Answer share
Of n answers to the same query, the number that name you. AI answers vary from run to run, so one answer proves nothing.
answer share = k / n
AI platform · ChatGPT
When a buyer asks ChatGPT who to hire, which companies does it name?
ChatGPT answers from what its model learned in training and, when it searches, from web pages it retrieves and cites. We measure which companies it names for your buyers' questions, and which pages it retrieved to name them.
How it builds an answer
How ChatGPT decides who to name.
Without search, ChatGPT answers from its training data: what was written about your company before the model's cutoff. With search, it rewrites the question into search queries, retrieves pages and builds the answer from passages on them, citing some. A company is named when a retrieved passage states plainly that it provides what was asked, for whom and where.
What it draws on
- Training data: the public web as it stood at the model's cutoff
- Live search results, fetched when a question needs current information
- Pages indexed by OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI's search crawler
- Pages and files the user provides in the conversation
What we measure
The same five measures, on ChatGPT.
Calculated per query, for you and every competitor in the set, so ChatGPT can be compared with every other platform.
Share of voice
Your mentions as a proportion of all mentions across the competitor set, for the same queries.
SoV = mᵧ / Σ mᵢ
Query coverage
The proportion of the query set, from problem to selection, in which you are named at least once.
coverage = |Q named| / |Q|
Citation coverage
Of the sources the answers cite, the proportion that mention you. AI systems repeat what their sources say.
citations naming you / citations
Retrieval margin
How closely your best passage matches the query, scored with our own embedding model, against the best competing passage. A negative margin usually explains why you were left out.
cos(q, pᵧ) − max cos(q, pᵢ)
Common questions
Does blocking GPTBot remove us from ChatGPT?
Not from search. GPTBot collects training data; OAI-SearchBot is the crawler behind ChatGPT search. Blocking OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt keeps your pages out of ChatGPT search results. Blocking GPTBot does not.
Why does ChatGPT name a competitor and not us?
Usually because a retrieved passage states the competitor's service, sector and location explicitly and none of yours does, or because the sources it cites mention them and not you. We trace each absence to which it is.
Why does ChatGPT give different answers to the same question?
Answers are generated, not looked up, and searches vary with wording and time. That is why we run each query many times and report answer share as k out of n.
The roadmap, service by service
Free 15-minute consultation
Find out where your business stands.
- How search and AI systems currently interpret your business
- Where competitors are better understood than you
- Specific retrieval weaknesses, checked before we speak
- Whether there is work worth doing, and what it is worth to you
Apply for a free 15-minute consultation
We reply within one business day, and usually within the hour.