Analytics & Performance
What is share of voice?
Share of voice is a comparative measure of how visible a brand is relative to competitors within a defined space, a set of search results, a social conversation, media coverage. Rather than asking “how visible are we?”, it asks “how much of the available visibility is ours?”. The same idea now extends to AI answers, where AI share of voice compares how often each brand appears in relevant responses.
How it works
Share of voice always needs a defined arena and a defined measure. In search, it might be the proportion of top positions your domain holds across a tracked keyword set; in social listening, your slice of brand mentions in the industry conversation; in PR, your presence in relevant coverage. The arena definition does the real work, “share of what, among whom?”, which is why SOV figures from different tools rarely match: they are measuring different arenas.
Why it matters
Absolute metrics flatter in growing markets and panic in shrinking ones; share is the honest control. Traffic up eight per cent while the category grew thirty means share lost, not won. For a smaller business, SOV also converts strategy into something concrete: rather than “be more visible”, the goal becomes “own the visibility for this specific cluster of searches”, winnable, measurable territory.
Related terms
Search share is assembled from keyword tracking across a term set; the same comparative idea applied to AI answers is AI share of voice.