Until 14 July, SEOmonitor detected brand mentions in AI Overviews and AI Search by analysing the response content and flagging any brand it identified. The approach worked well in most cases, but occasionally picked up names that are technically brands without being part of your competitive landscape - drug ingredient names, platform names like YouTube, and other incidental brand references that appeared in AI responses alongside genuinely competitive brands.
What we changed
On 14 July, we upgraded the brand detection algorithm to only consider a response as "branded" when it includes a brand that you can compete with. As an example: if the response on the keywords you are tracking returns “ChatGPT” it will no longer be enough to classify the topic as branded. Similarly, if brands like “youtube”, “facebook”, “wikipedia” and others appear by themselves that keyword will be considered as informational.
This makes the detection significantly more precise. The brands you see flagged in AI Overviews and AI Search now reflect the companies actually competing for those keywords in search, which is the signal that matters for your strategy.
What this means for your data
AIO mentions visibility is calculated as the share of search volume where your brand is detected, out of all search volume where any brand is present. Because the upgrade narrows what counts as a branded response, some keywords that were previously classified as branded will no longer be. This affects the baseline, which means you will see changes in mentions visibility for both your brand and your competitors from 2 July onwards.
This is not a change in performance, it is a more accurate representation of your SOV in the AIO and AI Search responses.
You will also see a cleaner split between commercial intent topics that return a branded response vs purely informational. Branded keywords will now more closely represent the terms you can realistically compete for.
What stays the same
Historical data up to and including 14 July is unchanged. The update applies from 15 July onwards.
To make the before/after transition easy to interpret, we have added a chart annotation in SEOmonitor marking the date of the change. When comparing performance across this period, the annotation will always be visible so the context is clear.
Edge Cases
Some of the competitor brands may include generic names like "Dove". By default SEOmonitor will only detect their mention if the brand is also cited in the AIO or AI Search. You can override this setting by clicking on the exclamation mark and enabling the toggle, which will mean that SEOmonitor will detect any mention of that term with a capital letter in the AIO/AI Search response and consider it as a mention of the brand:
