What is Funnel-Stage SOV?
Most brands know their overall AI Share of Voice. Very few know where in the buyer journey they're visible. Funnel-stage SOV breaks that number down by stage: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. It's an exclusive capability of Cited By AI®. No other ASEO product does this.
What funnel-stage SOV actually shows you
A single Share of Voice percentage tells you how often your brand appears across AI platforms. It doesn't tell you when in the buying process that happens. Funnel-stage SOV breaks your citation rate into three stages:
- Awareness: Queries from people just starting research. ("What is the best way to improve AI search visibility?" or "How do businesses get cited in ChatGPT?")
- Consideration: Queries from people comparing options. ("What should I look for in an ASEO agency?" or "How do ASEO tools compare?")
- Decision: Queries from people ready to act. ("Best ASEO consultant UK" or "ASEO agency Gloucester")
Why most brands are missing the Awareness and Consideration stages
Most ASEO strategies measure Decision-stage queries: branded prompts, direct vendor requests. That's the narrowest part of the funnel, and the part where preferences are already formed. You're measuring outcomes, not inputs.
Buyers at Awareness and Consideration are still forming preferences. They're evaluating categories, building shortlists, deciding which vendors are even worth comparing. The brand that shows up in AI answers at those stages shapes how the buyer understands the entire category. That's not a marginal advantage. It's a category position.
The common finding: Most brands that engage Cited By AI® discover they have moderate Decision-stage SOV and near-zero Awareness-stage SOV. AI is recommending their competitors during the stages that matter most for long-term preference formation.
How funnel-stage SOV is measured
Cited By AI® maps hundreds of prompts across each client's industry and categorises them by funnel stage. The ASEO Agent then queries all 5 AI platforms with those prompts and logs three things for each: whether the client's brand appears, how it's positioned, and which competitors take the slot instead.
What comes back is a matrix: SOV by platform, by funnel stage. You can see exactly where in the buyer journey you're visible and where you're not.
What to do with the gaps
Every empty cell in the matrix is a content brief. The Zero-Gap Topic Matrix cross-references funnel stage with topic cluster, pinpointing the exact combination of subject matter and buyer intent where you have zero AI coverage.
The AEO Content Writer generates a citability-scored content block for each high-priority gap, scored against the Citation Probability Score® formula before it reaches you. You get the insight and the fix in the same report.
Who offers this
No other publicly listed ASEO tool breaks AI Share of Voice down by buyer journey stage. Funnel-stage SOV is exclusive to Cited By AI® and available on all paid tiers from Small upwards.
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