Add a Competitor to Track

Adding competitors lets you measure your share of voice against the brands that appear alongside you in AI search results. Once a competitor is saved, Outercite runs the same verification pipeline on their mentions that it runs on yours, so every comparison is apples-to-apples.

What you'll learn

• How to manually add a competitor by name or domain
• How auto-discovery identifies rivals from your existing keyword set
• What the threat score tells you and when to act on it

Before you start

You need at least one keyword (prompt) already saved in Outercite. If you have not added keywords yet, do that first via Prompts in the sidebar. Each keyword becomes a live check sent to all six AI engines: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI, Grok, and DeepSeek.

Step 1: Open the Competitors screen

1. Log in and go to your Dashboard.
2. Click Competitors in the left sidebar. The URL will be /competitors.
3. You will see the competitor list (empty if this is your first time) and an Add Competitor button in the top-right corner.

Step 2: Add a competitor manually

1. Click Add Competitor.
2. Enter either the competitor's brand name or their primary domain (for example, rivalpharmacy.com.au).
3. Outercite resolves the brand to a canonical name and checks whether it already appears in any of your citation results.
4. Click Save. The competitor is now tracked across all your keywords.

Step 3: Use auto-discovery

Auto-discovery scans your existing citation results and surfaces brands that appear frequently alongside yours. It saves time when you are entering a new category or are unsure who your AI-search rivals actually are.

1. On the Competitors screen, look for the Suggested Rivals section. It appears once Outercite has processed at least one full check cycle for your keywords.
2. Each suggestion shows the brand name, how many of your keywords it appeared in, and a threat level (Low, Medium, or High).
3. Click Add next to any suggestion to track it. Click Dismiss to remove it from the list permanently.

Step 4: Read the threat score

Once a competitor is tracked, the Competitors screen shows a threat score (0-100) and a threat level for each rival. Per-engine citation rates currently range from 38% (Google AI) to 58% (Perplexity), so a competitor with a high score on Perplexity deserves priority attention because that engine cites businesses at the highest rate in the dataset.

Use the threat score to prioritise content and optimisation work. A competitor with a High threat level on Perplexity is a stronger signal than a High on Google AI, simply because Perplexity drives more citations overall.

Step 5: Remove a competitor

If you no longer need to track a brand:

1. On the Competitors screen, click the three-dot menu next to the competitor's name.
2. Select Remove.
3. Historical data is retained; future checks stop immediately.

Tips for a useful competitor list

• Track two to four direct rivals plus one aspirational brand (a category leader you want to close the gap on).
• Revisit the list quarterly. AI search results shift as engines update their retrieval logic.
• If a competitor's citation rate spikes suddenly, check whether they have published new content or earned coverage from a high-authority source. That pattern often explains surges.

Try this in Outercite

Head to the Competitors screen now and see which rivals are already appearing in your citation results.

Open Competitors in Outercite

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