Brand mention.In plain English.

Bing says the more a business is mentioned across the web, the greater its popularity and the more likely it is to appear in search results, and it recommends listing on trusted sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor.

Google says its AI features can show what's being said about products and services across the web, including in blogs, videos and forum discussions. It also lists pursuing inauthentic mentions among the tactics you can ignore.

Google's local ranking guidance counts how many websites link to a business, so if a genuine mention has no link, it's worth asking the publisher to add one.

Example: a roofer named in a local newspaper's storm-repair story has a genuine mention. Asking the paper to link the name to the roofer's website turns it into a link as well.