Definition
AI share of voiceAI share of voice is the percentage of all brand mentions in AI-generated answers that belong to your brand, measured across a fixed set of prompts. Each brand counts once per answer it appears in. If brands are named 200 times across your tracked answers and 50 of those mentions are yours, your share of voice is 25%.
How Searchable measures this
Searchable calculates share of voice as your brand's mentions divided by all mentions of you and your tracked competitors in the same answers, and breaks it down by engine, topic, and location, so a lead on one engine can't hide a gap on another.
How AI share of voice works
Share of voice started as an advertising metric: a brand's share of all the advertising in its category. AI share of voice applies the same idea to the answers AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity give when people ask about your market.
Before you can measure it, you need a fixed prompt set. These are the questions your buyers ask AI engines, like "best project management software for agencies," and the set has to stay the same between checks or the numbers stop being comparable. You also need a competitor list, because share of voice is relative and the result depends on which brands you count.
Each prompt should run several times per check, because the same question can name different brands from one run to the next. Every answer that names a tracked brand counts as one mention for that brand. An answer that names your brand three times still counts once.
The AI share of voice formula
AI share of voice = (answers that mention your brand ÷ total mentions across all tracked brands) × 100
Say you track 100 prompts and three brands. Across the answers:
| Brand | Answers that mention it | Share of voice |
|---|---|---|
| Your brand | 20 | 25% |
| Competitor A | 40 | 50% |
| Competitor B | 20 | 25% |
| Total | 80 | 100% |
Competitor A has twice your share of voice, which means AI engines put it in front of buyers twice as often as they put you, at least for these 100 prompts.
AI share of voice vs AI visibility score
The two metrics are easy to mix up because they're both percentages built from the same answers. They use different denominators.
AI visibility score divides the answers that mention you by all tracked answers, including answers that name no brand at all. In the example above you appear in 20 of 100 answers, so your visibility score is 20%. AI share of voice ignores the answers that name nobody and divides by all brand mentions instead, which puts you at 25%.
That difference matters when competitors drop out. If Competitor A vanishes from half its answers, your share of voice goes up even though AI engines aren't mentioning you any more often than before. That's why it's worth reporting the two side by side.
Why AI share of voice matters
When someone asks an AI engine for a recommendation, the answer usually names a short list of brands, and there's no second page to scroll to. A brand that isn't on that list doesn't get considered, however well it ranks in traditional search.
Share of voice tells you who AI engines put on that list for your category and how often. Leadership teams also tend to get it quickly, since it maps onto the market-share language they already use.
How to measure AI share of voice
The arithmetic is easy. The prompt set takes most of the effort, and four decisions shape the result.
- Use unbranded prompts. Prompts that already name your brand will almost always return your brand. Across 3,736 brands tracked in Searchable (30 days to September 17, 2026), the median brand was named in 93% of answers to branded prompts and 7% of answers to unbranded ones, so mixing the two inflates your share of voice. See branded vs unbranded prompts.
- Split by engine. A strong share of voice in ChatGPT can hide a weak one in Google AI Overviews.
- Split by topic. One blended number hides the topics you win and the ones you lose, so group prompts by product line or use case.
- Keep the competitor list stable. Adding a competitor lowers everyone else's share, so note the date in your reporting when you do.
Doing this by hand gets slow. Twenty prompts, run three times each across four engines, is 240 answers to read and tally every week. Searchable runs your prompt set on a schedule and calculates share of voice for your brand and each competitor, with the day-over-day change for each. You can filter it by engine or break it down by topic and location. The method behind it is in our guide to AI visibility tracking.
How to increase AI share of voice
AI engines recommend brands they see described consistently across sources they trust. Start with the prompts where competitors appear and you don't, then look at which sources the engine cited in those answers.
Those sources are often third-party comparisons, reviews, and "best of" lists. If a list the engine keeps citing leaves you out, getting onto it is a concrete fix with a clear owner.
Your own site matters too. Pages that say plainly who your product is for and what it costs give an engine something specific to repeat. And if AI engines describe your product wrongly, they're less likely to recommend it for the right prompts, so track AI brand sentiment alongside share of voice.
Expect changes to take a while to show up. Judge progress across several weeks of tracking, since a single before-and-after check can swing on run-to-run noise alone.
Frequently asked questions
Count how many tracked AI answers mention each brand (yours and every competitor's), then add those counts together. Divide your brand's count by the total and multiply by 100. If your brand appears in 50 answers and all tracked brands together appear 200 times, your share of voice is 25%.
See how AI engines talk about your brand
Get a free report on where ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI name and cite you.