Entity Salience
Analyze how prominently your brand and key concepts appear in AI engine knowledge graphs.
Last updated August 31, 2026
Entity Salience measures how prominently specific entities (your brand, products, key concepts) appear in the context of AI engine responses - not just whether you’re mentioned, but how central you are to the answer.
What is entity salience?
When an AI engine generates an answer, it draws on entities (people, companies, products, concepts) and their relationships. Salience refers to how central and prominent an entity is in a given answer:
- High salience - the entity is the main subject; the AI is specifically recommending or explaining it
- Low salience - the entity is mentioned briefly in passing or as part of a list
- No mention - the entity doesn’t appear at all
AEO Goal scores your brand’s salience in each tracked prompt response, not just whether you appear.
Salience scoring
Each tracked prompt result receives a salience score per brand mentioned:
| Score | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 1.0 | The entity is the primary subject of the answer |
| 0.7-0.9 | Highly prominent - featured recommendation or detailed explanation |
| 0.4-0.6 | Moderate - one of several options discussed |
| 0.1-0.3 | Low - brief mention, listed as an also-ran |
Viewing entity salience data
- Go to Citations or Prompts.
- Click on any prompt result.
- In the answer detail panel, each mentioned brand shows its salience score.
The summary view in Citations shows your average salience score across all mentions - a high citation rate at low salience means you’re being mentioned but not recommended.
Improving salience
High salience correlates with:
- Being the most comprehensive authoritative source on a topic
- Having original research or data that AI engines reference
- Strong E-E-A-T signals specific to the query topic
- FAQ content that directly answers the exact prompt question
Use the Quality Gate to identify content improvements that raise your citability for specific topics.