The Brand Present column was part of the legacy Citations dashboard, which is being replaced by Explorer as of the 2026-08-19 product update. It was designed to save you time by indicating whether your brand name appears on the cited page itself. The value is shown as Yes or No, based on an automated content analysis Scrunch runs on each URL.
Looking for the exact Explorer name or API field for a metric? The Scrunch Metrics Reference lists every metric, breakdown and filter with the API field it maps to.
This can be useful for quickly identifying which third-party citations may drive brand visibility in AI responses.
Going forward, this same page-content check lives in Explorer as the Citation Mention Rate metric (API field: brand_citation_mention_rate). It reports the share of cited URLs whose page content mentions the brand, out of all distinct cited URLs. Look for Citation Mention Rate in the Explorer metric picker.
Why You Might See Inaccuracies
Sometimes customers notice:
“Our brand is definitely listed on this page, but Scrunch shows ‘No.’”
This happens because the Brand Present check (and its Explorer equivalent, Citation Mention Rate) relies on Scrunch’s ability to retrieve and analyze the text of the page. A few common reasons for mismatches:
Bot-blocking or firewalls
Some sites use anti-bot protections (e.g., Cloudflare, Datadome) that prevent Scrunch from retrieving the page content.JavaScript-only content
Many ranking lists or tables load via JavaScript. Most AI crawlers (and Scrunch’s page analysis) do not execute JavaScript, so the brand name isn’t visible in the raw HTML.Recent performance bug (now fixed)
In some cases, Scrunch should display a warning (“Content not available for analysis”) instead of a “No.” A recent update caused this warning not to appear. That issue has been corrected.
Important Distinction: Citations vs. AI Mentions
It’s worth noting that this indicator is separate from Scrunch’s measurement of your AI visibility and citations in model responses:
The Brand Present value is an accessory value meant to give quick context about a cited page.
Your actual brand presence in AI answers is determined directly from model outputs, regardless of whether the brand was visibly present in the underlying page. In Explorer, that’s the Mentions Rate metric (API field: brand_presence_percentage), not Citation Mention Rate.
In other words: a “No” in this column does not mean your brand is missing from AI responses. It only reflects what Scrunch was able to retrieve from the cited page itself.
This concept is also available as a standalone metric in Explorer: Citation Mention Rate (API field: brand_citation_mention_rate), which reports the share of cited URLs whose page content mentions the brand. See Understanding Citation Metrics in Scrunch for how this metric fits alongside other citation metrics.
How to Interpret the Column
Yes → Scrunch detected your brand name in the plain text of the cited page.
No → Scrunch did not detect your brand name. This could mean:
Your brand is truly not present, or
Scrunch couldn’t fully access the page content (bot-blocking, JavaScript, etc.).
Warning (Content not available) → Scrunch could not analyze the page at all.
What to Do If You See a Mismatch
If the page is important for your visibility, check whether the content is accessible without JavaScript and that AI bots are allowlisted (see Guide to AI User Agents).
Use the Site Audit tab to test the URL and confirm whether AI crawlers can see your brand name.
Remember: even if the Brand Present column (or the Citation Mention Rate metric in Explorer) says “No,” your AI visibility metrics elsewhere in the dashboard, like Mentions Rate, remain accurate.
Key takeaway: The Brand Present column, and its Explorer successor Citation Mention Rate, are helpful shortcuts, not a definitive measure. Your AI presence data is unaffected by errors here, and we’re continuously improving how we detect mentions on complex or protected sites.