“Mention‑building” vs Link‑building
“Mention‑building” should be seen as important as link‑building. The more people mention your brand, the more reputation and brand prominence you gain. I’ve been saying this for over 5 years.
📌 Google just rolled out a new “Brand” panel inside Merchant Center — being tested across many eCommerce stores. 📈 A brand’s popularity now directly affects its rankings. If nobody searches for you, talks about you, or references you — you’re expendable to Google.
We’ve seen this play out in real time. Many “wall‑websites” — content‑heavy, function‑light — dropped off the map thanks to newer machine learning classifiers. If a site doesn’t serve a purpose, doesn’t have brand demand or business behind it, it becomes a second‑class citizen in the SERP — climbing up feels like chasing something that’s no longer there.
But here’s the key question:
Why do mentions matter so much to Google? Why not just focus on links?
- ✅ Mentions don’t pass PageRank (at least not directly).
- But they DO pass something arguably more valuable today:
- → Relevance
- → Co‑occurrence
- → N‑gram expansion
- → Semantic embeddings
I’ve used this in countless global projects — issuing press releases that mention my brand alongside target terms. It builds relationships between entities in the eyes of Google — and now, in AI mode too.
A lot of blackhat SEOs have even tried to simulate search demand, inventing “brand + product” queries or faking popularity with new web pages and social posts.
But let’s connect this to AI Mode: If your brand appears frequently with keywords like “flight ticket” + your brand + a location, and people are searching it… Google’s LLMs start associating your entity as the relevant option — based purely on document stats + query logs.
That’s why “mention‑building” is the future. SEO agencies focused only on link‑building are missing the bigger picture. Now’s the time to evolve into mention‑building and semantic visibility agencies. Because in AI Mode, you’re either part of the conversation, or you’re invisible.