Measuring AI Visibility: Prompts, Citations and Share of Voice

What this helps you with

“Are we visible in AI?” is not answerable with one screenshot. You need a repeatable set of questions, run across models, scored the same way every week.

Three steps

1. Define 10–30 buyer questions (e.g. “best silicone dildo for beginners”, “which store ships to Germany”). 2. Run them across models (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity) and record: mentioned? cited? which URL? sentiment? 3. Track weekly: mention rate, citation share, competitor share, and which pages AI cites.

The four numbers that matter

• Mention rate: how often your brand appears;
• Citation share: how often your URL is the source;
• Share of voice: your mentions vs competitors;
• Source mix: which pages AI actually cites (product, FAQ, blog, third-party).

One run is an anecdote. A fixed prompt set, run weekly, is a measurement.

Want the method and pitfalls? Read the expert version: ai-visibility.expert

Chapter 1: Measurement design

1.1 Fixed prompt set

Define prompts by intent, not by brand:

• category discovery (“best X for Y”);
• comparison (“A vs B”);
• policy questions (“does store ship to Z”);
• branded checks (“is brand X legit”).

Version the prompt set and hash it. Changing prompts invalidates trend comparisons.

1.2 What to record per run

1.3 Metrics

• mention rate = mentioned runs / total runs;
• citation share = runs citing your URL / total runs;
• share of voice = your mentions / (your + competitor mentions);
• source mix = cited URL types (product/FAQ/blog/third-party).

Always publish sample size and time window. A rate without N is noise.

Chapter 2: Pitfalls and operations

2.1 Model drift and sampling

Models change and answers vary. Run each prompt 2–3 times, record all runs, and report medians/ratios rather than single answers.

2.2 Don’t overclaim

• visible in ChatGPT ≠ visible in Perplexity;
• citation ≠ recommendation;
• AI answers are not rankings, and correlation is not causation.

2.3 Operational loop

1. weekly run → 2. detect changes → 3. inspect cited pages → 4. fix content/schema → 5. re-run and compare.

Keep raw answers (hash + capped text) for at least 90 days.

Back to beginner version:ai-visibility.novice