Share of Voice
The percentage of all AI answers to a given set of questions in which your business appears. The answer to a single question is an anecdote; the share itself is a measurement.
Share of voice is the percentage of answers in which your business is mentioned, where the answers come from asking a frozen set of questions to several engines, several times each. 20 questions × 4 engines × 2 repeats = 160 answers; if you appear in 48 of them, your share is 30%.
Why it's needed
Generative engines don't give the same answer to the same question every time. Asking once and seeing your name, or not seeing it, is not a measurement. Share reduces that variability to a single manageable number and makes it comparable with competitors.
Two separate shares
- Mention share: the proportion of answers in which your name appears.
- Recommendation share: the proportion of answers in which you are explicitly recommended.
The gap between the two is the size of the "recognizes but doesn't recommend" problem; for most businesses, that's where the real issue lies.
Rules
The prompt set and the competitor list are defined once and frozen; if they change at every measurement, the results can't be compared. The questions are the ones customers actually ask, and they don't contain the business's own name. The measurement rhythm is monthly; weekly measurement measures noise.
Related post: How to measure AI visibility