Definition

n-sampling

n-sampling is executing an identical prompt multiple times against the same surface in independent sessions, then reporting the aggregate rate with a confidence interval instead of a single observed answer.

AI answers are non-deterministic, so any single reading is one draw from a distribution. n=10 is the practical floor for client reporting; n=25 or more is appropriate for competitive claims.

Interval width shrinks roughly with the square root of n, so going from 10 to 40 samples halves the error bar.

Related terms

Citation share

Nostimates measures n-sampling across twelve AI answer surfaces. Request access →

All terms

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)AI Overviews AI Mode Citation share Query fan-out Grounding Share of voice (AI)Extraction success rate Surface Answer engine Citation Brand mention Mention rate Confidence interval Statistical significance Citation volatility Non-determinism Reproducibility Identity-free collection Personalisation Locale Residential proxy Bot detection Collection cost Credit Evidence retention Audit trail Parser version Canary prompt Data freshness Cadence Prompt set Head term Long-tail query Competitive set llms.txt robots.txt AI crawler Training crawler Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)Hallucination Answer box Featured snippet Zero-click search Entity Entity salience Knowledge graph Structured data JSON-LD schema.org FAQ schema Answer-first content Chunk Embedding Semantic search Prompt injection Market coverage Sentiment analysis Position tracking White-label data