Mentioned, cited or recommended? The three ways AI answers include your brand

Short answer: a mention is your brand's name in the text of an AI answer. A citation is a link to one of your pages in the answer's sources. A recommendation is a mention that puts you near the top and speaks well of you. They are three different events, they often don't happen together, and a tool that reports only one of them can tell you a misleading story.

People mix these up all the time, in community threads and in tool dashboards. This guide explains what each one means, how the GEO tools in our directory count them, and which one to watch first. Every definition below comes from the vendors' own documentation, checked on 22 October 2026.

Mention: your name is in the answer

A mention means the AI wrote your brand name in its reply. No link is needed. An engine can describe you from what it learned during training and attach no source at all, and that still counts.

Tools count mentions per answer, not per word. Ahrefs' help center gives the example of an answer that names Salesforce three times: it still counts as one mention. Peec AI's main brand metric, Visibility, works the same way: the percentage of AI responses where your brand appears.

Mentions matter most for discovery. When someone asks "what's the best tool for X?", being named is the moment a buyer first hears of you, whether or not they ever click.

Citation: your page is one of the sources

A citation means the AI used a page from your website and showed it as a source: a footnote, an inline link or an entry in a sources panel. In ChatGPT, answers that searched the web can include citations, and a Sources button lists the pages used, according to OpenAI's help center. Google says that to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page has to be indexed and eligible for a snippet in normal Search, with no extra technical requirements.

There's a step before citation that most dashboards hide: retrieval. Ahrefs separates pages that were "cited" from pages that were only "found in" an answer. In ChatGPT's sources list, the second group shows up under "More": pages the engine read but chose not to cite. Peec AI's research makes the same split and puts a number on it: on Perplexity, 64% of retrieved URLs were never cited in the answer (Peec data from February 2026).

Two counting details are worth knowing before you compare numbers:

• One citation per domain per answer. Ahrefs counts a domain once per response, even if the answer links to five of its pages.
• A citation doesn't mean you were named. An engine can use your guide to explain a topic and then recommend a competitor.

Recommendation: named early, and in a good light

No tool has a metric literally called "recommended". Instead, they break it into parts you can measure:

• Position: where you appear among the brands an answer names. Peec AI reports your average position, where 1 means you were named first.
• Win rate: the share of answers where your brand is ranked first, ahead of every other brand named (Peec AI).
• Sentiment: how positively the answer describes you. Peec AI scores it from 0 to 100 based on the language around your name.

This is why a high mention count can still be bad news. If you're always named fifth, or named as the option with "limited features", you're visible but not recommended.

The gaps between them tell you what to fix

Peec AI's documentation points out that brand visibility and source visibility often split. That split is more useful than either number alone:

For most smaller brands, the place to start is outside their own site. The pages AI cites about your category are often review sites, comparison articles and forums. Getting listed or corrected there can move your mentions faster than rewriting your homepage.

Why "share of voice" differs between tools

Share of voice is the metric that varies most, so read the definition before you compare it with anything:

• Peec AI: your brand mentions as a percentage of all mentions of the brands you track.
• Ahrefs Brand Radar: your share of impressions, which Ahrefs estimates from the Google search volume behind each prompt, compared with other tracked brands.

Both depend on which competitors you set up. Ahrefs says so directly: AI share of voice is a comparative metric and can change a lot depending on how you've set up the entities for your brand. Add a competitor and your share falls, even if no AI answer changed. Compare share of voice within one tool and one setup, never across tools.

Which tools track what

All four tools below track both mentions and citations. The difference is how much detail you get on the recommendation side and how prices are set.

• Ahrefs Brand Radar counts mentions, citations, "found in" pages and impression-weighted share of voice. Its AI Visibility Index starts at $199/mo, and custom prompts are included with paid Ahrefs plans from Lite up, according to its product page.
• Peec AI reports visibility, share of voice, position, win rate and sentiment, plus retrieval and citation rates for every domain and URL. See our pricing table for its current plans.
• Otterly.AI Lite costs $29/mo for 15 prompts and includes brand visibility, sentiment analysis and citation source tracking.
• Rankscale Essentials starts at $20/mo and is sold yearly only (shown as $17/mo with the yearly discount). Citation analysis and sentiment analysis are listed for every plan. See our Rankscale review.

Prices above were checked on each vendor's official pricing or product page on 22 October 2026.

Our recommendation

1. Track mentions first. If you're not named in answers to category questions, nothing else matters yet. Start with visibility on 10 to 20 buyer questions.
2. Look at citations next, especially who gets cited instead of you. The source list is your to-do list: those are the pages shaping the answer.
3. Add position and sentiment once you're showing up. That's the difference between being on the list and being the recommendation.
4. Never compare share of voice across tools. Each tool defines it differently, and your competitor list changes the number.

If you haven't measured anything yet, start with our free manual method: how to check if ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews mention your brand. The terms used here are also in our glossary.