Before a customer visits your website, an AI answer may already have introduced your business.
Was the introduction accurate? Did it explain what makes you useful? Did it mention you at all?
AI search visibility is how often, and how accurately, your business appears in answers from AI-powered search tools. A brand mention, a linked citation and a recommendation are different outcomes. Each deserves attention.
At Mention Group, we publish Mention.Report to track the changing landscape of AI search. SearchabiliTea is where we explain what those developments mean for the people running real businesses.
This month, the question is simple: who is supplying the information AI uses to talk about you?
The news: third-party sources shape AI answers
In its October 28 update, Muck Rack and Generative Pulse reported that more than 84% of citations in their analysis came from earned and third-party sources. That category includes journalism, academic research, government and NGO websites, encyclopedic sources and third-party corporate content. Journalism alone represented 22% of September citations. Read the research summary.
Those figures describe the study’s sample, not every AI answer. They also do not mean that 84% of citations come from news coverage.
My takeaway: businesses should pay attention to the information about them across the wider web, alongside the pages they publish themselves.
What Mention.Report adds to the conversation
The October 2026 edition of Mention.Report brings together published measurements of AI search, citations and brand discoverability. Its PR section already draws a distinction between journalism and the broader category of earned sources. The October 28 Muck Rack update adds a newer reading to that conversation.
The report is our research foundation. SearchabiliTea connects that evidence to decisions about your website, communications and reputation.
For your own business, start with three questions: where are we mentioned, what is being said, and which sources support it?
AI mentions, citations and recommendations are different
Large language models, or LLMs, generate language. Search-enabled AI tools can also retrieve web information while preparing an answer. Their sources and responses can vary.
A mention names your business. A citation links to a source. A recommendation presents your business as a possible choice.
A citation to your article does not necessarily recommend your company. A recommendation without a link may be harder to trace. An accurate mention is more useful than a flattering description of a service you do not offer.
Track these separately so your reporting reflects what a prospective customer actually sees.
Five ways to strengthen AI search visibility
1. Make your website specific
Explain what you do, whom you help and where you work. Answer the questions customers ask before buying. Add relevant examples, named expertise and clear contact information. Replace vague promises with details someone can check.
2. Check the information other sites publish
Review your business profiles, association listings and partner pages. Correct outdated services, locations and contact details. Prioritize sources your customers actually use and that accurately represent your business.
3. Give people a reason to reference you
Publish a useful finding. Explain a recurring customer problem. Share a documented result with permission. Offer relevant expertise to a journalist covering your field. Build a body of work that others can reference and readers can verify.
4. Make useful content accessible
Google says its existing SEO fundamentals apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode. Eligible pages must be indexed and able to appear with a snippet. It does not require special AI markup or a new machine-readable file. See Google’s guidance for AI search features.
Keep important information in readable text, connect related pages with internal links and check that technical settings permit access.
5. Measure a pattern over time
Choose a small, repeatable set of questions a customer might ask. Record the tool, date, wording, business mentions, citations and factual errors. Repeat the checks over time rather than treating a single answer as a visibility score. Compare those observations with actual inquiries and sales.
What to do this week
Ask a search-enabled AI tool to compare businesses offering your service in your market. Save the answer and inspect the sources. Then choose one concrete improvement: correct an outdated listing, answer a missing customer question or publish evidence of your expertise.
AI search visibility gives businesses another reason to keep their public information useful, accurate and worth referencing. That work serves the person making the decision, wherever they find you.
Explore Mention.Report for the research behind the conversation. To examine your own business’s visibility, contact Mention Group.