Term

Recommends / Recognizes / Doesn't Mention

In short

The three states an engine can be in regarding your business. Recommends – it names you when the need is asked about. Recognizes – it knows your name but doesn't name you for the need. Doesn't mention – it doesn't know you at all, or can't find you.

protan.ai reports show one of these three states for every engine. There is no ranking; in a generative engine's answer you're either present or absent, and if present, you're either recommended or merely mentioned.

Recommends

The answer to "a reliable X company in İzmir" includes your name, what you do and why you're good. The best state; the job is to protect it and re-measure regularly.

Recognizes

The model knows your name and gives a correct description for "what is X"; but when the need is asked about, its list has other names on it. The most common and most misleading state: the business owner asks about their own name, sees the correct answer and says "it knows us", whereas the customer asks about the need, not the name. The cause is usually a missing match: the service, area and customer type aren't clear on the site.

Doesn't mention

The model neither knows your name nor names you for the need. Two sub-states: the door is closed (crawlers blocked, an empty page without JavaScript, noindex), or the door is open but there's no descriptive text inside. The first is technical and quick to fix; the second is the work of describing the business.

Classification rule

One question is not evidence. A state is assigned when at least three different questions are asked to the same engine and give a consistent result; when there aren't enough questions, the result is "unclassified", not Recognizes.