How do I calculate AI Share of Voice?

Test a representative sample of relevant queries (50-200) across major AI platforms. For each query, record whether your brand and competitors are mentioned. Calculate SOV as: (your mentions / total relevant responses) x 100. Do this per platform, category, and query type for nuanced insights. Automated tools like Promptwatch make this scalable by testing thousands of queries and tracking SOV continuously.

What's a good AI Share of Voice benchmark?

Benchmarks vary by industry competitiveness and niche specificity. For broad categories with many competitors, 10-20% SOV may be strong. For specialized niches, 40-60% is achievable. More important than absolute numbers is your SOV relative to competitors and the trend direction. Gaining SOV consistently over time matters more than hitting a specific number.

How does AI SOV differ from traditional share of voice?

Traditional SOV measures advertising or media presence. AI SOV measures how often AI systems independently choose to mention and recommend your brand. AI SOV is arguably more valuable because AI mentions carry implicit endorsement—users trust AI recommendations more than ads. AI SOV also has a compounding effect: consistent mentions strengthen entity salience, which drives more future mentions.

Can I improve AI SOV quickly?

Quick wins include: ensuring accurate brand information across platforms, optimizing existing high-quality content for AI extraction, and addressing obvious gaps in review platform presence. Sustained improvement takes 3-6 months and requires building entity salience through third-party mentions, creating high-information-gain content, and maintaining content freshness. Focus on the factors research shows matter most: brand web mentions, entity consistency, and content authority.

AI Share of Voice

Metric measuring your brand's proportion of mentions in AI-generated responses compared to competitors for relevant queries. AI Share of Voice is the AI-era equivalent of traditional share of voice, tracking visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and other AI platforms.

Updated February 15, 2026

GEO

Definition

AI Share of Voice (AI SOV) measures what percentage of AI-generated responses for relevant queries in your industry mention, cite, or recommend your brand compared to competitors. It's the AI-era evolution of traditional share of voice metrics, adapted for a world where AI systems increasingly mediate how people discover brands, products, and expertise.

Traditional share of voice measured advertising presence or media mentions relative to competitors. AI Share of Voice measures something more powerful: how often AI systems choose to mention your brand when people ask questions in your domain. When 100 people ask ChatGPT about 'best project management tools,' if your product appears in 35 responses while your top competitor appears in 50, your AI SOV is 35% versus their 50%.

AI SOV is calculated across several dimensions:

Platform SOV: Your mention rate on specific platforms—you might have 40% SOV on ChatGPT but only 15% on Claude, revealing platform-specific optimization opportunities.

Category SOV: Your mention rate within specific product categories or topic areas. A cybersecurity company might have 60% SOV for 'small business security' but only 10% for 'enterprise security.'

Query Type SOV: How your SOV varies across different query types—recommendation queries, comparison queries, informational queries, and problem-solving queries may show different patterns.

Geographic SOV: AI responses can vary by region, so SOV may differ across markets.

AI SOV has become a primary KPI for GEO because it directly measures competitive positioning in the AI-mediated discovery layer. Research shows that brands appearing consistently across AI platforms see 40% higher likelihood of reappearing in future responses—creating a compounding advantage.

Key factors driving AI SOV:

Entity Salience: How well AI systems know and categorize your brand (4.8x stronger predictor than technical GEO)

Brand Web Mentions: Frequency of mentions across news, forums, Reddit, reviews, and social media (0.334 correlation with citations)

Content Authority: Quality and comprehensiveness of owned and third-party content about your brand

Freshness: Pages updated within 30 days account for 76.4% of ChatGPT citations for commercial queries

Cross-Platform Presence: Brands appearing on 4+ platforms are 2.8x more likely to appear in ChatGPT responses

Monitoring AI SOV requires systematic testing across AI platforms, which is where specialized tools like Promptwatch become essential. Manual testing can't capture the scale needed for reliable SOV measurement—you need automated query testing across platforms, tracking mention frequency, analyzing competitive positioning, and monitoring changes over time.

The strategic value of AI SOV extends beyond marketing metrics. High AI SOV means your brand shapes the narrative when AI advises millions of users. Low AI SOV means competitors define the conversation. In markets where AI-mediated discovery is growing rapidly, SOV gaps can translate directly into market share shifts.

Examples of AI Share of Voice

A CRM company discovers they have 45% AI SOV on Perplexity but only 12% on ChatGPT. Investigation reveals Perplexity heavily cites their comparison content, while ChatGPT relies more on review platforms where competitors have stronger profiles. They optimize for both channels, increasing overall SOV from 28% to 41%
A cybersecurity firm tracks AI SOV monthly and notices a competitor's SOV increasing rapidly after they publish original threat intelligence reports. They respond by creating their own research program, gradually reclaiming SOV in their niche from 30% to 52%
A fintech startup measures AI SOV across three categories: 'business banking,' 'startup finance,' and 'SMB accounting.' They discover dominant SOV (55%) in startup finance but minimal presence in the other categories, guiding their content expansion strategy
A law firm monitors AI SOV for 'immigration lawyer' queries and discovers their SOV varies dramatically by AI platform—high on Google AI Overviews due to strong local SEO, but low on ChatGPT due to weak third-party review presence. They address the gap with a review generation strategy

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Terms related to AI Share of Voice

AI Visibility Score

Metric measuring how often a brand or content appears in AI-generated responses across different platforms and queries.

GEO

Reference Rate

The percentage of AI-generated responses that cite or mention a specific source, replacing click-through rate as a key GEO metric.

GEO

AI Brand Mentions

Instances where AI systems reference, cite, or recommend specific brands in their generated responses to user queries.

GEO

Entity Salience

How prominently and clearly a specific entity (brand, person, product, concept) is associated with topics in AI systems' understanding. High entity salience means AI consistently recognizes your entity as relevant and authoritative for specific subjects.

GEO

Competitor Analysis

Strategic process of researching and analyzing competitors' marketing, SEO, and business strategies to identify opportunities and threats.

Marketing

Brand Monitoring

Continuous tracking of brand mentions, sentiment, and reputation across digital platforms including AI systems and social media.