Glossary

AI visibility, in plain words

The terms in a SearchMention report, what each one measures, and what other AI visibility tools call it. Three words do most of the work: mentioned (the answer names you), cited (it links your page as a source) and read (ChatGPT read your page but used someone else).

AI visibility

The share of tracked questions where an AI engine mentions your brand. Mentioned in 2 of 16 questions is 13% visibility.

In your report: The headline of every report: “Mentioned by AI in 2 of 16 questions · 13% visibility”, then the count for each engine.

Also called: Visibility score (Profound), Brand coverage (Otterly), AI Visibility (Semrush)

Mentioned

The AI’s answer names your brand or store. One answer counts once, however many times it names you.

In your report: Each engine’s result per question: the position (“#2”) when the answer is a list, “Mentioned” otherwise, or “Not mentioned”.

Also called: Mention, Brand mention (Peec, Profound, Ahrefs, Semrush, Otterly)

Cited

The answer links one of your pages as a source. A page can be cited without your brand being mentioned, and mentioned without a page being cited.

In your report: “Your pages in AI answers” lists every page AI cited, how many times, and the questions it was cited for.

Also called: Citation, Used as a source (Peec), Domain citation (Otterly), Cited page (Semrush)

Read

ChatGPT read one of your pages while researching the answer, but the answer didn’t mention or cite you. You were found, then passed over: the fix is a page AI wants to quote, not getting found.

In your report: Shown for ChatGPT answers (the only engine that reports what it read), from October 2026: a “Read” result in the question table and the questions each page was read for.

Also called: Retrieved (Peec), Found in (Ahrefs)

Source

Any page an AI answer used, yours or someone else’s: reviews, round-ups, forums, marketplaces, competitor sites.

In your report: “Sources that mention you” and “Sources behind answers that didn’t mention you”: the second list is where to get mentioned next.

Also called: Cited source (Semrush), Cited website (Profound)

Question (prompt)

What a shopper or customer would ask an AI engine, in their words and their country, without naming your brand.

In your report: Each question is asked once per engine per run, from the store’s market.

Also called: Prompt, Query

Engine

The AI that answers: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini or Perplexity. ChatGPT is asked with the model ChatGPT gives free users by default.

In your report: Every result is shown per engine, because each one answers differently.

Also called: AI model, AI platform

No Overview

Google didn’t show an AI Overview for that search. It isn’t counted as a miss, because there was no AI answer to be in.

In your report: Shown in the AI Overviews column instead of a result.

Position

Where your brand appears when the answer lists several: #1 is first. Lower is better.

In your report: Per answer (“#2”) and as the average when mentioned.

Also called: Average position, Rank

Sentiment

How the answer talks about you: recommended, mentioned neutrally, or compared against something else.

In your report: Inside each answer, next to whether you were mentioned and your position.

Also called: Brand sentiment

Share of voice

Your mentions as a share of all company mentions in the answers: yours plus your competitors’.

In your report: In the report data; the report leads with “Who AI mentions”, the same comparison as a ranked list.

Also called: SoV, AI Share of Voice (Ahrefs), Citation share (Profound, for sources)

Competitor

A company that competes for the same customer: rival brands if you sell your own products, rival stores if you sell other brands. Companies you sell (or list) are “also mentioned”, not competitors.

In your report: “Competitors mentioned” and “Also mentioned” columns, and the “Who AI mentions” list. Tracked competitors are the ones you chose to follow.

Query fan-out

When an AI engine turns one question into several web searches, then combines what it found. ChatGPT can add brand names it already trusts to those searches, which is one reason well-known brands win more answers.

In your report: Recorded for every ChatGPT answer; the recommendations note how often ChatGPT searched for your competitors by name.

Also called: Search queries

Answered from memory

The AI answered without searching the web, from what it learned in training. Those answers have no sources and favour brands the model already knows.

In your report: Recorded for every ChatGPT answer and used in the recommendations: those answers are won through brand strength, not a single page.

AI readiness

A 0–100 score for how well a page is set up for AI shopping assistants and crawlers: structured data, content quality, image descriptions, crawler access in robots.txt, and site signals like the sitemap and llms.txt.

In your report: Shown next to every one of your pages AI cited.

Price check

Whether the price an AI answer quotes for your product matches the price on your product page, for every variant it sells at.

In your report: “AI quotes a different price than your page” in the headline, and the prices side by side under each product page.