October 21, 2026
A Complete Guide to the AEOTrack Share of Voice Page: See Exactly Where You Stand Against Competitors
Introduction
Knowing your own AI visibility score is useful. Knowing how that score compares to every brand AI actually mentions alongside you is far more useful — because visibility is inherently relative. A score of 38/100 means something very different if you're the clear category leader than if you're last out of five.
The AEOTrack Share of Voice page exists specifically to answer that comparative question: out of every brand AI names when answering questions in your space, how often is it you — and who is beating you, by how much, and on which specific questions?
This guide walks through every card, chart, and table on the Share of Voice page, using a fictional example company, Acme Coffee Roasters (acmecoffee.example), competing against fictional rivals Northwind Roasters, Bluebird Coffee, Harbor Beans and Ridgeline Coffee.
What Is the Share of Voice Page?
The Share of Voice page (found under Competitors → Share of voice in the sidebar) measures how often your brand is named by AI relative to every other brand AI mentions in your category — computed from the same underlying checks that power your Questions and Topics trackers, with no additional checks required.
It's designed to help you answer questions like:
- What percentage of all AI brand mentions in my category belong to me?
- Where do I rank among the competitors I'm actively tracking?
- Are there brands AI already recommends in my category that I'm not yet tracking?
- Is my share of voice growing or shrinking over time?
- Which AI engines favor me, and which favor competitors?
- Head-to-head, am I ahead of or behind each specific rival?
- Which individual tracked questions are driving my competitors' advantage?
Summary Metrics
At the top of the page, four cards summarize your competitive standing at a glance.
Your Share of Voice
What it means: The percentage of all brand mentions across your tracked competitor set that belong to you.
Example: Acme Coffee Roasters holds a 20% share of voice.
Why it matters: This single number answers "out of everyone AI names in my category, what fraction of the time is it me?" — the core relative measure of your competitive AI visibility.
Your Rank
What it means: Your numeric position among all tracked competitors, ranked by share of voice.
Example: Acme Coffee Roasters ranks #4 of 5 (itself and its 4 tracked competitors).
Why it matters: A rank gives you instant competitive context that a percentage alone doesn't. Read the two together: #4 of 5 sounds weak, but at 20% against a leader on 22%, Acme is in a close race rather than far behind.
Competitors Tracked
What it means: The total number of rival brands you're currently monitoring alongside your own.
Example: Acme Coffee Roasters tracks 4 competitors.
Why it matters: This defines the size of the competitive set your rank and share of voice are measured against — tracking more relevant competitors generally produces a more accurate picture.
Top Competitor
What it means: The single brand currently holding the largest share of voice in your tracked set, along with its percentage.
Example: Acme Coffee Roasters' top competitor, Harbor Beans, holds a 22% share of voice.
Why it matters: This immediately identifies the brand to study most closely — whoever is winning the most AI mentions is the clearest benchmark for what's working in your category.
The Share of voice page: your share, rank and top competitor, the untracked brands AI already names, and the Share of Voice card with its window stated (last 30 days, questions and topics).
Add a Competitor
Below the summary cards, AEOTrack provides direct tools for managing your tracked competitor set.
- "Add competitors" lets you manually add a specific rival brand you want to monitor.
- "Suggest competitors for me" uses AI to recommend relevant competitors automatically, based on your category and existing tracked data. It never suggests a place, a directory or listing site, an ingredient or a practice, or your own business, and once AEOTrack knows you sell a service it leaves out marketplaces too.
A competitor that is not a business you compete with, such as a town, a directory or an everyday word, skews every number on this page. If one is tracked, the Dashboard asks Not a competitor? and removes it in one click. See Competitors that aren't competitors, which also explains how a competitor's one-word name is counted.
"Named by AI in Your Category — Not Yet Tracked"
This section is one of the most practically useful parts of the entire page. Rather than guessing who your competitors are, AEOTrack shows you brands that AI has already named alongside you across your collected answers — brands you haven't formally added to your tracked list yet.
What it is: A list of brand names, each with a count showing how many times AI has named that brand across your answer history, sourced directly from real collected answers rather than assumptions. Places, directories and listing sites, and your own business are never listed here.
Example (fictional): Acme Coffee Roasters' page shows untracked brands read from the 520 answers already collected: Juniper Roast Works (144), Copperline Roasting (142), Slow Tide Coffee (113) and Morning Bell Coffee (107). Each is a brand AI has recommended in answers relevant to Acme's category. Juniper Roast Works and Copperline Roasting each appear in more than a quarter of those answers, so they are worth adding.
Why it matters: This tells you your true competitive landscape as AI actually perceives it — which may be broader, or different, than the competitor list you'd choose based on your own market knowledge.
What action to take: Review this list regularly. If a brand appears frequently and you haven't added it, click "+" to start formally tracking it — otherwise you're missing a real, active competitor in your visibility picture.
Share of Voice Over Time
Beneath the top section, a line chart tracks how your share of voice — and each tracked competitor's — has moved over your selected date range.
What the chart shows
- X-axis: Dates across your tracked check-in period.
- Y-axis: Share of voice percentage.
- Lines: One line per brand, including yours and each tracked competitor, all plotted on the same scale for direct comparison.
Example (fictional): Acme Coffee Roasters' line starts at about 6% on 4 Aug, holds near 8% through August, then climbs to about 19% by 28 Sep. Over the same period Northwind Roasters slides from about 32% to about 22%, and the other rivals stay between roughly 16% and 27%. Around 22 Sep Acme's line crosses Ridgeline Coffee's, the kind of crossing worth looking into.
How to interpret it
Why it matters: Seeing every competitor's trajectory on the same chart shows you not just whether you're gaining or losing ground in isolation, but whether the entire category is shifting — for example, if every competitor's line is rising together, the category itself may simply be getting more AI attention overall.
What action to take
Watch for any competitor's line crossing yours in either direction — a rival overtaking you (or falling behind you) is a clear signal to investigate what changed around that date.
Share of Voice by Engine
Next to the overall trend, a bar chart breaks your share of voice down by individual AI platform.
What it is: A grouped bar chart comparing your share of voice — and select competitors' — on each specific AI engine, rather than blended together.
Why it matters: As the dashboard itself notes, a blended overall number can hide where your share actually comes from. You might have a healthy overall share of voice that's almost entirely driven by a single engine, while being nearly invisible on the rest.
Example (fictional): Acme Coffee Roasters' bar is the tallest on Perplexity (about 24%) and level with Bluebird Coffee and Harbor Beans on Gemini (about 22%). On Claude it is the shortest in the group (about 15%, against about 25% for Harbor Beans), and on Grok it trails Harbor Beans and Northwind Roasters. Its blended 20% hides that spread.
What action to take: If your share of voice is concentrated on one engine, treat that as a fragility risk rather than pure strength — diversify your visibility efforts toward the engines where competitors currently dominate.
Head to Head
Alongside the engine breakdown, AEOTrack provides direct, one-on-one comparisons against each tracked competitor.
What it is: For each competitor, a summary showing how many tracked questions named you both, how many you were named ahead of them, how many you were named behind them, and how many named neither brand.
Example (fictional): Across 13 tracked questions, Acme Coffee Roasters vs Ridgeline Coffee reads "5 both · 4 ahead · 1 behind · 3 neither": both brands were named on 5 questions, only Acme on 4, only Ridgeline on 1, and neither on the remaining 3. Against Harbor Beans it reads "7 both · 2 ahead · 1 behind · 3 neither", and against Northwind Roasters "8 both · 1 ahead · 1 behind · 3 neither". Acme is not clearly behind anyone. If a rival pulled away, the same row might read "2 both · 0 ahead · 8 behind · 3 neither", a clear, specific competitive gap.
Why it matters: A blended share-of-voice percentage can obscure real head-to-head performance. This view shows exactly which specific rivalries you're winning and which you're not, question by question.
What action to take: Prioritize competitors where you're mostly "behind" — these represent your clearest, most direct visibility gaps — and use the "neither" count as a reminder that plenty of questions remain open contests where no one has won yet.
AEOTrack's share-of-voice trend, engine breakdown, and head-to-head competitor comparisons.
Mentions by Question
Scrolling further down, the "Mentions by Question" section breaks down, question by question, exactly which brands are named in AI's answers.
What it is
A horizontal stacked bar chart, with one row per tracked question. Each bar segment represents a different brand named in AI's answers to that specific question, sized according to how often that brand was named relative to the others.
- X-axis: Mention count. Each segment's width is how many times that brand was named in answers to that specific question, so a longer bar means more brand mentions in total.
- Y-axis (rows): Individual tracked questions, listed word for word.
- Colored segments: Each color represents a distinct brand, keyed in the legend under the chart. In the example below, Acme Coffee Roasters is red and each competitor has its own color.
How to interpret it
Example (fictional): For Acme Coffee Roasters, "top online coffee roasters in the US" is the longest bar, at well over 200 mentions split across all five brands, a crowded question. "best gifts for coffee lovers" has only two segments, Bluebird Coffee and Ridgeline Coffee, and no red segment at all, so Acme is missing there entirely. "best decaf coffee beans" has a single segment (Harbor Beans), a quiet question one brand owns today. "how to store coffee beans to keep them fresh" has no bar, because no engine named any brand for it.
Why it matters: This view instantly shows you which questions are "crowded" (many brands competing for mentions) versus which are "quiet" (few brands currently contesting them) — both are useful in different ways. Crowded questions show where competitive pressure is highest; quiet questions may represent easier openings.
What action to take
- For questions where your segment is missing entirely, that's a direct, specific content gap.
- For questions where your segment is small relative to competitors, review what content or positioning is driving the larger segments.
- For "quiet" questions with few total brands mentioned, consider whether strong, focused content could let you dominate that specific question before competitors move in.
The AEOTrack Mentions by Question chart, showing which brands are named across each tracked question.
How to Read the Share of Voice Page: Step-by-Step
- Check your top-line share of voice and rank for immediate competitive context.
- Review "Named by AI, not yet tracked" to make sure your competitor set actually reflects reality.
- Check the share-of-voice-over-time chart to see whether the whole category — or just you — is shifting.
- Review the engine breakdown to see whether your visibility is diversified or concentrated on one platform.
- Scan head-to-head comparisons to identify your most lopsided competitive gaps.
- Study "Mentions by Question" to find specific questions where you're missing entirely or under-represented.
- Prioritize action on the competitors you're most behind and the questions where you have no presence at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "share of voice" mean on AEOTrack?
It's the percentage of all brand mentions across your tracked competitor set that belong to your brand specifically.
How is my rank calculated?
You're ranked among all tracked competitors by share of voice — a straightforward ordering from highest to lowest.
What does "Named by AI, not yet tracked" mean?
It's a list of real brands AI has already mentioned in answers relevant to your category, which you haven't yet added to your formally tracked competitor list.
Why does my share of voice look different by engine?
Different AI platforms can favor different brands based on their own training data and sourcing behavior — the engine breakdown shows you exactly where your visibility is concentrated versus thin.
What does "ahead / behind / neither" mean in Head to Head?
It compares you directly against one specific competitor across all tracked questions: how many you won, how many you lost, and how many neither brand was named on.
Why do some questions in "Mentions by Question" have more colored segments than others?
More segments means more different brands were named in answers to that specific question — a sign of a more competitive, contested topic.
How do I add a new competitor?
Use "Add competitors" to add one manually, or "Suggest competitors for me" to let AEOTrack recommend relevant rivals automatically.
How are a competitor's mentions counted?
By its full name, its name without "Ltd" or "Inc", its website's name, and its first word on its own only when that word is distinctive: not a place, an everyday word, a first name, a word of your own brand or questions, or a word two of your competitors share. See Competitors that aren't competitors.
A directory or a town is in my competitors. What do I do?
Remove it: the Not a competitor? check in the Dashboard's Check your setup section does it in one click. A directory the engines read is a site to get listed on, which is what the off-site plan is for.
Conclusion
The Share of Voice page turns your AI visibility from an abstract number into a concrete competitive picture — who's ahead, who's behind, and exactly which questions and engines are driving the gap. Make it a habit to check for newly-surfaced untracked competitors, review your head-to-head standing against your top rivals, and use the question-level breakdown to find the specific content gaps worth closing first.