# Mention Rank

Source: https://support.seoai.de/docs/mention-rank/

> Where your brand sits among the brands an AI answer names, and how often you make the top three.

Ask an AI for the best CRM for agencies and the answer usually names several options. Mention Rank tells you where your brand sits in that list: named first, third, or not at all. For buying questions this is often the number that matters most, because many readers only look at the first names.

## How the rank is measured

1. After each run, the analysis lists every brand, company and product the answer names as an option, provider or recommendation.
2. Sources the answer only quotes are left out: rating portals, directories, search engines and maps, video platforms, encyclopedias and test institutes. They appear on the result page as not counted.
3. SEOAI sorts the list by where each name first appears in the answer text. The order comes from the text itself, the AI is never asked to rank anything.
4. Your place in that list is your rank in that answer. Your brand name, your aliases and your domain all count, so "HubSpot CRM" and "HubSpot" are the same brand.

## Avg mention rank

The average of your rank over the answers that name you. 1.0 means you were named first every time. Lower is better.

Answers that do not name you are left out of the average, so it never drifts toward zero. How often you are named at all is your Mention Share. The delta compares against the previous period of equal length: a negative delta means you moved up.

## Top-3 rate

The share of analyzed answers that name your brand among the first three brands. An answer that names no brand at all still counts in the denominator, so the Top-3 rate is never higher than the share of answers that name you.

## Which prompts count

By default the rank counts best-of, comparison and unclassified prompts, the questions where the order of the brands means something. For brand, definition, how-to and fact prompts, being named first says little: an answer about your own brand names you first by default, and how-to answers name tools and integrations in passing.

Switch to All prompts in the Mention rank card to count every prompt. The prompts table follows the same switch: prompts outside the selection show a dash. You can change a prompt's intent on the topic page, and the rank follows at once.

The dashboard card and the PDF report always count the default selection, best-of, comparison and unclassified prompts. They have no switch.

## Where you see it

1. Dashboard: the Mention rank card with the average rank over the last 30 days, its change versus the 30 days before, and the Top-3 rate
2. Reports: the Mention rank card with the average rank, the Top-3 rate and a daily chart per platform
3. The prompts table in Reports: the average rank per prompt, and per platform the rank in the newest answer that named brands next to the average
4. The PDF report and Pulse emails: the average rank and Top-3 rate with their change, the daily chart, and a table with the newest and average rank per prompt and platform, up to 15 prompts with your best rank first
5. The result page of every run: the brands named in the answer, in order, with your brand marked, plus the names that were not counted
6. The prompts CSV: an average mention rank column, filled for every prompt whatever its intent

Until the period has an analyzed answer, the dashboard card shows a dash with "No analyzed answers yet" and the PDF a short note instead of the numbers. You never see a rank of 0 or a Top-3 rate of 0% that was not measured.

## Mention rank versus citation position

Two different orders, two different questions:

1. Avg citation position is the order of your page among the sources an answer links. It says how prominent your content is as a source.
2. Mention rank is the order of your brand among the names in the answer text. It says how strongly the AI recommends you.

A brand can be named first and cited last, or cited without being named at all. Watch both.

## When you change your name or aliases

SEOAI keeps every brand an answer named, not just yours. When you save a new name, new aliases or a new domain on the brand, it checks those stored names again for every past answer, usually within two minutes. Your rank history then follows the new aliases, with no new analysis and no extra cost.

Mentions and sentiment of past answers stay as they were analyzed. An answer where the analysis found a mention of your brand keeps its rank, even if you remove the alias it was found under.

> **Note:** Mention rank comes from the answer analysis, the same step that finds mentions and sentiment. On the Free plan it needs your own OpenRouter key; paid plans include it. Answers analyzed before the brand list existed got their brand list afterwards when they were analyzed with the included analysis. Answers analyzed with your own OpenRouter key did not, because SEOAI never spends your key on its own. Those have no rank and do not count in the Top-3 rate, so they never pull it down.

**[Mention Share](https://support.seoai.de/docs/mention-share)**

**[Citation vs mention](https://support.seoai.de/docs/citation-vs-mention)**

**[Aliases and name recognition](https://support.seoai.de/docs/aliases-and-recognition)**