Share of Voice
Of every time a tracked brand is named in an AI answer, the share of those namings that are yours.
Share of voice in AI answers counts namings, not answers. Of every time your brand or one of your tracked competitors is named in the prose of an AI answer, it is the share of those namings that are yours. One answer that names six brands gives each of them one naming, so the shares across your tracked set add up to 100 percent.
That is what makes it a competitive number. AI visibility asks how many of your tracked prompts mention you at all, and it can hold steady for months while the models start naming three more vendors in the same answers. Share of voice falls the moment that happens, because your slice of the names being said has genuinely shrunk.
Every brand is counted the same way, by its name appearing in the answer. Whaily holds a recommendation signal for your own site that it cannot hold for a competitor, so that signal is deliberately left out of this number: a comparison where one side is scored by a rule the other cannot pass is a comparison that flatters whoever wrote it.
Whaily also reports an inclusion rate, which answers the other question: of the answers that named anyone in your category, how many included you. An answer naming you and five competitors counts in full for you there, so a brand named in every answer reads 100 percent on inclusion and nearer 17 percent on share of voice. Both are true and they are not versions of each other.
Frequently asked questions
- How is share of voice different from AI visibility?
- Visibility is absolute: of all your tracked prompts, how many mention or recommend you. Share of voice is competitive: of every time a tracked brand is named in an answer, how many of those namings are yours. Visibility can hold while share of voice falls, which happens whenever the models start naming more competitors in the same answers.
- Do the shares add up to 100 percent?
- Yes, across your own brand and your active tracked competitors. That is the point of the metric: it is a slice of a fixed pie, so a competitor gaining means somebody losing. A name in an answer that belongs to nobody you track is counted on neither side.
- What is the inclusion rate then?
- Of the answers that named anybody in your category, the share that included you. It counts each answer once however many brands it names, so it is a rate and never a slice. Whaily called this metric share of voice until 12 September 2026, and renamed it because the rest of the industry means the competitive share by those words.
Related terms
Whaily turns this from theory into measurement: which brands AI names in your category, and which sources shape those answers, tracked across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity.