Competitors

The Competitors page ranks the brands AI engines name alongside you in the answers to your tracked prompts, by visibility: the share of those answers that name each brand. Open it from Competitors in the Monitor section of the sidebar. Four cards sit above two tabs: Overview, the ranking of every brand, and Head-to-head, you against one rival.

Detected and tracked competitors#

Ranqo finds competitors for you. Every brand an engine names in an answer to one of your prompts is detected, up to 20 per answer, with no setup. Those detected brands fill the rankings on this page and on the Visibility page.

Your watchlist is the set of competitors you choose to follow closely. Tracking a competitor:

• keeps it in the rankings and in Share of Voice even when AI names it only once;
• lists it under Watching on the Overview table, even in a range where AI does not name it at all;
• puts it first in the rival picker in Head-to-head;
• adds it to the competitor chips on the Visibility trend chart, so you can plot its line next to yours.

Add a competitor to the watchlist with the box at the end of its row in the Overview table, or Watch beside the rival picker in Head-to-head, where a message confirms each change with Undo. Untick the box, or hover Watching and press Stop watching, to stop following a competitor. Removing a competitor from the watchlist does not remove its mentions from your data.

Which competitors count#

Some names in AI answers are noise: a brand mentioned once, with no website, that may not exist. A detected competitor appears in the rankings and counts toward Share of Voice when AI named it more than once in the window, AI gave a valid website for it, or Ranqo confirmed its website when a run finished. A competitor on your watchlist always counts. See Share of Voice.

Filters#

The page has the same filters as the Visibility page: All Platforms, All Locations, All Categories, All Themes (when your prompts span two or more themes), All Prompts / Branded / Unbranded, and the date range.

• The page reads the last 7, 30 or 90 days. Last 365 days reads the last 90 days, and a custom range reads a window ending today, not the dates you picked: 7 days for a range of up to 14 days, 30 days for up to 60, and 90 days for anything longer. See Time zones.
• The four cards and both tabs apply every filter, except the pages card in Head-to-head, which follows Outreach's own window.

When the window holds no run, the four cards and both tabs show the last completed run, and an As of note next to the date picker gives its date. Changes against the previous window are not shown then. See Carried values.

The four cards#

• Your Rank (Where you place overall): your position among all qualifying brands by visibility, for example #3 of 18. The arrow beside it is your change in visibility against the previous window, in points, though it is printed with a % sign.
• Share of Voice (Your slice vs competitors): your share of every qualified brand mention.
• #1 Rank Rate (How often you rank first): the share of all answers, across prompts and engines, where you are named first. Answers that do not name you count against it.
• Tracked Competitors (On your watchlist): how many competitors you follow.

Overview tab#

The table titled with your brand's name, such as Acme's Competitors, ranks every qualifying brand, with Visibility, Position, Sentiment, Mentions and SoV (Share of Voice), then one column per engine. A search box finds a brand by name.

Three chips at the top left of the table choose which brands it lists, with your own average visibility over the period beside them:

• All (the default): every qualifying brand.
• Watching: every competitor on your watchlist, including any AI did not name in these answers, which show Not named in these answers.
• New & rising: the brands marked New or Rising. It appears when the previous window holds answers.

Under Watching and New & rising, your own row sits among them in its ranked place, so each brand reads against you. New marks a brand the previous window did not name at all and that is visible enough now to be more than a passing name. Rising marks a brand whose visibility rose by more than 15 points on the previous window, the ordinary movement between two runs. Hover either marker for the reason.

Click a row to open that competitor's detail:

• its logo, a link to its website, its rank and mention count, Watching if it is on your watchlist, and Counted with when AI used other spellings for it (see Merged names);
• Visibility, Position, Sentiment and Share of voice for that competitor;
• Visibility by run: one point per run in the window. Hover a run for its visibility, mentions and position;
• By engine: its visibility on each engine, the same figures as its row in the table;
• Queries: one row per prompt whose answers named the competitor in the selected period, five to a page and the most visible first. Each shows its category, the engines (in colour where the latest answer named it, with the counts on hover), its visibility in that prompt's answers (hover for how many named it), the most common sentiment toward it and its average position. Click a query to open its insights page, where each run's answers are listed.

Head-to-head tab#

Head-to-head compares you with one rival. You vs and the rival picker sit at the top, with Watch or Watching beside them; hover Watching and it reads Stop watching. The tab opens on your top rival. The picker lists the competitors on your watchlist first, then the most visible, each with its visibility, and its search finds any brand named in these answers.

When a link opens a rival that your filters exclude, a notice says so, with Clear filters or Compare with your top rival.

The matchup#

The first card opens with a scoreboard. On the left is the number of prompts you lead, on the right the number the rival leads, and between them how many prompts there are and, when there are any, how many are tied and how many name Neither of you. A prompt is tied when the rival isn't ahead of you on any engine and, on at least one, AI names you both at the same place or with no rank to compare. When more prompts are tied than either of you leads, the tied count takes the middle instead. Hover a number to see what it counts: the rival's says how many prompts it was named instead of you on and how many it was ranked above you on.

Under the scoreboard, a strip shows every prompt, one block each in the same colours (a single bar when you track more than 50).

Three panels follow:

• Where you stand: Visibility, Position, Share of voice and Sentiment, your figure first and the rival's second, the better of each in bold. Every figure but position has two bars, yours above theirs, starting from the same edge. Position shows both of you as dots on a line from #1 to #10, so the dot nearer #1 is placed higher. Visibility and position show their change on the previous window when they moved.
• By engine: when you track more than one engine, each engine's visibility for both of you, laid out the same way.
• Answers that name either of you: how many answers name you and how many name the rival, then one bar of every such answer, split into those naming only you, both of you, and only the rival. Under it, When AI names you both counts how many of the shared answers put you first, how many put the rival first, and how many are tied (the same place, or no rank to compare).

These figures come from the same ranking as the Overview table, so the matchup agrees with the rival's row there.

A prompt counts as one the rival beats you on when, on at least one engine, the latest answer in the window named the rival and not you, or placed it above you. It reads each engine's latest answer, so it describes where things stand now, while Visibility counts every answer in the window.

Where the rival beats you#

The card titled with the rival's name, such as Where Acme beats you, lists your prompts one by one, each engine read from its latest answer in the window. Prompts where neither of you is named are left out, and the footer counts them.

• The chips: the rival's name followed by ahead (the default), Tied, You ahead and All, each but All with the colour its prompts have on the scoreboard's strip. A prompt is ahead for the rival when, on any engine, the latest answer named the rival and not you or placed it above you. It is tied when no engine does that but on at least one, AI names you both at the same place or with no rank to compare. You are ahead when, on every engine that names either of you, you are named alone or placed higher.
• The line under each prompt names the engines, for example Named instead of you on ChatGPT or Ranked above you on Gemini (#1 vs #3). Outside the ahead view it also names where you lead.
• The two engine columns, yours and the rival's, show one mark per engine: in colour where the latest answer named that brand, dimmed where it did not. Hover your marks for your place.
• A row opens the prompt's insights page, where you can read the answers. The ⋯ menu offers Open prompt insights and Write a post for this prompt, which opens Generate Blog with the prompt as the title.

The footer repeats how many prompts the rival beats you on. When there are any, Counter-content ideas opens Blog Ideas filtered to Competitor counter ideas.

Pages AI cites for the rival, not you#

The last card lists pages and threads AI cited in answers that named the rival and left you out, taken from your Outreach list. Getting mentioned on them gives AI a reason to name you too.

• Each row shows the page or thread, its site or subreddit, how many such answers it appeared in, and its play (comment, post or pitch), with Working once you have started it. Click a row to open it in Outreach; See all in Outreach opens the whole list.
• Only open targets are listed: those still to do or in progress.
• It follows Outreach's own window, the 90 days before Outreach last refreshed, and a page counts for a rival only when the rival is among the brands most often named alongside it. Your filters and date range do not apply to it.
• Until Outreach has built its list, the card says Outreach builds this list after your next run.

Merged names and how to separate them#

AI engines spell the same company in different ways: a short name, a legal name, a product name. Ranqo groups those spellings under one competitor, so its mentions are not split across three rows. The decision is made once per brand and remembered, so the same pair does not merge one week and split the next. See Competitor identity.

When a competitor's detail or Head-to-head shows Counted with and the competitor's name, those are the spellings counted in its row, each with how many answers used it. If one of them is a different company:

1. Open the competitor

   Click its row in the Overview table, or choose it in the rival picker in Head-to-head.

2. Separate the spelling

   Press Separate on the spelling. A confirmation says what changes: the competitor stops counting answers that name that spelling without it; the spelling gets a row of its own only if you watch it, AI names it in more than one answer, or AI gives its website or Ranqo has confirmed one; and answers already saved under the competitor's name stay with it, while the rest move at once. Press Count separately, and a message confirms it will no longer be counted as part of this competitor, with Undo.

3. Group it back if needed

   A separated spelling stays listed, struck through, while answers saved under the competitor's name still count it there. Press Group back to count it as part of the competitor again, or use Undo on the message. Once the spelling is no longer listed, Undo on the message is the only way to group it back.

A separation is remembered. Later runs do not merge the two names again, in either direction.

Why some logos are a letter#

A competitor's website is never in the AI answer itself, so Ranqo works it out as each run finishes: the website stored for a competitor you track, the site AI reported for it, the pages AI cited and, when those do not settle it, an AI model told your category and market and then a Google search written from what your answers say about the competitor, each checked against the competitor's name. When no website is confirmed, the logo shows the first letter of the name. Ranqo does not guess a domain from the name, because a guessed domain often belongs to a different company, and a wrong logo is worse than none. See Competitor identity.

Related#