How competitors are identified
Tracking competitors shows you who AI recommends instead of you — and how the gap changes over time.
The hard part isn't spotting other company names in an AI answer; a single scan can surface hundreds. The hard part is deciding which of them a customer could actually pick over you.
What counts as a competitor
A competitor is a business a customer reading that AI answer could plausibly choose instead of yours — for the same job, in a market they can reach.
That's substitutability, not co-occurrence. A car brand appearing next to a dealership isn't a competitor of that dealership; nobody buys a car from the manufacturer instead of from a dealer. Every organisation named in your results is sorted on that basis:
Sells the same thing to the same customer. These are the only ones on your competitor board.
Lists many providers rather than being one. Shown in its own panel — AI sending buyers there instead of to you is its own finding.
Review, maps and social sites. Also its own panel, because ranking well on them is a different job.
Brands you represent or resell, manufacturers above you in the chain, and services your customers also buy. Kept out of the board entirely.
This is why your board is usually much shorter than the number of names in your results — and why it doesn't list the brands you sell. If AI names no genuine rival at all, the board is empty, and that is a real answer rather than a failure: it means AI isn't pointing buyers at a competitor, it's pointing them somewhere else entirely. Check the marketplace panel.
How a name becomes a competitor
- Evidence first. A company has to appear in at least two different prompts, or across two different AI models, before it's considered at all. One mention in one answer is noise.
- Then classification. Survivors are sorted into the categories above using what your site actually does — not just your industry, which is far too coarse. Two businesses can both be "automotive" and share no competitors at all.
- Then verification. A competitor's website is checked before we act on it: the domain has to answer, not be a parked or for-sale page, and actually mention the business. AI models routinely invent plausible-looking domains, so an unverified one is never scanned or contacted.
- Out-of-market rivals are kept, and flagged. If AI answers your local questions with a foreign tool, that's worth knowing, so it stays on the board with a marker rather than being filtered away.
Adding your own
From the Competitors page you can add a rival by name or website — useful for a new entrant AI hasn't surfaced yet. Your plan sets how many you can add by hand, and separately how many auto-detected competitors your board holds. See plan limits.
Seeing a competitor's full report
Your board shows each competitor's visibility against yours. To open a competitor's full report, use Track this competitor on their profile. Tracking uses one of your domain slots, exactly as adding another of your own domains would, and it doesn't start a new scan — you're opening a report, not commissioning one.
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