Share of voice in AI: what it is and how to calculate it

Share of voice in AI is the portion of all mentions in AI answers that are about your business. You count how often you are mentioned and divide that by the total number of mentions of you and your competitors combined. That shows not just whether AI names you, but how big your place is next to the other names.

Why share of voice adds something

When you measure whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude mentions your business, you usually start with visibility: in how many answers do you appear? That is useful, but it says little about your competitors. You can appear in half the answers while a competitor appears in almost all of them.

Share of voice puts your result in proportion. It answers the question: when AI names businesses in my field, how often is it me? That makes it a good way to track progress against the market. For why a competitor might be mentioned more often, read why does AI mention your competitor.

Three metrics that often get mixed up

It helps to keep three ideas apart:

1. Visibility: the share of measured answers that mention you. If you appear in 6 of 20 answers, your visibility is 30 percent.
2. Share of voice: your mentions divided by all mentions of you and the competitors you track.
3. Average position: where you appear on average when you are mentioned. Position 1 means AI names you first.

Together these tell you more than any one on its own. High visibility with a low position means you do get mentioned, but often at the bottom of a list.

A worked example

Take a made-up installation company in Zwolle called Warmtetechniek Zwolle. It measures 20 questions, such as "which installer in Zwolle fits heat pumps?", and tracks three competitors. After one measurement, the mentions break down like this:

• Warmtetechniek Zwolle: mentioned 6 times
• Competitor A: mentioned 12 times
• Competitor B: mentioned 8 times
• Competitor C: mentioned 4 times

That is 30 mentions in total. Warmtetechniek Zwolle's share of voice is 6 divided by 30, which is 20 percent. Competitor A has 12 of the 30, which is 40 percent.

Visibility is 6 out of 20 questions, so 30 percent. Suppose the company appears in those six answers at positions 2, 3, 1, 4, 2 and 3. The average position is then 15 divided by 6, which is 2.5.

Keep in mind these numbers are invented to explain the calculation. Your own market may look very different.

What to watch out for

Share of voice depends heavily on choices you make yourself:

• Which competitors you track. Add a large national player and your share drops, even if nothing changed for you.
• Which questions you measure. Questions that contain your own name inflate your share of voice. Pick questions customers really ask, as explained in which questions do customers ask AI.
• Which AI assistants you measure. Your share can differ per assistant, so look at each one, not just the total.

Keep your set of questions and competitors as stable as you can. Otherwise you end up comparing weeks that cannot really be compared.

Why you should look across several weeks

AI does not give the same answer every time. One time your name is in it, the next time it is not. A single measurement is a snapshot. Look at the trend over several weeks: if your share slowly rises, your approach is probably working. If it hovers around the same point, you usually need to do more.

How to improve your share of voice

You raise your share the same way you improve visibility. Make sure your website clearly says what you do and where. Collect reviews, keep your Google Business Profile up to date and earn mentions on sites that AI uses as sources. Also check which sources AI cites for your competitors. That is often where your biggest opportunity lies.

Curious what this looks like in practice? Explore the demo dashboard, which shows visibility, share of voice and position per question. With GEO tracking you measure it for your own business and competitors every week.