AI share of voice: what it means and how to calculate it

AI share of voice is your brand's mentions as a share of all brand mentions in AI engine answers for your category's buyer questions. Ask an engine which project management tools are best, and it might name four brands. If your brand is one mention out of four, your share of voice on that question is 25 percent.

Why it is different from mention rate

Mention rate asks a yes or no question: were you named at all? Share of voice asks a relative one: when brands get named, how much of that attention is yours versus your competitors'. A brand can have a solid mention rate and still lose the category if two competitors dominate every answer it does appear in. Share of voice catches that.

The formula

Share of voice is your brand's mention count divided by the total mention count of your brand plus your named competitors, across the answers checked. It excludes brands nobody flagged as a competitor, so a stray unrelated name in an answer does not skew the number.

How ASRM uses it

ASRM's composite AI visibility score weighs three signals: 50 percent mention rate, how often you are named at all; 25 percent answer position, how early you land among the brands named; and 25 percent share of voice, your mentions against your named competitors' mentions. The same math runs on every engine, every time.

Raising your share of voice

• Identify the competitors actually taking your slots, not just the obvious rivals; engines sometimes surface names you would not expect.
• Close the same gaps that raise mention rate: clearer positioning, third-party coverage, and citable content, since a competitor with more of those tends to hold more of the voice too.
• Track it per engine. A brand can dominate voice on Gemini and trail badly on ChatGPT, and the fixes differ.

Measure it now

ASRM's free scan shows your mention rate, answer position, and share of voice against your real competitors across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. About a minute, no signup.