When a prospect asks ChatGPT “which company for this need?”, the AI does not visit your site first. It answers with what the web says about you: the articles and reviews where your name appears. Each of those appearances is a mention.

Not all mentions are equal. AI filters them and ignores part of them. Here are the six rules that separate a mention that counts from a mention that does not exist, then the levers within reach without a press budget.

1. The mention lives on a site search engines respect.

AI filters its sources with quality criteria close to search engines’. A site stuffed with interchangeable advertorial content brings nothing, with Google as with ChatGPT.

The right reflex: aim for the sites where a mention would already have had value for your SEO. Press, your sector’s specialized media, recognized trade blogs. And play quality from the start: AI spam filters tighten year after year, and what slips through today will cost you tomorrow.

2. Your name is spelled out.

AI does not process links. An article that points to your site without writing your name is useful for Google, invisible to ChatGPT.

A mention without your brand written in plain letters does not exist for an AI. The name of the company, product or site must appear in the text, as is.

Useful corollary: a mention without a link keeps its full value. A mix of the two, some mentions linked, others not, is in fact what looks most natural.

3. The mention carries its own context.

An AI reuses ready-made phrasing. If the sentence that mentions you already answers the buyer’s question, it is ready to be lifted into an answer.

Two or three sentences are enough. Compare:

• “Among the players in this market, one can cite [Brand].” Your name floats, with no reason to pick you.
• “For a fixed-date launch, [Brand] delivers a custom site from €3,500 excl. VAT, training included.” The need, the name, the proof, in the same sentence.

The second gives the AI a reason to associate you with the question asked. That is the one to get when you review an article or brief a journalist.

4. The content around it is done properly.

Google weighs a page mostly by the authority of its links. AI reads the content: the dates, the sources cited, the data, the trade vocabulary.

A perfect mention in a hollow article gets diluted. The content where your name appears must read like a specialist wrote it: numbered, dated, sourced. It is the same standard as for your own site, where content that sounds generated gets spotted in seconds and takes your credibility down with it.

5. The page already ranks on Google or Bing.

When a question calls for fresh data, the AI runs a search and reads the top 10 to 20 results. Gemini, Perplexity and Claude rely on Google, ChatGPT on Bing.

The consequence is direct: a mention on a well-ranked page can be picked up on the AI’s very next search. A mention on an invisible page is not lost, it will feed the next models’ training, but its effect is counted in months or years instead of being immediate.

Quality being equal, favor the pages that already rank on the questions your clients ask.

6. The site that mentions you accepts AI crawlers.

Some media outlets block AI crawlers in their robots.txt file. A mention there stays readable for humans, invisible to the blocked AI. The equivalent of a nofollow link in SEO: the effort exists, the effect does not.

The check takes a minute: open sitename.com/robots.txt and look for Disallow lines targeting AI crawlers, GPTBot first. Do it before investing time or money in a mention.

Where to start, without a press budget.

No need to buy articles to apply these rules. A founder already has mentions within reach:

• Local and specialized press. A launch, a fundraise, a trade show are news. A precise press release, with numbers and dates, has its chances.
• Your trade’s directories and review platforms, where your name is spelled out on established domains.
• Your partners and clients. A case study on their site is a contextualized mention on a trusted domain.
• Interviews and podcasts that publish a transcript: every passage where your name appears becomes a mention AI can read.

And the first site to put in order is your own. It is the one AI cites first when asked about your name, and the one all mentions converge toward. If it is closed to crawlers or empty of facts, the rest of the work is wasted. On our projects, that technical groundwork is part of the scope of every site delivered.

A launch ahead and a site not ready to be cited? Book a call, thirty minutes to scope your project.