Snoika
Glossary·AI search visibility

What is share of voice

Definition

Share of voice (SOV) is the percentage of all visibility in a market that one brand holds compared with its competitors.

In practice, it is your brand's mentions, ad impressions or ranking-weighted clicks divided by the total for your category. Marketers use it to see whether a brand is gaining ground or losing it to rivals.

TermShare of voice3 min read · reviewed by the Snoika team

Share of voice in AI

AI share of voice is how often AI assistants name your brand when buyers ask questions about your category, compared with how often they name your competitors. Some teams call it share of model. It counts the brands that appear inside the answer itself, which is different from counting links on a results page.

We track mentions and share of voice in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, where most AI search traffic happens. We also track sentiment and citations, and we rerun the prompt sets every week. 1StopVAT, in tax and fintech, saw 10x growth in ChatGPT visibility in 7 weeks.

What the SOV formula measures

The SOV formula measures how much of the market's attention you hold right now. Read it next to your market share to put that attention in the context of sales.

When your share of voice is higher than your share of market, analysts call the difference excess share of voice. Brands with excess share of voice tend to grow, so a share of voice at least equal to your market share is the floor, and growth plans need more.

Why SOV predicts organic growth

Brands that hold more voice than their size gain market share over time. Les Binet and Peter Field studied the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) databank and found that every 10 points of excess share of voice brings about 0.5% annual market-share growth in consumer markets. LinkedIn's B2B Institute puts the B2B figure at 0.7%.

In search, a brand that buyers keep seeing gets more branded searches and more clicks. It also makes the shortlist when a buyer is ready to choose.

SOV signals in AI answers

AI answers carry four signals worth counting separately:

MentionsThe assistant names your brand in the answer.
CitationsThe answer links to your pages as a source.
PositionYour brand comes first in a list or appears later.
SentimentThe answer describes you positively, neutrally or negatively.

A brand can have a high mention count and still lose if the sentiment is poor, so we check every signal before trusting the headline number.

Calculating your SOV percentage

You calculate share of voice by dividing your brand's visibility by the total visibility of every brand in the set, then multiplying by 100. The formula stays the same across channels, though the inputs change.

The basic formula

SOV = (your brand's measure ÷ total measure for all tracked brands) × 100. The measure can be ad impressions or ranking-weighted clicks. AI mentions are another option. Pick one measure and keep it fixed, because numbers from different measures aren't comparable.

Counting AI mentions

  1. 011Write buyer promptsDraft the questions real buyers ask about your category.
  2. 022Run them repeatedlyAI answers vary between runs, so one pass isn't enough.
  3. 033Count every brandRecord each brand named in each answer.
  4. 044Divide and compareWork out your share and track it week by week.

Our free AI visibility audit follows these steps with tailored buyer prompts and a competitor check. It needs no access to your systems.

A practical SOV example

Say we run 50 buyer prompts and the answers name brands 200 times in total. Your brand appears 30 times, so your share of voice is 15%. If your market share is 10%, you have 5 points of excess share of voice, which points to growth. If your market share is 20%, you're living on past reputation, and rivals will close the gap.

Share of voice by channel

Each channel counts visibility in its own unit:

Paid ads

What gets counted
Impressions or spend

Organic search

What gets counted
Ranking-weighted clicks

AI assistants

What gets counted
Mentions in answers

Social media

What gets counted
Brand mentions in posts

Compare each channel separately against its own past results.

Related terms worth knowing

Once a team knows what is share of voice, these terms come up next in reports:

Share of modelYour brand's share of mentions inside AI model answers.
Excess share of voiceShare of voice minus share of market.
Share of searchYour branded search volume against your competitors' branded searches.
Generative engine optimization (GEO)Work that raises a brand's visibility in AI answers.

Related terms

All terms
AI citationAn AI citation is a link or named reference to a source that an AI assistant attaches to the answer it generates. For a brand, an AI citation is proof that a model read your page and trusted it enough to point users to it.AI visibilityAI visibility is how often and how favorably AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews mention or cite your brand when buyers ask questions in your category. We measure it as a share of tracked buyer prompts.LLM visibilityLLM visibility is how often, and how favorably, large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT name a brand when people ask questions in its category. It shows whether the AI answer a buyer reads includes the brand and links to the brand's own pages.Prompt trackingPrompt tracking is the practice of running the same buyer questions through AI assistants on a fixed schedule and recording whether each answer names or cites your brand. It shows what ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews tell your buyers, which a rankings report can't.

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