Why brand mentions are the new backlinks
Google's Knowledge Graph and the LLMs behind ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude don't just read links — they read brand mentions in context. A steady drumbeat of your brand name appearing near your category keywords across trusted sites builds the entity signal these systems use to decide who to cite. It's why some brands with fewer backlinks still get pulled into AI Overviews ahead of larger competitors.