AI impression share

Also: share of AI impressions, AI answer impression share

AI impression share is the percentage of AI answers in a defined category where your brand appears at all, mentioned or cited, across a fixed set of buyer prompts. It is the AI-answer analogue of paid impression share in Google Ads, applied to generative search results rather than ad auctions.

Reviewed June 2026

Why it matters

Across a 50-prompt set on industrial lubricants, a distributor appears in 6 answers. That is a 12% AI impression share. Now the distributor has a baseline. Publish a hydraulic-fluid cross-reference table, re-run the same 50 prompts, and watch whether that number moves. Impression share answers a blunt question. In how many of the answers your buyers see do you show up at all? Rankings cannot tell you that, because the AI answer is a single synthesized passage, not a list of ten blue links.

They count different things. Impression share is presence: the fraction of answers where you appear, full stop. Share of voice weighs that against competitors, so it is your slice of all brand mentions in the same answer set. You can hold a high impression share and a low share of voice when a rival is named in every answer you appear in.

In practice

An MRO distributor fixes a stable prompt set, say 50 questions covering NLGI grease grades, seal cross-references, and 'best supplier for X' lookups. They run it monthly across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI answers, then log the share each month. When a new PIM-fed spec page pushes impression share from 12% to 19% on the lubricant prompts, that is the signal the content reached the engines. Treat any single run as illustrative, since answers vary per sample.

Estimate your AI impression share

Impression share is how often you appear at all across a prompt set. Enter mentions and prompts for your appearance rate, and add a competitor for share of voice.

Prompts testedBuyer questions you asked the enginesAnswers that named youAnswers that cited youLinked you as a sourceA competitor's mentionsOptional — for share of voice

Mention rate30%

Citation rate15%

Share of voice35%

Illustrative — every number is computed from your inputs. Mention rate and citation rate are out of prompts tested; share of voice is your mentions against the one competitor you entered.

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AI impression share

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