Brand Recommendation Share is a Rhinegold-defined metric that measures the share of an LLM's recommendation attention a brand holds — weighted by the number of competitors named alongside it in the same answer.
Key takeaways
A mention is not a recommendation — being one of ten options contributes only one fifth as much as being one of two.
Read the gap between Mention Rate and Brand Recommendation Share, not the absolute number.
Use it as a steering KPI; pair it with Citation Rate for authority.
4×
difference in per-answer BRS contribution between a 2-provider list and an 8-provider list — same brand, same mention.source
Consensus definition
There is no industry-standard definition for a competition-weighted recommendation metric in LLM answers. In current practice, observers fall back to mention share or raw Share of Voice, neither of which distinguishes a brand named alone from a brand named in a long aggregate list.
rhinegold operator refinement
Brand Recommendation Share treats each valid recommendation answer as the unit of analysis. If the brand is named, it receives a contribution of 1 divided by the number of distinct providers listed. If the brand is not named, its contribution is zero. The metric is the average of these contributions across all valid recommendation answers — which makes it decomposable as Mention Rate × conditional concentration.
Exhibit
Why list size dominates the score
Per-answer BRS contribution when the brand IS named, by number of providers listed. Same mention — very different weight.[ref]
1 Contribution = 1 ÷ number of distinct providers listed, when the brand is named in the answer. 2 Illustrative of the weighting mechanism; not measured client data.Source: rhinegold weighted-recommendation methodology v1.0.
Exhibit · Formula governance
BRS = (1/N) · Σ over valid recommendation answers a of [1_{brand named in a} / |providers in a|]
Numerator
For each valid recommendation answer: 1 divided by the number of distinct providers listed if the brand is named in that answer; 0 otherwise.
Denominator
All valid recommendation answers (N).
Unit of analysis
A valid recommendation answer (an LLM answer to a discovery prompt that contains a provider list).
Inclusion
Answers to discovery prompts that produce a provider list; provider extraction successful.
Exclusion
Non-recommendation answers (brand prompts, informational prompts). Answers without a provider list. Answers where provider extraction failed.
Missing data
Brand not named → contribution 0 (the answer still counts in the denominator). Provider extraction failed → answer is excluded from both numerator and denominator.
Aggregation
Within an answer: 1/|providers| weighting if named, 0 otherwise. Across answers: equal-weighted arithmetic mean over the valid recommendation set.
Worked example
Across 100 valid recommendation answers, the brand is named in 40. Average list size when named: 2.5. Mention Rate = 0.40. Mean conditional contribution = 0.40. BRS = 0.40 × 0.40 = 0.16. Brand named in only 8-provider lists: BRS = 0.40 × 0.125 = 0.05.
Known sensitivity
Sensitive to competitor-set completeness (incomplete set deflates the denominator of the conditional concentration). Sensitive to list-length distribution within the prompt set. Volatile at small N. Span-aware brand detection matters: substring matches inflate the numerator.
Must not be read as
A position-aware ranking metric (it is not). A causal claim about commercial outcome (it is not). Equivalent to Share of Voice (it is the weighted refinement).
Comparability
v1.0 baseline. Any change to the formula requires a new metric_version.
BRS v1.0 · introduced 2026-06-07
Operational use
Brand Recommendation Share is the steering KPI for visibility programs1 where the right question is not whether the brand is mentioned at all, but how exclusively. It separates weak visibility — one of ten in an aggregate list — from stronger visibility among a small number of recommended providers.
Measurement boundary
The metric is volatile at small n. It says nothing about the brand's position within a list — a rank-weighted variant is needed for that2. It is not a replacement for Citation Rate: a recommendation is not a source citation.
The question is not whether the brand is mentioned — but how alone it stands when it is.
Distinct from
Against Share of Voice — the naïve count share — this is the competition-weighted refinement. Against Mention Rate, this is no longer binary. Against Citation Rate, this measures recommendation, not source attribution.
Observed pattern in practice
In rhinegold's practice, the gap between Mention Rate and Brand Recommendation Share is the recurring diagnostic, not the absolute Brand Recommendation Share value. Brands that look strong on Mention Rate often reveal a substantially weaker shortlist position once the list-size weighting is applied. The shape of that gap — small vs large — is what separates a brand recommended exclusively from one recommended as one of many.
Common mistakes
Confusing it with raw Mention Rate (overstates strength when lists are long).
Averaging over non-recommendation answers (distorts the denominator).
Working with an incomplete competitor set, which deflates the conditional concentration and inflates the metric.
Where consensus is missing
No industry-standard definition for a competition-weighted recommendation metric exists. This is a deliberately chosen, more substantive aggregation than naïve Share of Voice. Treat related research on position bias2 as methodological context, not as primary evidence for this formula.