What is AI share of voice?
AI share of voice is how much of the AI answers in your category belong to your brand, compared with your competitors. There are two common ways to count it: your share of all brand mentions, or the share of answers that mention you. They can rank brands very differently, so say which one you use and report it for each engine.
By Julien Lauret, Co-founder and CTO, SocialSeal Published
The two formulas
Definitions of AI share of voice agree that it compares your visibility in AI answers with your competitors’. They differ on what they count.
Share of mentions. Your brand’s mentions divided by all brand mentions in the answers you track.
Share of mentions = your mentions ÷ all brands’ mentions × 100
Share of answers. The answers that mention your brand divided by all the answers you track. Some tools call this mention rate or presence rate.
Share of answers = answers that mention you ÷ answers tracked × 100
On real answers, the two can tell different stories.
A real example: which tools do AI engines name?
We asked four engines “how to track your brand’s visibility in ai search” on 26 October 2026 and counted the tracking tools each answer named. The names are replaced with letters.
| Tool | Mentions | Share of mentions | Answers naming it (of 4) | Share of answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tool A | 6 | 20% | 4 | 100% |
| Tool B | 4 | 13% | 4 | 100% |
| Tool C | 3 | 10% | 3 | 75% |
| Tool D | 3 | 10% | 3 | 75% |
| Tool E | 3 | 10% | 3 | 75% |
| Tool F | 3 | 10% | 2 | 50% |
| Tool G | 3 | 10% | 1 | 25% |
| Five other tools | 1 each | 3% each | 1 each | 25% each |
| All mentions | 30 |
Look at Tool G and Tool C. Both have 10% of the mentions. But ChatGPT named Tool G three times in one answer, and no other engine named it at all. Tool C was named once in each of three answers. By share of mentions they’re level. By share of answers, Tool C is three times as visible.
If your customers read one answer from one engine, the second view is closer to what they see. Being named in three engines’ answers reaches more of them than being named three times in one.
Which formula to use
- Use share of answers to track visibility. It answers the question you care about: when someone asks, do they see you?
- Use share of mentions to track prominence. It shows how much space you get in the answers where you appear.
- Report each engine separately. When we asked four engines the same 11 questions, they rarely cited the same sites. A single blended number hides that. See how to track your brand’s visibility in AI search.
- Keep your question list the same. Change the questions and your share changes. Keep the same 20 to 50 questions month to month.
For travel brands: split it by source
A hotel can be mentioned in an AI answer for very different reasons. When you track your share, note what the answer relied on:
| The answer cites | What it means | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Your own website | Your pages answer the question | Keep them current and specific |
| Your own videos | Your channel ranks for the question | Make more videos for the questions you’re missing |
| A creator’s video about you | Someone else is answering for you | Brief and work with the creators who already rank |
| A booking site (OTA) or review site | The booking platform is the source | Make sure your listing and reviews say what you want repeated |
| A competitor’s content | You’re absent | Find the question and answer it, on your site and on video |
This matters most in Google’s AI Overviews, which cite video far more than other engines. In 36 Google AI Overviews we captured in October 2026, a quarter of the cited sources were videos or social posts. See what sources Google’s AI Overview uses.
How it compares with other “share” metrics
| Metric | What it counts | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Share of voice (classic) | Your share of ad spend, media mentions or social mentions | Media, social listening |
| Share of search | Your share of branded searches in your category | Google search volume |
| AI share of voice | Your share of mentions or answers for category questions | AI answers |
| Share of social search | Your share of the top results when people search your category | TikTok, Instagram, YouTube |
The last one is what SocialSeal measures alongside AI answers. For travel, the two are linked: Google’s AI Overviews cite YouTube and TikTok videos, so a video that answers a traveller’s question can count in both.
How we know
- Example: The answers Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude gave to "how to track your brand's visibility in ai search" on 26 October 2026 (US, English), captured with SocialSeal.
- Counting: We counted each time a tool was named in the answer text, leaving out image captions and link labels. We've replaced the tools' names with letters: the point is how the formulas behave, not which vendor leads.
- Limits: One question and one capture per engine. The example shows how the formulas behave, not which tool leads the market.
Other questions
- Is AI share of voice the same as share of search?
- No. Share of search usually means your share of branded Google searches in your category, a demand measure. AI share of voice measures how often AI answers mention or cite you when people ask category questions.
- Should mentions or citations count?
- Track both, separately. A mention is your name in the answer text. A citation is a link to your page. ChatGPT and Claude often give few or no links, so mentions carry more weight there.
- How many questions do I need?
- One question, as in our example, is only enough to show how the formulas work. For a real measure, use the same set of questions every month on every engine you report. See how to track AI visibility for how to choose them.
See your share of the searches travellers make
The free Visibility Check measures your share of the results when travellers search your category on social video in your market, next to your competitors.
Get your free Visibility Check