AI Share of Voice
AI share of voice is the proportion of AI-generated answers, for a defined set of prompts, that mention or cite your brand compared with competitors. It adapts the traditional marketing idea of share of voice to tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews.
What it measures
Share of voice has long been used in advertising and SEO to show how much of the available attention a brand captures. In SEO it is often based on rankings and estimated clicks, similar to search visibility. AI share of voice asks a different question: when people ask AI tools about your category, how often does your brand come up compared with others?
It is one of the main ways to put a number on AI visibility.
The metric is useful because AI answers rarely have a clear position one. A brand might be mentioned in passing, recommended first or listed among several options. Counting how often each brand appears across many answers gives a more stable picture than looking at any single response.
How to calculate it
- Build a prompt set: list realistic questions your audience asks, such as “best accounting software for small businesses” or “how do I fix a leaking tap”.
- Choose the tools: decide which AI platforms to include, for example AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
- Run the prompts: run each prompt several times, ideally in a clean session and from your target location, because answers vary.
- Record mentions: note every brand mentioned or cited in each answer.
- Calculate the share: divide your brand’s mentions by the total brand mentions across all answers, then multiply by 100.
For example, if 200 answers contain 500 brand mentions in total and 75 of them are your brand, your AI share of voice is 15%.
Variations
| Version | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Mention share | Any time your brand is named |
| Citation share | Times your site is linked as a source |
| Recommendation share | Times you are suggested as an option |
| Weighted share | Mentions weighted by position or prominence |
Many teams also note sentiment, so a negative mention is not counted the same as a recommendation.
How to use it
- Compare your share with key competitors to see who dominates AI answers in your category.
- Break results down by topic to find gaps where you are rarely mentioned, similar to a content gap analysis.
- Track it monthly or quarterly alongside organic metrics in your SEO reporting.
- Use prompt tracking tools to automate data collection at scale.
Limits
AI share of voice depends heavily on which prompts you choose. A small or biased prompt set can make results look better or worse than reality. Answers also change with model updates, personalisation and location. Keep the prompt set stable, sample repeatedly and treat the figure as a directional benchmark rather than a precise market measure.
For help getting your brand cited in AI answers, see my work as an AI SEO consultant.
Key Takeaways
- AI share of voice compares how often your brand appears in AI answers against competitors.
- It is calculated from a fixed set of prompts run across chosen AI tools.
- Run each prompt several times because AI answers vary.
- Mention, citation and recommendation share each tell you something different.
- Results depend heavily on the prompt set, so keep it consistent.
Related Terms
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