Glossary · AI share of voice
What is AI share of voice, and how do you measure it?
What AI share of voice measures
AI share of voice is the share of brand mentions, or citations, that go to your business across a set of AI answers, compared with the competitors you track. The name comes from advertising; SEO tools also use it for your share of estimated visibility across tracked keywords.
In AI search there’s no fixed results page to count. Answers are written fresh, vary between runs and depend on where and how the question was asked. So AI share of voice is always a sample: questions, AI tools and times you choose.
How AI share of voice is calculated
Fix a set of questions
Write the questions real buyers ask about your field, such as the best provider in a city or how two options compare, drawn from search data, sales calls and support questions, not picked to flatter the brand.
You get: A numbered list of questions that stays the same between reports
Choose AI tools and locations
Decide which AI tools and AI search features to test, and from which country or city. Answers differ by both.
Run every question several times
Repeating each question shows how stable the answer is, and turns a yes or no into a rate.
Note who is mentioned and cited
For each answer, note which of the brands you track are named and which pages are linked as sources. Keep mentions and citations separate.
Divide, and say what you divided by
Your mentions divided by all tracked brands’ mentions gives your share of voice against competitors. Answers that mention you divided by all answers gives a mention rate. Say which one the headline figure is.
One set of answers, two valid numbers
An example, with made-up numbers to show the maths. Forty questions, each run three times, give 120 answers. Your business is mentioned 24 times, competitor A 48 times and competitor B 28 times.
Your share of voice among the three tracked brands is 24 out of 100 mentions: 24%. The share of answers that mention you at all is 24 out of 120: 20%. Both are correct, so a report must say which it quotes.
Add a fourth competitor and the first figure falls, though not one answer changed. That’s why the list of brands tracked belongs in the method too.
Why two AI share of voice reports on the same brand disagree
- Different sets of questions
- A set built from questions that name the brand will always flatter it; open questions about the field are harder and more useful. The two can’t be compared.
- Different things divided by
- Share among tracked brands and share of all answers can differ a lot on the same data, as the example above shows.
- One run against several
- A single run per question captures one draw from an answer that varies. Repeated runs give a rate that moves less between reports.
- Different locations and settings
- Where a question is run from, and whether the AI tool searched the web or answered from its training, changes which businesses appear.
How BOOSTD is built to report it
AI visibility is one of the eleven categories in the BOOSTD Growth Score, marked as sampled. Every figure is reported with its questions, platforms, dates and counting rule, with mentions and citations kept apart.
Question sets, answer collection and citation extraction are built and tested against simulated answers. No AI tool has yet been queried live for a customer. The free checkup doesn’t measure AI visibility, because each sampled answer costs money to collect, and it says so rather than guess.
Questions about AI share of voice
Is a higher AI share of voice always better?
Usually, but look at the answers behind it. In a simple share, a mention that describes you wrongly or recommends a competitor counts the same as a good one, so read a sample of the answers too.
How many prompts are enough?
Enough to cover the questions buyers ask about your field, each run several times. A handful of prompts gives a number that swings with every run. Keep the set the same, so changes over time mean something.
References
Sources for AI share of voice
The official documents and research this page is based on. Platform rules change, so check the source before you act on a detail.
Last updated · Published by Zubair Afzal, responsible editor
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