What is Share of Voice?

Your percentage of total available search impressions

Share of Voice (SoV) tells you what percentage of total search visibility you're capturing across your tracked keywords. Think of it as your market share in search results. If there are 10,000 total impressions available and you're getting 2,000, your Share of Voice is 20%.

How is it calculated?

We can't know exactly how many total searches happen for a keyword, but we can estimate it using your position and impressions along with our Expected CTR curve.

Share of Voice = sum(your impressions) / sum(estimated total impressions)

Estimated total impressions = your impressions / Expected CTR at your position

The Expected CTR curve tells us what percentage of total impressions a result at each position typically receives. By dividing your actual impressions by the expected CTR for your position, we can estimate the total search volume, and then calculate your share of it.

A worked example

Example: Calculating Share of Voice for three keywords
Keyword Pos Your Impr Exp. CTR Est. Total Impr
"seo tools"310010%100 / 0.10 = 1,000
"keyword tracker"8501%50 / 0.01 = 5,000
"rank checker free"120025%200 / 0.25 = 800

Your total impressions: 100 + 50 + 200 = 350

Estimated total impressions: 1,000 + 5,000 + 800 = 6,800

Share of Voice = 350 / 6,800 = 5.1%

What does your number mean?

Share of Voice is most useful as a trend metric. The absolute number depends on how many keywords you track and where they rank, so there's no universal "good" or "bad" value. Instead, watch it over time:

  • Going up: Your search visibility is growing. Your content and SEO efforts are working
  • Going down: You're losing ground. Competitors may be outranking you, or search demand is shifting
  • Flat: You're holding steady, which might be fine or might mean you need to push harder
Note: Only tracked keywords with position and impression data are included in the Share of Voice calculation. Keywords with no data (new keywords not yet synced) are excluded.

How to improve your Share of Voice

There are two ways to increase SoV:

  • Rank higher: Moving from position 10 to position 3 increases your expected CTR from 0.6% to 10%, dramatically increasing your share of those impressions
  • Target more keywords: Track and optimize for more relevant keywords to expand the total pool you're competing in