Reddit talk about "brand mentions" grew 4.5 times in a year, and most of it is about AI

What we counted

We searched Reddit posts and comments back to 2005 for the exact phrase "brand mentions": both words, next to each other, in any case. A post counts if the phrase is in its title or text. The first match we found is from April 2008, and 14,792 posts and comments have used it since. Accounts on our list of known bots and comments posted with the moderator badge are left out, and so are removed posts and comments.

Our data for 2026 runs through September 2026, so every year-on-year number in this article compares the same nine months, January to September.

"Brand mentions" grew 4.5 times in a year

From 2016 to 2022 the phrase came up between 53 and 157 times in the first nine months of each year. It rose to 263 in 2023 and 445 in 2024. Then it took off: 1,996 in January to September 2025 and 9,068 in the same months of 2026, 4.5 times as many in one year and about 20 times as many as in 2024.

This isn't a few accounts posting more. The number of different accounts that wrote "brand mentions" went from 1,198 to 4,548, 3.8 times as many, and in 2026 the ten most active of them wrote 12% of the posts and comments. Reddit itself grew much more slowly: the number of posts and comments in our archive was 8% higher in January to September 2026 than a year earlier. Per million Reddit posts and comments, the phrase went from 0.61 to 2.56.

It peaked in May 2026 and has fallen since

By month, the high point was May 2026, with 1,577 posts and comments from 867 different accounts. By September 2026 it was down to 573 from 382 accounts, 64% below the peak and the lowest month since November 2025. That's still more than in September 2025 (417).

"Social listening" fell by about as much over the same months: from 728 posts and comments in March 2026 to 262 in September 2026, 64% lower. So the drop isn't only in this phrase. The data shows when it happened, not why.

Three in four mentions now come with AI

We also checked what else these posts and comments talk about. In January to September 2024, 15% of them also mentioned AI, ChatGPT, LLMs or AI search. In the same months of 2025 it was 56%, and in 2026 76%. The two rose together: today most people who use the phrase on Reddit bring up AI in the same post or comment.

Backlinks come up much less often and haven't grown in the same way: 21% of these posts and comments mentioned backlinks in 2025 and 23% in 2026.

Where people talk about brand mentions

In January to September 2026 the phrase came up in 1,226 subreddits, not counting personal profiles. The ten busiest of them hold 31% of all mentions. r/DigitalMarketing leads with 596 posts and comments, followed by r/seogrowth (358), r/aeo (354), r/SaaS (297) and r/AskMarketing (297).

Many of these communities are new. Of the 20 subreddits with the most mentions in 2026, 9 had their first post in 2024 or later, among them r/aeo (April 2024), r/GEO_optimization (August 2025), r/SEO_LLM (July 2025) and r/AISEOforBeginners (October 2025). Judging by their names, most of these 9 are about search optimization for AI tools. Across all subreddits, personal profiles aside, 44% of the 2026 mentions were in communities that didn't have a single post before 2024.

How it compares with other monitoring phrases

"Brand mentions" grew faster than the other phrases people use when they want to keep track of what Reddit says about them. "Social listening" went from 2,343 to 4,307 posts and comments, 1.8 times as many. "Track mentions" grew 3.0 times and "find reddit threads" 2.7 times.

Counting different accounts is the safer measure, because one busy account can move a small number a lot: a single account wrote 222 of the 603 posts and comments with "find reddit threads" in 2026. By accounts, "brand mentions" grew 3.8 times, "track mentions" 2.5, "social listening" 1.8 and "find reddit threads" 1.5.

What this data can't tell you

• Whether brand mentions on Reddit help a brand in Google or in AI answers. We counted how often people talk about it, not whether it works.
• What each writer meant. A match is someone using the words: in a question, an answer, a rule reminder, or a pitch for a service. We didn't sort them by intent.
• Every other way of saying it. "Brand mention" in the singular, "mentions of our brand" or "brand monitoring" aren't counted here.
• How broad the AI word list is. It includes "GEO", "AEO" and "GPT". With a narrower list ("AI", "LLM", "ChatGPT", "OpenAI", "Gemini", "Perplexity", "Claude", "Copilot" and "AI Overviews") the 2026 share is 75% instead of 76%.
• Every automated account. We leave out accounts on our list of known bots, but accounts that post for a business and aren't on that list are counted like anyone else.
• The rest of 2026. Our data ends in September 2026, and the monthly numbers since May 2026 could still go either way.

Method

Matching the phrase

We used the same search that powers KissMyPost: "brand mentions" as an exact phrase, case-insensitive, with any spaces or punctuation between the two words, in post titles, post text and comments. We then looked up every match in our archive to check the author and the date. A separate pattern match on the text found the phrase in 14,721 of the 14,792 posts and comments; the rest are edge cases of how the search splits words, and we count them as the search does.

Who counts

Posts and comments by accounts on our list of known bots are left out, and so are comments posted with the moderator badge and posts or comments that were removed. Posts and comments from deleted accounts are counted, but they don't count as different accounts.

Years and months

Each post and comment goes into a month by its creation time in UTC. Because our 2026 data ends in September, year-on-year comparisons use January to September of each year. On the monthly chart each value sits at the end of its month.

AI and backlinks

A post or comment "also mentions AI" if its text has one of these words or phrases as whole words, in any case: "AI", "LLM", "ChatGPT", "GPT", "OpenAI", "Gemini", "Perplexity", "Claude", "Copilot", "AI Overviews", "AI search", "GEO", "AEO", "generative engine" or "answer engine". It "mentions backlinks" if it has "backlink" or "backlinks".

Subreddits

The first post of a subreddit is the oldest post from it in our archive. Personal profiles (u/name pages) are left out of the subreddit table, the CSV and the share of new communities.

Checks

For the 12 subreddits with the most matches in 2025 and 2026, we also counted the phrase directly in the archive, month by month from January 2025 to September 2026. Comment counts matched the search in every month.

Source

Public Reddit archives back to 2005, plus our own collection for recent months. All counts come from one set of queries run on October 25, 2026. If you spot a mistake, tell us and we'll fix it here with a dated note.

Questions people ask

The data

The monthly, per-subreddit and per-phrase counts behind this article are in these files. They're free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; please credit KissMyPost and link to this page.

• CSVMonthly counts, April 2008 to September 2026Posts and comments with "brand mentions" by month, different accounts, how many also mention AI or backlinks, and the count per million Reddit posts and comments.
• CSVCounts by subredditAll subreddits with at least 5 mentions: posts and comments and different accounts for January to September 2025 and 2026, all-time count and the month of the first post. Personal profiles left out.
• CSVRelated phrases, 2025 and 2026"brand mentions", "social listening", "track mentions" and "find reddit threads": posts and comments and different accounts, January to September 2025 and 2026.
• PNGMain chart, 1600 × 1000The yearly chart on this page as an image.

This study comes from the archive behind KissMyPost, a Reddit analytics tool. Its search shows where any phrase of up to three words, a brand name included, came up in Reddit posts and comments back to 2005: by month, by subreddit, and in the threads themselves.