Brand Presence
The four tiers that describe how your brand appeared in a single AI answer.
Every AI answer SurfacedBy captures is classified into exactly one of four presence tiers. The tier is the verdict behind Brand Coverage, AI Mentions and the per-prompt breakdowns in the dashboard.
The four tiers
| Tier | What happened | Counts as a mention |
|---|---|---|
| Cited | The answer links a page of your site or of one of your own channels, either among the sources it actually uses or as an inline link in the answer text. | Yes |
| Named | The answer names your brand in its text, or shows your own Google card, without linking you. | Yes |
| Considered | Your page was among the sources the platform looked at, but the answer neither linked nor named you. | No |
| Missing | Your brand does not appear in the answer. | No |
The tiers are ordered and exclusive. An answer that links your page is Cited even if it also names your brand; an answer that names you without a link is Named even if the platform also looked at your page.
How your brand is recognized
- Links. An answer cites you when your domain, one of its subdomains, or another website you listed as yours is among the sources the answer uses, or is linked inline in the answer text. An inline link counts even when the platform left it out of its own source list.
- Your channels. A link to one of your own channels also cites you: your YouTube channel and its videos, your LinkedIn company page and its posts, your review profiles, your listings in directories and app stores, your social profiles, and press releases published through a release service that link back to your site. A channel counts once it is verified: listed in your site's own structured data, linked from your site under your brand's name, or added by you in Settings > Brand. The answer shows which channel it cited, for example "Cited through your channel". Reviews, articles and videos about you on someone else's channel are coverage, not your channel, and do not count as a citation.
- Your Google card. On Google AI Mode, an answer that shows your own business or product card (its title starts with your brand name) counts as Named, labelled "Shown as your Google card".
- Names. An answer names you when your brand name, or one of the other spellings saved in Settings > Brand, appears as a whole word in the answer text. Spacing and casing variants of those names match too. A link address sitting in the answer text is not treated as a mention of your name.
- Common-word names. If your brand name is also an everyday word, it counts only when the answer uses it as a proper noun, so ordinary uses of the word do not inflate your numbers.
Edits in Settings > Brand apply from your next check. Answers already measured keep the tier they were given.
If a platform returns no answer at all, that attempt is not scored as Missing. It is treated as a failed check rather than a measured answer.
Why Considered is not Missing
Considered means the platform reached your page and chose not to use it. That is a different problem from Missing, and it usually has a different fix: the page is discoverable but is not answering the question well enough to be quoted, so the work is in the content rather than in getting found at all. Treating the two as one number hides the prompts you are closest to winning.
Only some platforms show which sources they looked at but did not use, so Considered is common on some platforms and rare or absent on others. Its absence on a platform does not mean the platform never looked at your page, only that it did not say.
How tiers roll up
Mentioned is Cited plus Named. This is the grouping the AI Responses status filter uses, and it is the numerator of Brand Coverage: both tiers put your brand in front of the reader, which is what the metric measures. Considered and Missing are both outside the numerator.
A prompt is checked on your AI platforms in its own country, so one prompt produces several answers and each carries its own tier. A prompt can be Cited on one platform and Missing on another; the per-prompt view shows every platform's verdict side by side rather than flattening them to a single word.