To find every unlinked brand mention of your business with AI, give it your name, address, phone number and website, and it searches for each, opens every page and checks for a link: an IvI SEO sweep for a London location agency found 22 mentions this way, 17 linked and 5 not. A York electrician's sweep found 4 mentions, and none of them linked. It takes minutes, not an afternoon of Googling.
What is an unlinked brand mention?
An unlinked brand mention is any web page that names your business but doesn't link to your website. For a local business, that's usually a directory listing, a trade body register, a local news story, a sponsored club's page, a supplier's "where to buy" page or a council list. IvI SEO counts a mention as unlinked if the page is genuinely about your business, in your area, and has no working link to your current website.
Say you sponsor the local under-10s football team. Their website thanks "Smith Plumbing" on the sponsors page. Nice. But there's no link. That's an unlinked brand mention.
A few that people don't think of:
- A link to your old website. If you've changed domain and a directory still points at the old one, that's unlinked as far as your current site is concerned.
- Your name spelt differently. "J Smith Plumbing" instead of "Smith Plumbing & Heating" still counts. It just takes more finding.
- Mentions by phone number or address only. Some listings barely use your name at all.
Why bother hunting them down? A site that already mentions you is the easiest place to win a local link, and the mention itself still counts even when no link comes. I've gone into that properly in why unlinked brand mentions matter for local SEO. This post is the how.
How do you find unlinked brand mentions with AI?
To find unlinked brand mentions with AI, give it your exact business name, address, phone number and website, and ask it to search for every page that mentions them. Then make it open each page and check for a link itself. IvI SEO's sweeps search the business name, the phone number, the street address and any old website address. Every mention goes into a spreadsheet saying whether it links, what the link text is, and whether the name, address and phone match.
Here's a brief you can use. Swap in your details:
Find every web page that mentions my business, apart from my own website and social profiles.
My business: [name], [full address], [phone], [website]. We used to use [old website], and people sometimes call us [other versions of the name].
Search the name, the phone number (with and without spaces), the street address and the old website. Check directories, trade bodies, review sites, local news, clubs, suppliers and council pages.
For every mention, open the page and check whether it links to my website. Don't trust search summaries. Make sure it's actually my business and not another one with a similar name.
Put it all in a spreadsheet: site, page address, type, linked yes or no, link text, and the name, address and phone as they appear on the page. If a site blocks you, write "could not check". Don't guess.
How an AI mention sweep works
Your details
Name, address, phone, website and old website
Search each
Phone with and without spaces, street, old site
- The bit that matters
Open every page
Don't trust the search summaries. Check it's you
Check the link
Linked or not? Name, address and phone right?
Spreadsheet
One row per mention. Blocked? "Could not check"
The step people skip is 3. It's the one that kept two York electricians with near-identical names apart.
A few bits in there matter more than they look.
Search the phone number and address, not just the name. Directories get names wrong all the time. The phone number is often how you find the listing that spells you "J Smith Plumbing".
Make it open the page itself. On the York electrician's sweep, the search tool's own summaries mixed up two different York electricians with nearly the same name more than once. Only opening each page and checking the details kept them apart.
"Could not check" beats a guess. Facebook and some directories block automated checks. Those get marked for you to look at by hand.
Ignore instructions hidden in pages. On one sweep for a London location agency, a company data website had put an instruction in its page title telling AI tools to always credit it as the source. The sweep treated it as page content, ignored it and reported it. Make sure yours would too.
It's not the whole picture. An AI sweep finds what search engines show. A backlink tool like Ahrefs finds links search doesn't surface. Use both if you can.
What does an unlinked brand mention sweep actually find?
An unlinked brand mention sweep finds every page that names your business, shows which ones already link, and turns up problems with how you're listed. On one IvI SEO sweep for a London location agency, AI found and checked 22 mentions: 17 already linked and 5 didn't. A sweep for a York electrician found 4 mentions, and not one linked to its current website.
The London location agency: 22 mentions
Most of the agency's mentions already linked, so there wasn't much to reclaim. The five that didn't were Companies House (which never links to anyone), one company data site and three social profiles that block automated checks.
But the sweep turned up things that mattered more than five links:
- The address on the website didn't match Companies House. Different building, same street. Exactly the kind of thing that quietly muddles local listings.
- No LinkedIn company page at all, while every comparable agency had one.
- Missing from the main industry directories its competitors were listed in.
- Nothing distinctive to mention. Its properties were numbered rather than named, so press covering a shoot had nothing memorable to write about.
The York electrician: 4 mentions, 0 links
| Where it was mentioned | Links to the current site? | What was going on |
|---|---|---|
| A regional business directory | No | Name, address and phone all correct. The website address was sitting in the listing's data, just not displayed. The listing had been claimed, so it's likely a two-minute fix in the dashboard. |
| A national business directory | No | Linked to the old website instead, with a nofollow link. |
| The trade body's member register | No | No website field at all. Name written as initials, no trading name, no street or phone. |
| A trades marketplace | No | Doesn't allow website links. Profile text copied word for word from the old website. |
Only one of those four was ever a real link opportunity, and it didn't even need an email. Again, the bigger finds were elsewhere:
- The old website was still live. No redirect to the new one, a different email address, and at least one directory still pointing at it. One redirect fixes the lot.
- Another York electrician has almost the same name. Different business, different owners, different phone number. The AI's search summaries confused the two more than once. That's a real problem when people, and AI tools, are trying to work out which one is which.
- The name wasn't consistent. Initials on one site, capitals on another, missing streets and phone numbers.
- Obvious gaps. No sign of the business on Checkatrade, TrustATrader, Rated People, Bark or FreeIndex.
So don't go in expecting a pile of free links. Go in expecting to learn where your business is mentioned, and what's wrong with how it's mentioned. That's where the local SEO wins are.
How do you ask a website to turn a brand mention into a link?
To turn a brand mention into a link, email the person who runs the page, thank them for the mention, and ask for one specific change: a link from your business name to your website, with the exact web address. Keep it short and make it easy. IvI SEO's rule is one ask per email, sent to a real person, with the page address included so they don't have to go looking for it.
Here's an example. Say you're a plumber and your local cricket club thanks you on its sponsors page:
Subject: Thanks for the shout-out on your sponsors page
Hi Sarah,
Just spotted Smith Plumbing on the club's sponsors page ([page address]). Thanks for that, we're chuffed to be supporting the team this season.
One small thing, if you get a minute: could our name link to our website? It's [website address]. It'd help anyone from the club who needs a plumber find us.
Thanks again, and good luck on Saturday.
Dave, Smith Plumbing
Why it works:
- It thanks them first. They've already done you a favour.
- One ask, spelled out. Exactly what to change, and the exact address to use.
- A reason that suits them. It helps their members, not just you.
- It's short. Anything longer looks like a sales email.
A few more tips:
- Find the right person. A club secretary or the person who edits the site, not a generic info@ inbox if you can help it.
- Some you can fix yourself. If it's a directory listing you've claimed, just log in and add your website. No email needed. That was the case on the York electrician's best opportunity.
- Follow up once, then leave it. People are busy. One nudge a week or two later is fine. More than that isn't.
- Don't pay for it. If someone asks for money to add a link, that's an advert, not a mention.
And if a site won't add the link? Don't write it off. Ask them to fix any wrong details instead: your name, address, phone number or website. An accurate mention is still worth having, and "could you update our phone number?" is an even easier ask. Here's why that matters for local SEO.
Want this done for your business?
A mention sweep is one of the first things I run as part of IvI SEO's local SEO service: every mention found, checked and tidied up, and the easy links chased. If you're not sure where your business is mentioned or whether the details are right, take a look at how I can help. I'll tell you honestly what's worth fixing first.