As of October 2024, Google’s share of search was 83.54%, with YouTube claiming 6.79% and ChatGPT, the new kid on the block, stealing 4.33% of the search market.
The encroaching popularity of ChatGPT - and other generative AI search tools - has prompted a new marketing metric that Marketing Week described as “the new marketing measure for the AI era”: Share of Model.
Share of Model measures how well a brand is represented in AI models like ChatGPT. We’re naturally interested in it, not least because we recently published a white paper titled Reputation in the Age of AI.
But whilst Share of Model is a worthy addition to the myriad of measures we might use to gauge PR impact, it doesn’t necessarily change the way we should approach digital PR.
I’m going to discuss that more here.
One of the core takeaways from our research was that 61% of brand-related AI search results are abstracted from earned media. Owned media - brand-generated content such as blogs, press releases, and company websites - shows up in 44% of responses in relation to questions about brands.
In other words, ChatGPT draws a significant number of its answers from resources we’ve been talking about for years. It certainly isn’t manifesting opinions or information about brands on its own.
As such, Share of Model doesn’t really tell us anything revelationary. A good Share of Model score essentially means that our website is well optimised and our Share of Voice is high. Equally, a low Share of Model score means there’s work to be done. It’s highly unlikely that you’d have a high Share of Model but a low Share of Voice and a poorly optimised website.
Share of Model isn’t really a new metric at all: in essence, it’s a score that measures the health of a range of well-established metrics. It just so happens to do it through the guise of AI models.
With this in mind, improving our Share of Model isn’t a dark art. By taking action to improve our Share of Voice and optimising our own digital assets, we’ll improve our Share of Model even if we’re not intending to.
As with any impact indicator, Share of Model should be viewed consistently over time. AI search is still relatively primitive, and it’s reasonable to expect changes to the way these tools draw from the internet to formulate search responses.
