Glossary
What is Share of voice (AI search)?
Share of voice in AI search is the percentage of buying-question answers that mention your brand versus competitors, per engine. If ten relevant prompts mention you in four answers and a rival in eight, your share of voice is lower — it quantifies who AI assistants recommend most in your category.
Why share of voice matters
An AI answer usually names only a handful of brands, so presence is closer to a zero-sum game than a results page with ten links. Share of voice is the relative metric that captures this: it tells you not just whether you appear, but how much of the conversation you own compared with the brands buyers are also shown.
How share of voice is calculated
Take a fixed set of buying questions and run them on one engine. Count every mention of your brand and of each competitor you track. Your share of voice is your mentions divided by the total mentions of all tracked brands. Repeat for each engine separately, using the same questions and the same competitor list every time so the numbers are comparable over time.
It is the relative cousin of mention rate. Mention rate asks how often you are named; share of voice asks what fraction of all brand mentions is yours.
A hypothetical example
Suppose you run 10 questions on one engine. You are named in 4 answers, competitor A in 8 and competitor B in 3. That is 15 mentions in total, so your share of voice is 4 out of 15, roughly 27%, while competitor A holds about 53%. Your mention rate looks healthy at 40%, yet a rival is being recommended twice as often. The gap worth investigating is the set of questions where A appears and you do not.
Common mistakes
- Changing the competitor list or the questions between runs, which makes the numbers incomparable.
- Blending all engines into one figure. It can read healthy while you are invisible on the engine your buyers use.
- Using too few questions, so one answer swings the result.
- Counting only obvious rivals. Marketplaces, directories and publishers that the assistant names instead of you also take share.
Common questions
How is share of voice different from mention rate?
Mention rate is absolute: the share of answers in which you are named. Share of voice is relative: your mentions as a fraction of all brand mentions in the same answers. You can have a good mention rate and a low share of voice if competitors are named even more often.
Which competitors should I include?
Include the brands your buyers actually compare you with, plus any non-obvious names you see assistants recommending in your category. Reviewing the answers themselves is the quickest way to find them.
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