Unlinked Brand Mentions: How to Find and Reclaim Them

A Backlinko correlation study (2025) of 11.8 million results found the top result has three times more referring domains than positions 2 to 10, though a correlation study cannot show causation.

An unlinked brand mention is any page that names your business, product or people without linking to your website. These are some of the easiest links to earn, because the writer already knows and has chosen to talk about you. Below you will find how to find these mentions, decide which are worth chasing, write outreach that gets a friendly response, and recover links to broken pages on your own site.

Why unlinked mentions are worth your time

Most link building starts from zero: you have to convince someone you are worth mentioning. With an unlinked mention, that work is already done. The author has written your name. All you are asking for is a small edit that helps their readers find the thing they referred to.

That makes this one of the friendliest tactics in white-hat link building. You are not asking for a favour out of nowhere. You are pointing out a convenience for their audience. It also fits naturally into the step-by-step workflow I describe in how to do off-page SEO, where reclaiming links sits early on because it is low effort and low risk.

Mentions without links are not worthless on their own. They still build awareness and show that people talk about you. But a link makes the reference useful to readers and gives search engines a clear connection between the mention and your site.

Step 1: Build your list of names to monitor

Before you search, decide what counts as a mention of you. Most businesses only look for their company name and miss half the opportunities. Write down:

• Your business name, plus common misspellings and abbreviations.
• Product, service or brand names you own.
• Names of founders, directors and staff who are quoted or speak publicly.
• Proprietary things people might cite: a named method, a report, a free tool, an event you run.
• Your domain name written without a link, for example in a plain-text list of resources.

If your business name is a common word, add context terms to cut down on noise, such as your city, industry or product category.

Step 2: Find mentions with search, alerts and tools

There are three practical ways to find mentions. Most people use a combination.

Search operators

Google’s search operators let you run targeted searches by hand. Their behaviour changes from time to time, so treat results as a starting point rather than a complete list. Useful patterns include:

• "Your Brand Name" -site:yourdomain.com finds pages mentioning you that are not on your own site.
• "Your Brand Name" -site:yourdomain.com -site:facebook.com -site:linkedin.com strips out social profiles you already control.
• "Founder Name" "Your Brand Name" finds interviews, quotes and event listings.
• "Your Brand Name" intitle:review or "Your Brand Name" best finds reviews and roundup lists.

Search operators are free and flexible but slow if you have a lot of mentions. They are best for a one-off sweep.

Alerts

Free alert services, such as Google Alerts, email you when new pages appear that match a phrase. Set up an alert for each name on your list. Coverage is not complete, but alerts catch many new mentions soon after they appear, which is when a writer is most likely to update an article.

SEO and media monitoring tools

Many paid SEO suites and brand monitoring tools include a mentions feature that crawls the web and flags which mentions already link to you and which do not. They save time when you have a large volume. Their indexes differ, so no single tool sees everything.

Step 3: Decide which mentions to chase first

You will rarely have time to contact everyone. Sorting your list prevents you wasting effort on mentions that will never turn into useful links. Use this priority guide.

Before you contact anyone, check that the site itself is worth a link. My guide to judging backlink quality gives you a quick set of questions to run through.

Step 4: Write outreach that gets a yes

The tone of your email matters more than anything else. You are thanking someone for a mention and offering to make their article more useful. You are not demanding a link. Keep it short, specific and warm.

Template: a straightforward mention

Hi [Name],

Thank you for including [Business Name] in your piece on [topic]. It was great to see [specific detail they wrote].

If it would help your readers, you are welcome to link our name to [specific URL], which covers [what the page offers]. No problem at all if that does not suit your editorial style.

Thanks again, [Your name], [Role]

Template: when they cited your data or resource

Hi [Name],

I noticed you referenced our [report/guide/tool] in your article on [topic]. Thank you, I am glad it was useful.

In case readers want to see the full version, the original is at [URL]. A link there would let them check the details for themselves.

Best wishes, [Your name]

Outreach rules worth sticking to

• Address a real person, not “Dear Webmaster”.
• Mention something specific from their article so it is obvious you read it.
• Suggest the most useful page on your site, not automatically your homepage.
• Do not dictate keyword anchor text. Let them link your name naturally. My post on anchor text explains why branded anchors are the healthy default.
• Never offer money for the edit.
• Follow up once at most, then move on.

Step 5: Reclaim broken links pointing to your site

A close cousin of the unlinked mention is the broken link. Someone linked to you, but the page they linked to has moved or been deleted, so visitors land on an error. The link is wasted for both sides.

To find these, look at the pages on your site that other sites link to and check which of them now return a not-found error. Google Search Console can show you linking pages and pages that return errors, and most SEO tools have a report for broken backlinks. Then fix them in one of two ways:

1. Redirect the old URL. Add a permanent redirect from the dead URL to the closest relevant live page. This fixes every broken link to that URL at once, without contacting anyone.
2. Ask for an update. If there is no sensible page to redirect to, or the link sits on a high-value site, email the author with the correct URL. People generally appreciate being told about a broken link on their page.

Redirect to a page that genuinely matches the original content. Sending every broken URL to your homepage is unhelpful to visitors and is often treated as an error rather than a proper redirect.

Step 6: Track what you send and what you win

A simple spreadsheet is enough. Record the page URL, the date you found the mention, who you contacted, the date of contact, whether you followed up, and the outcome. Add a column for the link type you received and the page it points to.

Review it every month or so. You will spot patterns: which kinds of sites respond, which email version works, and which mentions keep coming in. Those patterns tell you where to focus. They may also show which of your assets get talked about most, which is useful input if you are planning digital PR on a small budget, because the things people already mention are often the best things to promote further.

If you write for other publications, every byline also becomes a potential mention. My post on guest posting done properly explains how to make sure those contributions are handled cleanly.

Questions people ask about unlinked brand mentions

Reclaiming mentions and broken links is steady, unglamorous work, but it builds a stronger profile with very little risk. If you would like help finding the opportunities you are missing, book a free audit and I will show you which mentions and broken links are worth recovering first.