# How do you measure whether AI assistants name your brand?

Measure it as a share: of the answers that carried sources, how many pointed at a page of yours. That single figure has a denominator you can inspect, which is what separates it from a score. Break it down by question tier — category, shortlist, comparison — because being named in a broad category question and being named in a direct comparison are different achievements, and averaging them hides which one you have.

## Key points

- The denominator is answers that cited anything. Answers that named no source are not zeroes for you; they are measurements of nothing, and folding them in either way changes the result.
- Break the figure down by the question that produced it. A share that rises because the category question shifted is not the same result as one that rises on the comparison question where buyers decide.
- Report "not measured" separately from zero. A competitor you never observed and a competitor observed at zero are different facts, and only one of them is a reading.
- Anchor ownership explicitly: a citation counts for you only when its domain is one of the pages you registered.
- Keep the series. One number is a snapshot; the series is the only thing that shows whether an action changed anything.

## Frequently asked questions

**Q: Is share of answer comparable between subjects?**
A: Only when the questions are. Two subjects measured on different question sets produce two different denominators, so compare subjects that share a question set, and compare a subject against its own history first.

**Q: Should answers without citations count as zero?**
A: No. An answer that cited nothing is not evidence that you were excluded; there was no source list to be excluded from. Counting it as zero would penalise a subject for the engine's answer style.

## Sources

- https://autoaeo.work/aeo/answers/which-pages-ai-engines-cite.md
- https://autoaeo.work/aeo/answers/citation-stability.md
- https://autoaeo.work/aeo/product.md

Updated 2026-10-07. Canonical source: https://autoaeo.work/aeo/answers/share-of-answer.md