For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt. Every page on this site is also served as Markdown: append `.md` to any URL, or send `Accept: text/markdown`.
Skip to content
Attensira LogoAttensira
Start free

Is a competitor gaining on you in AI answers?

Ask your assistant to call get_analytics with area=competitor and days=30 on the Attensira MCP server. Each tracked rival comes back with a mention rate on the same denominator as yours and a change marked real or not. A rival is gaining only when its change is real; being named more often is a level, not a gain.

7 days free · card requiredConnect your assistant

ChatGPTattensira · attensira.com

Asked: Is any competitor gaining on us in AI answers?

called get_analytics area=competitor days=30

Every tracked rival is named far more often than we are, and none is provably gaining: every change came back real false.

Semrush
36.3%
n = 4,374 answers · change not proven
Profound
31.6%
change not proven
Ahrefs
26.2%
change not proven
Peec AI
22.1%
change not proven
Attensira
4.1%
n = 4,374 answers

Levels are not gains. This is what it looks like when nobody is moving.

attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP ·

Who does the work

  • Analyst agentAnalyst · Counted the split

Which call answers it?

Paste it into any client connected to the Attensira MCP server, or ask the question in your own words and your assistant picks the same call.

The call
{ "tool": "get_analytics", "arguments": { "area": "competitor", "days": 30 } }

What can’t this tell you?

  • Competitor mention rate is measured on your prompts, not on the market. It says how often a brand appears in answers to the questions you chose to track, and nothing about their overall presence, spend or growth.
  • A competitor you have never registered with add_competitor is invisible here, and absent is not the same as not appearing. The list is a list of brands you asked about.
  • Sentiment is scored for your own brand only, never for competitors, so an answer that recommends a rival and an answer that criticises one both count as one mention.

What is the chain behind it?

When one call is not enough, these are the calls that follow, in order, and why each one is there.

  1. Call 01

    Pull the tracked competitor rates

    Call get_analytics with area=competitor and days=30. Each tracked competitor comes back with a mention rate calculated on the same denominator as your own, which is what makes the two numbers comparable at all.

  2. Call 02

    Pull your own rate over the identical window

    Call get_analytics with area=visibility and days=30. Comparing movement needs both series over the same window; comparing levels across different windows is the most common way to read a gain that never happened.

  3. Call 03

    Find the prompts where the gap lives

    Call get_analytics with area=prompt, days=30 and order=worst_first. Competitors rarely gain evenly across a prompt set, and the handful of prompts carrying the difference are the only ones worth acting on.

  4. Call 04

    Read what the models actually say about them

    Call get_prompt on those prompts. The answer text is the competitive intelligence — which of their pages the model leaned on, and which claim of theirs it repeated.

How do two brands split the same answers?

Head to head counts every answer once: only us, only them, both, or neither. Against Semrush, it names them alone in 1,601 answers and us alone in 177. That split is the baseline a gain is measured against.

Semrush named, we were not
1,601
n=4,524 answers
we were named, Semrush was not
177
n=4,524 answers
both named
20
n=4,524 answers
Analyst agentAnalyst · Counted the splitattensira.com workspace, get_analytics area=competitor, read over the Attensira MCP on 4 Oct 2026 · ChatGPT and Perplexity · to

What did it show on our own workspace?

A level problem, not a trend problem. Every rival was named far more often than we were, and not one was provably pulling away. That changes the work: a race calls for answering a rival's latest move, while a level gap calls for getting into the answers at all, starting from the sources that decide them.

"Are we losing to them?" has four possible answers, and only one of them is yes: they gained, you lost, both of you gained, or nobody moved enough to say. This recipe separates the four from inside your assistant.

How do I read what comes back?

Their rate up, yours flat, both deltas real
They gained and you did not lose. The market grew around you.
Both rates up
Answers are naming more brands than before rather than reshuffling the ones they name.
Their rate up and yours down
The closest thing to genuine displacement, and the only case that justifies changing plan.
Rates that sum to well past a hundred percent across brands
Expected. Answers name several brands, so these rates are independent and never sum to one.

What does a gaining rival look like in one answer?

Perplexity on 3 Oct lists ten Semrush alternatives, SE Ranking first, with SE Ranking's own blog as the first source. A rival whose page is the first source is the one to watch week on week.

Answer · Perplexityasked

Question: Semrush alternatives for AI search

Perplexity answered: SE Ranking, Ahrefs, Clearscope, Moz Pro, Seobility, Similarweb, Ubersuggest, SERPstat, Raven Tools, Sistrix. These are commonly cited Semrush alternatives with AI/search visibility features.

Sources cited

  1. 1seranking.com
  2. 2learn.g2.com
  3. 3seo.com
  4. 4blog.hubspot.com
  5. 5searchatlas.com
  6. 6semrush.com
  7. +4 more

Not namedAttensira is missing from this Perplexity answer.

Analyst agentAnalyst · Read the rivals in the answerattensira.com stored Perplexity answer, read over the Attensira MCP · · 10 links

Why is the denominator the whole recipe?

A competitor's mention rate is calculated on the same denominator as yours: the answers collected for the prompts you track. It measures how often a brand appears in answers to the questions you chose. It is not market share, traffic, spend or growth. If your prompts skew towards one topic, every rate skews with them, the flattering ones included.

Two consequences follow. A competitor you never added with add_competitor reads as absent, and absent here means unasked, not unmentioned. And widening the prompt set changes every rate on the page, yours too, because the denominator changed.

If the gap traces back to third-party lists, read which sources the models trust; if it traces to one prompt, turn that prompt into a plan.

Questions about tracking a competitor in AI answers

Why do the mention rates add up to more than a hundred percent?
Because they are not shares of a fixed pie. An answer routinely names several brands, and each brand's rate is measured against the same denominator of collected answers, so the rates are independent and never sum to one.
What does it mean when their rate rises and mine stays flat?
They gained and you did not lose. The models named more brands, or named theirs in answers that previously named nobody. That is a different situation from displacement and calls for a different response.
How do I add a competitor I am not yet tracking?
Call add_competitor with the bare hostname — no scheme and no path — and optionally a display name. It is a write tool, so it needs write access (any signed-in connection, or a read-and-write key), and the brand only appears in readings collected after you add it.
Is there a ranking of brands anywhere in this data?
No. Attensira reports mention rates per brand, not positions in a league table. The position figure that exists elsewhere in the product is a mean index within a citation list per source domain, not a rank against competitors.
Does this cost credits?
Reading does not. get_analytics and get_prompt are read-only. add_competitor is a write tool but registering a competitor is not itself a credit-spending action; adding new prompts is.

Where do these facts come from?

  1. Attensira's MCP recipes state that competitor mention rate uses the same denominator as your own, so it measures how often a brand appears in your prompts' answers rather than anything about their market presence.

    docs.attensira.com · retrieved

    “Competitor mention rate uses the same denominator as yours, so it measures how often a brand appears in *your* prompts' answers — nothing about their overall market presence, spend, or growth.”

Know whether a rival is gaining before your pipeline does.

7 days free · card requiredConnect your assistant

Tell it where you want to be cited.

Start free

7 days free · card requiredHow the trial works

attensira.com's own workspace · read 4 Oct 2026 · n=4,518

197/ 4,518 answers4.4%

Answers on ChatGPT and Perplexity that named attensira.com. Our own reading, published with its n.Sites we own · not customers · 24 of 31 days sampled