Add a competitor

Adding a competitor tells the platform to count every time that business is named in an answer to one of your prompts. It takes a minute, and the more interesting half happens by itself.

What you'll learn

• How to add a competitor and what changes once you have
• How competitors are discovered without you
• How to keep the list useful rather than complete

Add one

1. Open Competitors.
2. Add the business. Use the name customers use, and add the website if you have it: a name alone can be ambiguous, and the domain is what disambiguates a common trading name.
3. Save. From the next cycle onward, every answer that names them counts here, and they appear in the landscape ordered by how much of the answer space they hold.

Let them find you

Every answer the judge reads records every business named in it. Businesses that keep turning up appear in your landscape whether or not you added them.

This is where the value is. The business being recommended most often in a category is regularly not on the internal list, because it is not the one the sales team loses deals to. It is the one with the best-structured content.

What to do with a rival once it is there

1. Open the head to head. Where they beat you, where you beat them, on which surfaces.
2. Descend to the answers. Read two answers that named them. The language an engine uses about a rival is the clearest statement of what the engine thinks the category values.
3. Check the sources. If the same third-party page keeps feeding the answers that name them, that page is your next job. See Sources.

Keeping the list useful

• Remove noise. A business named once in six months is not a competitor, it is a coincidence.
• Watch for new entrants. A name that appears from nothing and climbs is worth knowing about early.
• Do not add every company in your category. The list is for businesses you are actually being compared with.

An empty list is a real state

If you track rivals and none was named this window, the lens says so rather than showing zero. They may not come up on the prompts you track, and a prompt they win that you do not track is not counted at all. If that persists, the problem is usually prompt coverage rather than the rivals.

Try this in Outercite

Ask the assistant "How do I compare to @" and pick the rival you least expected to see in your landscape.

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