Unlinked brand mentions: find them and win the link

An unlinked brand mention is a web page that names your business, product or people without linking to your website. Turning one of these brand mentions into a link is the easiest link building there is: the writer already knows you, already chose to mention you, and only needs a reason to add the link.

The work comes in three parts: finding the mentions, choosing which deserve an email, and writing an email short enough to get a yes.

How to find unlinked brand mentions

Say you run Fennel, a made-up meal-kit company at fennelbox.com. Three methods, from free and slow to paid and fast.

Google, for the back catalogue

Google documents a handful of search operators: quotes for an exact phrase, a minus sign to exclude, site:, before: and after: (Google's search refinements). Combined:

"Fennel" "meal kit" -site:fennelbox.com -site:instagram.com -site:facebook.com -site:linkedin.com after:2025-10-01

That finds pages from the last year that mention you, minus your own site and the social profiles that would never give you a useful link anyway.

Then check each result. Looking for your domain on the visible page will not tell you whether there is a link, because anchor text hides the address. Open the page source (Ctrl+U in most browsers) and search it for fennelbox.com. No match means no link.

Run the same search for:

• Product names and people's names, because journalists quote founders more often than they name companies.
• Your own data. If you publish a survey or a price index, search a distinctive phrase from it. Pages that use your numbers without credit are the strongest case you will ever have.
• Misspellings, which by definition rarely come with a correct link.

Alerts, for new mentions

New mentions are the best ones to chase, because the article was published days ago and the writer still remembers it. Set Google Alerts and Talkwalker Alerts on the same queries; the free brand monitoring stack covers the settings that make them useful. Check every alert for a link the day it arrives.

SEO tools, for scale

Prices below were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 4 October 2026.

Ahrefs Content Explorer. Search your brand, exclude your own site with -site:, turn on One page per domain, and enter your domain under Highlight unlinked domains. Sites that have never linked to you are highlighted, and the export has an option for only the highlighted pages (Ahrefs' own walkthrough).

Note what that highlights: domains that have never linked to you, not pages without a link. A site that linked to you once, years ago, from another article will not be highlighted even if today's mention is unlinked. Content Explorer is not in the $129 Lite plan; it starts with Standard at $249 a month (Ahrefs pricing explained).

Semrush Brand Monitoring. A separate app at $79 a month with 3 queries and a 7 day trial. Put your URL in its Track backlinks field and you can filter mentions with or without that link (Semrush's help page). It only finds historical mentions from the 30 days before you create the query, so it is a tool for new mentions, not the back catalogue.

Which mentions are worth an email

Not every unlinked mention deserves outreach. Sort them before you write a word.

Two quick checks before emailing anyone.

Does the site link out at all? Skim two or three of its other articles. A site that never links to the businesses it writes about will not start with you, and you can skip it.

Is the page alive? If it gets no search traffic and nobody shares it, a link from it is worth little. An SEO tool's traffic estimate is enough to judge; you do not need precision.

The outreach email

Short, specific and easy to say yes to. Find the author's name from the byline rather than writing to a generic inbox, and link to the page that serves their reader, which is often not your homepage.

Subject: Your piece on [topic]

Hi [first name],

Thanks for including Fennel in "[article title]". [One sentence that
shows you actually read it.]

Small request: could you link our name to [exact URL]? Readers who
want to try it would land on [what that page shows], which saves
them a search.

Either way, thanks for the mention.

[Your name], [role] at Fennel

If they used your data, the middle paragraph becomes: "The figure on [topic] comes from our [study name]; could you credit it with a link to [URL] so readers can see the method?" That one gets the most yeses, because credit is a norm writers already accept.

Send one follow-up a week later, two lines long, then stop. Do not attach anything, do not offer a guest post, and do not offer payment or free products in exchange. Google's spam policies list "exchanging money for links", "exchanging goods or services for links" and "sending someone a product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link" as link spam unless the link is marked sponsored or nofollow (Google's spam policies).

The competitor version

Pages that mention two or more of your competitors but not you are pages that already cover your category: roundups, comparisons, "best X for Y" lists and journalists' explainers. Getting added to them is often worth more than converting a mention you already have.

Say Fennel's rivals are the made-up Basil Box and Pantry Club:

"Basil Box" "Pantry Club" -"Fennel"
"Basil Box" "Pantry Club" best -"Fennel"

The second line narrows to lists and comparisons. Content Explorer runs the same search at scale, and the competitor backlink analysis guide covers the linked version of this job: sites that link to rivals and not to you.

The email changes. You are asking to be included, so give the writer what they need to include you fairly: one sentence on how you differ, your price, and an offer to answer questions. If you offer a free trial so they can test it, do not make it conditional on coverage or a link.

Set alerts on competitors' names as well. When a rival gets written about, the same writer covers your category, and a polite note that week is better timed than any cold pitch.

Mentions on other sites are outside what our own Figo tracks. What it does report, weekly, is when a competitor publishes new pages and blog posts on its own site, including new comparison and "alternatives" pages, which tell you which rivals they are positioning against.

Keep a simple tracker

One row per mention: URL, site, date found, type, date contacted, follow-up date, outcome. Review it monthly.

After a quarter you will know which kinds of sites say yes, which page you should be asking them to link to, and whether the whole exercise is worth more of your time than the other ways of earning links. For many small businesses it is the best hour of link building in the month, precisely because nobody has to be persuaded you exist.