# Brand mention scanner skill Human Guide

## What This Is For
Brand mention and authority scanner for AI visibility. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for search and SEO workflows: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Brand mention scanner skill agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for brand mention scanner skill.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Brand mention scanner skill guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- YouTube is the second-largest search engine and the largest video platform globally (2.5B+ monthly users).
- AI training datasets heavily incorporate YouTube transcripts, descriptions, and metadata.
- Google's Gemini and AI Overviews directly reference YouTube content.
- Perplexity and ChatGPT both index and cite YouTube video content.
- YouTube transcripts are particularly valuable because they contain natural language mentions in conversational context, which aligns with how AI models process and generate text.
- **Brand YouTube channel:** Does the brand have an active YouTube channel? How many subscribers? Video count? Upload frequency?
- **Third-party video mentions:** Are other YouTubers or channels mentioning the brand? In what context (reviews, tutorials, comparisons)?
- **Video descriptions:** Does the brand name appear in video descriptions of industry-relevant content?
- **Video transcripts:** Is the brand mentioned in spoken content of relevant videos? (AI models index transcripts)
- **YouTube search presence:** When searching "[brand name]" on YouTube, do results appear? Are they positive?
- **Comment mentions:** Is the brand mentioned in comments on relevant industry videos?
- Reddit is one of the most heavily indexed platforms in AI training data (confirmed in Google's $60M/year Reddit licensing deal, 2024).

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Core Insight, Platform Importance Ranking for AI Citations, YouTube Mentions -- Correlation ~0.737 (STRONGEST), Reddit Mentions -- High Correlation, Wikipedia Presence -- High Correlation, LinkedIn Presence -- Moderate Correlation, Other Platform Presence -- Supplementary, Quora, Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange, GitHub.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- Wikipedia Check (IMPORTANT — use BOTH methods to avoid false negatives):
- | **Negative** | Complaints ("Avoid [brand]", "[Brand] has terrible support"), downvoted recommendations, negative comparisons |
- **Post Frequency:** [Weekly/Monthly/Rare/Never]
- Participate authentically (do not shill -- Reddit communities detect and punish this).
- Hire a Wikipedia-knowledgeable consultant -- do NOT edit your own article (conflict of interest).
- Ensure your Wikidata entry is complete even if you do not have a Wikipedia article.

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Brand mention scanner skill human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the zubair-trabzada/geo-seo-claude skill entry for `geo-brand-mentions`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Brand Mention Scanner Skill

## Core Insight

Brand mentions correlate approximately 3x more strongly with AI visibility than traditional backlinks. An Ahrefs study published in December 2025, analyzing 75,000 brands across AI search platforms, found that **unlinked brand mentions** -- references to a brand name without a hyperlink -- are a stronger predictor of whether AI systems cite and recommend a brand than Domain Rating or backlink count.

The critical finding: **the platform where the mention appears matters enormously.** Not all mentions are equal. A mention on YouTube or Reddit carries far more weight for AI citation than a mention on a low-authority blog, because AI training data and retrieval systems disproportionately index high-engagement platforms.

This inverts a core assumption of traditional SEO. In traditional SEO, a backlink from a high-DR site is the gold standard. In GEO, an unlinked mention on Reddit or a YouTube video description may be more valuable than a dofollow backlink from a DR 70 blog.

---

## Platform Importance Ranking for AI Citations

Based on the Ahrefs December 2025 study and corroborating research from Profound (2025) and Terakeet (2025):

### 1. YouTube Mentions -- Correlation ~0.737 (STRONGEST)

**Why YouTube matters most:**
- YouTube is the second-largest search engine and the largest video platform globally (2.5B+ monthly users).
- AI training datasets heavily incorporate YouTube transcripts, descriptions, and metadata.
- Google's Gemini and AI Overviews directly reference YouTube content.
- Perplexity and ChatGPT both index and cite YouTube video content.
- YouTube transcripts are particularly valuable because they contain natural language mentions in conversational context, which aligns with how AI models process and generate text.

**What to check:**
- **Brand YouTube channel:** Does the brand have an active YouTube channel? How many subscribers? Video count? Upload frequency?
- **Third-party video mentions:** Are other YouTubers or channels mentioning the brand? In what context (reviews, tutorials, comparisons)?
- **Video descriptions:** Does the brand name appear in video descriptions of industry-relevant content?
- **Video transcripts:** Is the brand mentioned in spoken content of relevant videos? (AI models index transcripts)
- **YouTube search presence:** When searching "[brand name]" on YouTube, do results appear? Are they positive?
- **Comment mentions:** Is the brand mentioned in comments on relevant industry videos?

**Scoring for YouTube (0-100):**

| Score | Criteria |
|---|---|
| 90-100 | Active channel with 10K+ subscribers, regular uploads, brand mentioned in 20+ third-party videos, appears in YouTube search results for industry terms |
| 70-89 | Active channel with 1K+ subscribers, brand mentioned in 10-19 third-party videos, some YouTube search presence |
| 50-69 | Channel exists with some content, brand mentioned in 5-9 third-party videos, limited YouTube search presence |
| 30-49 | Channel exists but inactive, brand mentioned in 1-4 third-party videos |
| 10-29 | No channel or empty channel, brand mentioned in 1-2 videos only |
| 0-9 | No YouTube presence whatsoever |

---

### 2. Reddit Mentions -- High Correlation

**Why Reddit matters:**
- Reddit is one of the most heavily indexed platforms in AI training data (confirmed in Google's $60M/year Reddit licensing deal, 2024).
- AI systems heavily weight Reddit for product recommendations, comparisons, and user sentiment.
- "Reddit" is now appended to an estimated 10-15% of Google searches by users seeking authentic opinions.
- Perplexity frequently cites Reddit threads as sources.
- ChatGPT and Claude both reference Reddit discussions when answering product/service questions.

**What to check:**
- **Subreddit presence:** Is the brand discussed in relevant subreddits? Which ones?
- **Mention volume:** How many Reddit threads mention the brand? What is the trend (increasing/decreasing)?
- **Sentiment:** Are mentions mostly positive, negative, or neutral? What are common praise points and complaints?
- **Official presence:** Does the brand have an official Reddit account? Do they participate in discussions? Have they done AMAs?
- **Recommendation threads:** Does the brand appear in "What do you recommend for X?" threads? Is it the top recommendation or an also-ran?
- **Subreddit community:** Does the brand have its own subreddit? How active is it?

**Scoring for Reddit (0-100):**

| Score | Criteria |
|---|---|
| 90-100 | Frequently recommended in relevant subreddits, predominantly positive sentiment, active official presence, own subreddit with 5K+ members, appears in top recommendations for industry queries |
| 70-89 | Regularly mentioned in relevant subreddits, mostly positive sentiment, some official presence, appears in multiple recommendation threads |
| 50-69 | Mentioned in several relevant threads, mixed sentiment, brand name is recognized by community members |
| 30-49 | Occasional mentions, limited to 1-2 subreddits, no official presence |
| 10-29 | Rare mentions, brand largely unknown on Reddit |
| 0-9 | No Reddit presence |

---

### 3. Wikipedia Presence -- High Correlation

**Why Wikipedia matters:**
- Wikipedia is one of the highest-authority sources in AI training data. All major AI models have been trained on Wikipedia dumps.