
The most effective access to brand mentions is relationship-driven and focused on the value of information.
Key guidelines include:
- Lead with goods, not asking: Example: “We have published new proprietary data on [X] and I thought it might support your future installation.”
- Use a narrative complement, not a conditional complement: Send journalists and creators who have just written an article, not those who might one day.
- Bring a clear angle: Providing a ready-made hook, such as comparing specific data, greatly increases the chances of product placement.
- Combine communication and thought leadership: Podcasts, public AMAs, expert panels, and webinars increase the surface area for discovery and research.
- Follow up with new value, not reminders: If there is nothing new to add, wait until there is.
The long-term goal is to build a reach engine by building relationships with writers and people who are likely to refer your product for future work.
In some cases, there is added value when that relationship extends to sharing content.
When do you deliver a PR service
Regardless of budget considerations, PR support is most effective in building brand awareness where:
- A solid story or data engine exists, but distribution is limited.
- The brand’s content must be growing rapidly, such as fundraising, major launches, or highly competitive categories.
- Internal teams are not designed for ongoing media relations management.
- Credibility from first-tier sources, such as the Wall Street Journal or TechCrunch, is necessary to reinforce perceived authority in LLM evaluations.
- The category is driven by reputation, where trust and authority directly affect quality. Healthcare, finance, legal, property management, and AI fall into this group.
If the fundamentals of technical SEO have not been solved or the assets worth looking at do not yet exist, PR is premature.
When the product is ready to act as a source, PR accelerates the signal flywheel.
Dig deep: How to build search visibility before there’s a need
Building a product talks about what it includes in all search engines and LLMs
Many of the long-term lessons from link building are still valid.
Avoid low-quality publications, and don’t confuse volume with impact.
With a critical inventory and disciplined approach, brands can:
- Benefit from the mentioned.
- Increase AI search citations.
- See a meaningful improvement in search rankings.
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