More info: We KNOW that certain unlinked mentions can help with Local SEO. Citations can include mentions of your business name, address, and phone number, whether a website link is included or not. This question is NOT asking about Local SEO, but about general SEO. Does the concept apply to non-local SEO? The floor is open!

I would say yes, but it's of course going to be difficult to measure of know for sure. It would make sense that if you got a mention on an authoritative site, that it would be helpful.

Matt Cutts mentioned many, many years ago that non-linked URLs are understood as a link. (Not sure if he said they would count the same, however.)

I would imagine they would have some sort of influence, but it seems like it would be hard to measure. I'd be really curious to see a test of this!

But how does Google parse that "mention"?  Into the link graph, the content being crawled, both?

I would guess the answer is: "Yes, but not directly." I doubt that Google has a distinct algorithm ranking factor that categorizes something as a "brand mention," but I do think that other (indirect) factors are influenced by such content.

@Jill

> Matt Cutts mentioned many, many years ago that non-linked URLs are understood as a link.

Really?