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Mentions and sources

The two foundational concepts in BrandAxis — what counts as a Mention, what counts as a Source, and how the two relate.

Updated

BrandAxis tracks two distinct things in every AI response. Knowing the difference matters because each one tells you something different about how your brand is performing.

Mention

A Mention is your brand being named in an AI response. If the model writes the word “BrandAxis” (or any of your tracked aliases) in its answer, that’s a Mention.

Mentions drive every aggregate score in the dashboard — Visibility, Sentiment, and Rank are all counted from Mentions.

Source

A Source is a website (domain or URL) that an AI model links to or references in its answer. Sources are the AI’s footnotes — the receipts behind what it said.

Sources drive the Sources panel — domain rollups, URL detail, source categories.

How they relate

A single AI response can contain Mentions, Sources, both, or neither:

  • Mention + Source — the model named you AND linked to a relevant URL (e.g. your domain, or a third-party article about you). This is the strongest signal.
  • Mention only — the model named you but didn’t link to anything. Counts toward Visibility/Sentiment/Rank, doesn’t add to Sources analytics.
  • Source only — the model linked to a domain (e.g. your blog) without naming your brand in the answer text. Appears in Sources, doesn’t add to Mentions.
  • Neither — the response doesn’t reference you at all.

Spotting “Mentioned” at a glance

BrandAxis surfaces a Mentioned indicator in two places so you can read your performance without opening anything:

  • On every source row in the Sources panel — the row is tagged Mentioned when at least one chat that surfaced that source also named your brand. An unmarked row means the AI referenced that domain or URL while answering about your space, but you weren’t part of the answer.
  • On every row in the Chats list — the chat is tagged Mentioned when your brand appears in that conversation. Unmarked chats are responses to your prompts where the AI didn’t name you.

Why this matters — turn unmentioned into mentioned

The unmarked rows are your action list:

  • Sources NOT Mentioned — the AI is already using these domains to answer about your space; you’re just not on them yet. These are the highest-leverage outreach and content targets. Get featured on them and the AI will start citing you alongside the article.
  • Chats NOT Mentioned — the AI answered your prompt without you. Open the chat to see who it named and which sources it pulled from. Those sources become your shortlist of where to show up next.

Action sequence: scan the NOT Mentioned sources, work out how to land on them, and watch your previously-unmarked chats start flipping to Mentioned over the following cycles.

Why sources matter

If you can identify which domains feed AI models when they answer about your industry, you can:

  • Pitch journalists and bloggers at frequently-referenced domains
  • Update your own pages that show up as sources
  • Spot misinformation sources before they spread

See Source domains & URLs for how to use this data, and Source categories for how we group domains by type.