Glossary
Share of answer
Share of answer is the proportion of AI answers, across a defined set of prompts, in which a brand appears. It is the AI-era counterpart to share of voice: instead of ad or search presence, it measures how often a brand is named inside generated responses.
Share of answer is computed over a prompt set and an engine. If a brand appears in 12 of 40 answers on Perplexity for a topic, its share of answer there is 30 percent. Running the same prompt set across engines shows where a brand leads and where competitors own the response.
The figure is comparative by design. It is read next to the competitors named on the same prompts, which turns a vague sense of visibility into a measured gap against specific rivals.
Common questions
How is share of answer different from citation rate?
Share of answer measures how often a brand is mentioned in answers. Citation rate measures how often the brand's own pages are cited as sources. A brand can be mentioned without its site being cited, and the reverse.
What do you need to compute it?
A fixed prompt set, the engines to test, and a record of each answer. CiteSurge runs the prompts, logs every mention, and reports share of answer per engine and per competitor set.