AI Share of Voice
AI share of voice is the proportion of tracked prompts in which a business is mentioned, relative to its competitors, across AI engines.
It reframes visibility as competitive rather than absolute. Being mentioned in 30% of prompts means little until you know the leading competitor is mentioned in 80%.
Measured per engine it becomes more useful still, because engines diverge sharply — a business can lead on Perplexity and be absent from Gemini, which points directly at what to fix.
Why it matters
It converts a vague sense of AI visibility into a number that can be tracked and compared, and it identifies which competitor is taking the answers you want.
An example
Across forty tracked prompts, a business is named in twelve. The leading competitor is named in thirty-one. The business's share of voice is lower than it looked in isolation — and broken down by engine, it turns out to lead on one engine and be absent from another, which tells it where to look.
Common mistakes
- Reporting an absolute mention rate without a competitor to compare against.
- Averaging across engines and hiding the one where you are absent.
Questions
- How is AI share of voice calculated?
- Divide the number of tracked prompts in which you are mentioned by the total number of prompts, then compare that rate with competitors measured the same way. Many teams also weight by position, so a first mention counts for more than a fourth.
- What is a good AI share of voice?
- There is no universal benchmark. It depends entirely on the category and competitors. The useful comparison is against the businesses you actually compete with, tracked consistently over time.