Measuring and earning mentions in AI answers
Record your competitors, check AI visibility once per assistant, read Mentions and Share of voice against them, then improve the pages assistants already cite and write the pages your strongest competitors have and you lack. Check again about once a month, when the dataset is rebuilt.
AI answers on Google and ChatGPT name brands and cite pages. A domain that is named in those answers gets a visit, or at least a mention, from questions where the ten blue links are never read. AI visibility measures that, one assistant at a time.
1. Record the competitors first
The comparison reads the competitors in the project’s context, up to nine of them. Without them the check reports only your own figures and share of voice has nothing to compare against. Record the competitors you lose deals to, not only the largest ones.
2. Run one check per assistant
On AI visibility, choose Google AI answers and Check AI visibility, then do the same for ChatGPT. Each check costs 2,150 credits, and the same check within 24 hours answers from a stored copy at no cost.
3. Read the figures
| Figure | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Mentions | how many AI answers in the dataset name your domain |
| AI search volume | how often the questions behind those answers are asked |
| Share of voice | your mentions against each competitor’s |
| Cited sources | which of your pages the assistant cites, and how often |
A competitor with twice your mentions on Google AI answers and level with you on ChatGPT has a Google problem you do not; treat the assistants separately.
4. Improve what is already cited
Cited sources is the shortest list to act on. Those pages already earn citations, so they are the pages an assistant trusts on the topic:
- Keep them current. A cited page with an outdated figure is a citation that can turn against you.
- Make the answer easy to lift: a direct one-paragraph answer near the top, then the detail.
- Link from them to the pages you want cited next.
5. Close the gaps competitors hold
Where a competitor’s share of voice is well above yours, look for the page they have and you lack: a comparison, a definition, a pricing explanation. Use Keyword research on the topic to see how often it is searched, then write the page in the topic cluster it belongs to.
6. Check monthly, not daily
The data vendor rebuilds its AI answer dataset about once a month, so a check every few days returns the same figures. Run both checks once a month and record what changed in the project’s research log, next to what you published that month.