Mention rate
Definition
Mention rate is the fraction of AI answers that name a brand at least once, out of all answers collected for its tracked questions. A mention rate of 0.6 means the brand appeared in 60 percent of answers.
Mention rate is the presence number: the simplest, hardest-to-argue-with measure of whether AI knows you exist for a given question. It ignores position and volume; one mention in an answer counts the same as five.
Because assistants vary their answers run to run, a single ask proves little. Mention rate becomes trustworthy when it is computed over repeated collections, which is why serious measurement samples the same questions on a steady cadence rather than once.
