Share of Voice
Share of voice is the percentage of total visibility — historically measured in advertising spend or media mentions, later adapted to organic search impressions — that a brand holds within its category, relative to named competitors, across a defined channel.
Share of Voice in Practice
In traditional media, share of voice might mean what percentage of category-relevant ad impressions your brand owns versus competitors. In organic search, it became the percentage of total search visibility (impressions or ranking positions) a brand captures for its category’s core keyword set.
How Share of Voice Is Measured
Standard SEO tools calculate organic share of voice by aggregating ranking positions and estimated search volume across a defined keyword set, then comparing your brand’s captured visibility against competitors’ captured visibility for the same set.
Why Share of Voice Matters
Share of voice is the direct conceptual ancestor of share of model and AI share of voice (covered elsewhere in this glossary) — but the naming has genuinely converged in current industry usage. Semrush, for example, uses “AI Share of Voice” as the actual name for its AI-answer visibility metric, rather than adopting “share of model” as separate terminology. In practice, when you see “share of voice” used today, check whether it’s referring to the traditional channel-based metric or the newer AI-answer-based one — the term is being used for both, and context is currently the only way to tell which one is meant.
Terms Related to Share of Voice
Share of model ·
LLM visibility ·
Citation share
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
FAQ
Is share of voice still relevant now that share of model exists?
Yes — they measure different surfaces (traditional search/media versus AI-generated answers) and a brand can perform very differently on each, so tracking both separately gives a more complete visibility picture than either alone.