Leaderboard methodology
How MarStack calculates AI visibility
How MarStack calculates AI mention rate, citation rate, recommendation rate, and share of voice for industry leaderboards across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
What we measure
Industry leaderboards score the same shared prompt set for every company in a market. We send those prompts to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, then count how often each company is named, cited, or recommended in the answers.
The unit of measurement is a cell: one prompt, one AI platform, and one location when the prompt is local. A reporting week is the full grid of those cells. A missing answer counts as a miss, not a skip. Private per-account prompt packs are not mixed into industry rankings.
Mention, citation, recommendation, and share of voice
AI Mention Rate
How often the company is named in AI answers during the reporting week.
named cells ÷ all cells × 100AI Citation Rate
How often the company’s website is listed as a source in those answers.
cited cells ÷ all cells × 100Recommendation Rate
How often the answer names the company or cites its site. Named and cited in the same cell counts once.
(named or cited) cells ÷ all cells × 100AI Share of Voice
That company’s share of all ranked-company mentions that week. Rank uses this first.
company mention cells ÷ all ranked mention cells × 100How rank is assigned
Rank is Share of Voice descending, then mention rate, then company name. Week-over-week rank change is prior rank minus current rank, so a positive number means the company moved up. Companies that did not appear in the prior week show as New.
Visibility change is this week’s mention rate minus last week’s mention rate, in percentage points. The prior week is the previous seven days.
Who appears on the table
Rows are not limited to originally tracked firms. The industry set includes catalog brands, companies using MarStack in that market, tracked competitors, and brands AI named organically. Names are deduped by website and brand. A company with zero mentions and zero citations in the week is omitted.
What these rankings are not
These are not Google search rankings. Generative answers change, and a mention is not a guarantee that AI described the company accurately. Leaderboards report what the tracked engines returned for the shared industry questions that week.
Questions
What is a leaderboard cell?
A cell is one research prompt sent to one AI platform, for one location when the prompt is local. Industry scores use every cell in that week’s shared prompt set. A missing answer counts as a miss, not a skip.
How is AI Mention Rate calculated?
AI Mention Rate is named cells divided by all cells in the reporting week, times 100. A company is named when the AI answer uses its brand name or a tracked alias.
How is AI Citation Rate calculated?
AI Citation Rate is cells that cite the company’s website divided by all cells, times 100. Citation means the AI answer lists that domain as a source.
What does Recommendation Rate mean?
Recommendation Rate counts cells that name the company or cite its website, divided by all cells, times 100. A company can be recommended by being named, cited, or both; it is not double-counted in the same cell.
What is AI Share of Voice?
AI Share of Voice is that company’s mention cells divided by all ranked companies’ mention cells, times 100. It is a share of named answers among companies that appeared that week, not a share of citations.
How is rank decided?
Rank is Share of Voice descending, then mention rate, then company name. Week-over-week rank change is prior rank minus current rank, so a positive number means the company moved up.
Who appears on an industry leaderboard?
The table includes catalog brands, companies using MarStack in that industry, tracked competitors, and brands AI named organically. Companies with zero mentions and zero citations in the week are omitted.
See the current rankings
Industry tables use this methodology and are rendered in the page source so they can be crawled without JavaScript.