Entity
A distinct, uniquely identifiable thing — a person, place, organisation, product or concept — that a search engine can reason about…
Links
Co-citation and co-occurrence
The pattern of two entities being mentioned or linked together by third parties, which helps search engines infer that they are related.
In full
Co-citation is when two pages are cited by the same source; co-occurrence is when two terms or brands appear together in text without a link. Both contribute to entity association: repeatedly appearing in the same 'best tools for X' lists as established competitors helps a search engine and a language model place a brand in that category. It is one of the mechanisms behind why category-list coverage matters for AI visibility even without links.
Example
A new tool appears in six roundups alongside three established competitors, and starts surfacing when users ask for alternatives to them.
Related terms
Unlinked mentions
References to a brand, product or person in published content that do not include a hyperlink, and which can sometimes be converted into…
Brand mention monitoring
Tracking where a brand is named across the web and inside AI answers, including whether the description is accurate and the sentiment…
Citation share
The proportion of AI answer citations across a tracked prompt set that point to a given domain, used as the AI-era analogue of ranking…
Backlink
A hyperlink from one website to another, historically the strongest external signal search engines use to judge a page's importance and…