Share of voice in AI answers

For a given query set: your_sov = your_mentions / total_brand_mentions_across_all_brands. Expressed as a percentage. Across all brands measured in the same set, share-of-voice sums to 100.

'Mentions' here means visibility-mentions: every time a brand is named in the prose of an AI answer counts as one mention. Two mentions of your brand in one answer count as one (binary per answer, like citation rate).

Raw visibility moves based on which questions you ask. Add a softball brand-name question ('Is HubSpot legitimate?') and visibility jumps. Add a hard category question ('Best CRM for nonprofits with under 50 staff') and it drops. This makes raw visibility look better or worse than reality depending on query selection.

Share of voice normalises: across the same set you and your competitors were measured on, what fraction of the brand mentions did you win? It's robust against query selection and category competitiveness — a 25% SoV in CRM software means the same thing whether the query set was 8 questions or 40.

The most actionable SoV view is a stacked area chart of your top 5–10 competitors over 6+ months. Patterns to watch: a competitor steadily eating share of voice (they're shipping AEO improvements faster than you); a sudden drop in your own SoV (a Google AI Mode update may have re-weighted sources); a new entrant appearing (PR or major content push you should investigate).

Monthly cadence is right for most brands. Weekly is too noisy unless you're actively experimenting. Our industry rankings publish category-level SoV updated monthly.

You grow SoV either by gaining mentions (improve your own AEO) or by competitors losing them (rare, slow, mostly out of your control). The leverage is on your own side: focus on the queries where your top 2–3 competitors get named and you don't. Those are your highest-conversion AEO targets — same buyer intent, same answer slot, just need to displace whoever's currently there.

An audit shows you exactly which queries your competitors win on. Pitch the trusted sources those AI answers cite, publish content that directly addresses those query intents, ship FAQ schema for those buyer questions.