Brand-citation rate is the share of an AI engine's answers, across a defined set of questions, that name a specific brand. It answers "how often does this engine mention us at all?" and is the demand-side counterpart to a citation count, which measures how often your pages are used as sources. A brand can have a high citation rate on one engine and a near-zero rate on another for the same questions, so the metric is only meaningful once you fix the engine and the question set.
The rate varies enormously by engine because engines retrieve differently. In a 2026 analysis of 34,234 AI responses by AI-visibility platform Leapd.ai, ChatGPT named a brand in about 0.59% of answers, Perplexity in about 13.05%, and Grok in about 27% — roughly a 46-times spread (single-vendor, directional; attribute "Leapd.ai, 2026" and hedge). Engines that search the live web on more queries, and that foreground their sources, tend to name more brands.
Brand-citation rate is distinct from three neighbours. It is not total mentions (a raw count rather than a share), not share of voice (your rate relative to competitors'), and not a first-party citation (which is about whose page is cited, not whether the brand is named). It also differs from being recommended: an answer can name a brand without endorsing it. Because a single blended figure hides the wide per-engine spread, treat brand-citation rate as a per-engine, over-time line rather than one number.