1. A mention is an appearance
A mention occurs when an answer names your organization, product, or another clearly identified entity. It can be positive, neutral, critical, or simply contextual. A list of options may mention a product without recommending it. A warning may name the same product for an entirely different reason. Before counting a mention, define the accepted brand names and aliases, and check ambiguous matches manually. In a fictional example, “Luma” might refer to several unrelated businesses. A matching word alone is not enough to establish that the answer discussed your organization.
2. A citation points somewhere
For this course, a citation is a visible source reference or link attached to an answer. Record the destination URL, not just the displayed domain. A citation to your page and a mention of your brand can occur together, separately, or neither can occur. Your tutorial may support a general explanation without the assistant naming your company. Conversely, an assistant may name your product while linking to an independent review. Separate these events in your records so you can ask the right question: were we named, was our content used as a visible source, or was a claim supported?
3. Inspect whether the source supports the claim
A link is a starting point for verification. Open the cited page and locate the exact passage relevant to the nearby claim. Check the date, scope, version, and any exceptions. If an answer says a service operates internationally but the source lists only three countries, the link does not support the broader statement. Record the mismatch instead of counting the citation as an unqualified success. For your own pages, place scope beside the claim: who qualifies, where the offer applies, and when the information was last checked. This makes human review less dependent on inference.
4. Design a passage that stands on its own
Citation readiness is an editorial question: could a reader understand and verify this passage without reconstructing the entire website? Start with a direct answer, name its subject, and include necessary conditions in the same section. Avoid pronouns whose meaning depends on a distant paragraph. Replace “This is available everywhere” with the actual service name and confirmed service area. Use descriptive headings and stable source links. These practices help readers and reviewers; they are not a proven formula for earning citations. Citation readiness is not a scored dimension of the current Suprara scanner, which does not observe model answers or passage selection.
5. Report examples with their limits
Save the prompt, provider, product or mode, language, time, and full response for an observed example. Include the cited URLs and your classification of the mention. If you cannot preserve the full response, describe that limitation. Avoid turning a single favorable answer into “AI recommends us.” A precise statement is “Our brand appeared in this recorded answer to this prompt.” When reporting a collection, retain unfavorable and missing results as well. The purpose is to learn where information is represented accurately, not to produce a highlight reel that conceals the test conditions.
Apply it in your own notes
Review one answer you have actually saved, or write a clearly labeled fictional example. Mark every entity mention and source link separately. Pick one claim and check whether its cited page supports the same scope. Then rewrite one passage from your own content so the subject, answer, conditions, and supporting link sit together.
Get a worksheet →Practice questions
1. A brand is named without a source link. What occurred?
2. What should you do with a citation that overstates its source?
3. Does a strong public-page scan score prove that your page was cited?