# How to Do SEO Competitor Analysis for Google and AI Answers

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> A step-by-step SEO competitor analysis that covers Google results and AI answers, with the sheet, the questions to ask, and our own head-to-head numbers.

- Canonical page: https://attensira.com/blog/how-to-do-competitor-analysis-in-seo
- Family: blog
- Last updated: 2026-10-04
- Author: Karl-Gustav Kallasmaa (https://attensira.com/blog/author/karl)
- Claims as data: https://attensira.com/claims.json?slug=how-to-do-competitor-analysis-in-seo

**In short:** To do an SEO competitor analysis, list the searches and AI questions your buyers ask, record who wins each one on Google and in AI answers, then study the winning pages, why they win, and which sites link to or cite them. Finish with a ranked list of pages to create, fix or get onto, not a report.

**Head to head, 61 questions · 4 Sep to 4 Oct 2026 · earlier read, about 18:20 UTC**

| Competitor | Only them | Both | Only us |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Semrush | 1,567 | 19 | 161 |
| Profound | 1,305 | 78 | 102 |
| Ahrefs | 1,129 | 15 | 165 |
| Peec AI | 952 | 13 | 167 |
| Otterly AI | 926 | 13 | 167 |

_attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP · 4 Oct 2026 · earlier read, about 18:20 UTC · n=4,374 answers, 23 of 31 days_

Most competitor analyses end as a slide deck: a table of domain ratings, a keyword overlap chart, a list of things the competitor does. The deck is filed, and nothing changes. A useful analysis ends somewhere else: with a short, ranked list of pages to create, fix or get onto, each tied to a question your buyers ask.

This post gives the method for Google and for AI answers, the sheet we use, and the numbers from our own head-to-head against the brands that win our category.

### Who are your SEO competitors?

Not necessarily the companies you lose deals to. Your SEO competitors are whoever wins the searches and answers your buyers see. For most queries that list contains three kinds of site:

| Kind | Example | What to do about them |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Business rivals | Companies selling what you sell | Out-answer them on your own pages |
| Publishers and roundups | Review sites, "best X" lists, trade press | Get onto their pages |
| Reference sources | Docs, encyclopedias, platform help centres | Rarely beatable; cite them, complement them |

Separating them early saves wasted work. You cannot outrank a platform's own documentation for a question about that platform, and you do not need to. You can get onto the roundup that outranks your rival.

### How do you run the analysis?

#### Step 1: Write the question list

Thirty to sixty searches and questions your buyers ask, across the buying stages: problems ("how do I…"), categories ("best X for Y"), comparisons ("X vs Y", "X alternatives") and brand questions. Use buyers' words. This list is the backbone of everything that follows.

#### Step 2: Record who wins on Google

For each search, record the top ten results, which of them are business rivals, which are publishers, whether there is a featured snippet or AI Overview, and where you rank. Search Console gives you your own positions; for the rest, search and note it.

#### Step 3: Record who wins in AI answers

Ask each question on the AI engines your buyers use, several times each. For every answer record which brands are named, in what order, and which pages are cited. Count per brand: named in how many answers, out of how many read.

#### Step 4: Study the winning pages

For the questions you lose, open the winning pages and ask why they win:

- Do they answer the question directly, near the top?

- Do they have something you do not: original data, a comparison table, a clearer definition, a tool?

- Are they newer, or more complete?

- Who links to them, and who cites them in AI answers?

#### Step 5: Turn it into work

For each lost question, one of four moves:

- **Fix our page**: you have a page; it answers worse.

- **Publish our answer**: you have no page for it.

- **Get onto their page**: a roundup or guide decides it, and you are not on it.

- **Leave it**: a reference source owns it, or the question does not matter enough.

Rank the moves by the value of the question and the cost of the move. That ranked list is the deliverable.

### What does a head-to-head look like on real numbers?

Here is ours. Our workspace tracks 61 questions about our category and reads them daily on ChatGPT and Perplexity. The head-to-head below is a read taken on 2026-10-04 at about 18:20 UTC: from 2026-09-04 to 2026-10-04 (23 of 31 days sampled) it covered 4,374 answers. For each competitor, it counts the answers where only we were named, only they were named, both, or neither.

A later read the same evening covered 24 of 31 days and 4,524 answers. It gives brand totals but no head-to-head split: Semrush named in 1,621, Profound 1,420, Ahrefs 1,171, Peec AI 988, Otterly AI 967 and Attensira 197 (the totals [how to calculate share of voice](/blog/how-to-calculate-share-of-voice) works through). The table keeps the earlier read so its four columns come from one read.

The table at the top shows four of the five counts per competitor, all from the 18:20 UTC read. The fifth, answers that named neither of us, ran from 2,627 for Semrush to 3,268 for Otterly AI. Three things the counts say that a keyword overlap chart would not:

- **We lose far more than we win on category questions.** Every competitor here was named alone in hundreds more answers than we were.

- **Profound is the competitor we are most often named beside**: 78 answers named both. Those are mostly comparison questions that contain both names, which tells us where buyers already put us side by side.

- **The "neither" count is the opportunity.** For every competitor, thousands of answers named neither of us. Those answers were won by someone else, often a publisher or a smaller tool, and they are not locked up by a big rival.

A head-to-head like this is a rate count, with the same total behind every row, so it does not shift when you add or remove a competitor. See [how to calculate share of voice](/blog/how-to-calculate-share-of-voice) for why that matters.

### Which pages decide the answers your competitors win?

The most useful part of an AI competitor analysis is not who wins but which pages make them win. In our own data, the single most cited pages for category questions were vendor roundups and comparison hubs. That told us the move: not out-ranking Semrush's domain, but appearing on the roundups and publishing [comparison pages](/blog/comparison-pages-ai-search-will-cite) worth citing.

To find these pages, collect every URL cited in the answers your competitors win, count how often each appears, and sort. The top of that list is your outreach list and your content brief at the same time.

### How do you analyse competitors' backlinks?

For Google, links still matter. Look at the sites that link to two or three of the competitors who outrank you and not to you. Those sites have shown they cover your category. Free methods are in [how to check backlinks](/blog/how-to-check-backlinks-in-google-search); paid tools add full lists for competitor domains.

For AI answers, the equivalent is the list of cited pages above. A page cited next to your competitors is valuable whether or not it links to them.

### What should you copy, and what should you not?

Copy structures that serve readers: a clear comparison table, a direct answer at the top, a pricing explainer. Do not copy their content. Google's own guidance on helpful content asks whether a page provides "original information, reporting, research, or analysis", and a rewrite of a competitor's page provides none of that. The better move is to answer the same question with something they cannot: your data, your test, your honest trade-offs.

### What does the analysis sheet look like?

One row per question and engine, so the same sheet covers Google and every AI engine you read:

| Column | What to record |
| --- | --- |
| Question | The search or question, in the buyer's words |
| Surface | Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, AI Overview |
| Winner | The brand or page that wins: first organic result, or first brand named |
| Your position | Your rank, or named / not named, with the number of answers read |
| Deciding page | The page that wins or is cited most |
| Kind | Rival, publisher, reference |
| Why it wins | Direct answer, data, table, freshness, links |
| Move | Fix our page, publish our answer, get onto theirs, leave it |
| Value | High, medium or low, by how close the question is to a buying decision |

Fill it question by question. After twenty rows the pattern is usually obvious: the same three or four pages decide most of what you lose, and the move list writes itself.

### How do you analyse competitors in a crowded category?

When a category has dozens of tools, as ours does, do not try to analyse all of them. Track the five to ten that win most often, and treat the rest as one group. Their individual moves matter less than the pages that decide the answers, which tend to be shared. In our own tracking (the evening read, 4,524 answers), five brands are each named in more than a fifth of all the answers we read, and the pages that decide those answers are a short list of roundups and comparison hubs. That list is where the analysis earns its keep.

### What mistakes ruin a competitor analysis?

- **Analysing the wrong competitors.** Business rivals who never appear in your search results are not your SEO problem.

- **Counting keywords instead of questions.** A competitor ranking for ten thousand keywords tells you nothing about the forty questions that matter to you.

- **Using one sample per AI question.** Answers vary; count across several.

- **Stopping at "they have more links".** That is a description, not a plan.

- **Never re-running it.** Winners change. Re-check the questions that matter monthly.

### How do you present it?

One page. At the top, the ranked list of moves. Under it, for each move: the question, who wins it now, the page that decides it, and what you will do. Then the head-to-head table with its sample sizes and window. Everything else goes in an appendix nobody needs to read.

### How does Attensira run competitor analysis?

Attensira keeps this post's sheet current for you: the head-to-head for every competitor you track, on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI, with Gemini from Growth, read every day: answers naming only you, only them, both, or neither, with the sample size. For each question it ranks the pages that decided the answers, classifies each as yours, a competitor's or someone else's, and turns it into a move: fix our page, publish our answer, get listed, pitch. Then the crew does the moves, with your approval.

That is the service of an SEO agency at the price of a tool. Run the [free audit](/audit) for a first look at who wins your category's answers.

## What does an answer your competitors win look like?

ChatGPT on 3 October, asked for Semrush alternatives for AI search: seven tools in its table, Attensira not among them. The brands are the head-to-head; the sources it cited are where to start reading why they win.

**ChatGPT, asked "Semrush alternatives for AI search" on 3 Oct 2026**

> Independent 2026 comparisons broadly put Profound, Peec AI, Otterly, Ahrefs Brand Radar, Scrunch, and SE Ranking among the leading alternatives. … One important distinction: AI visibility tracking ≠ actually improving AI visibility. Most tools tell you where you're appearing, which competitors are appearing instead, and which sources AI cites.

Sources cited, in order: semrush.com, withmaya.ai, stayfound.tech, overflow.agency, datadab.com, citecycle.com.

Attensira: not named in this answer.

_attensira.com workspace, read over the Attensira MCP · 3 Oct 2026 · 1 stored answer of 54 on ChatGPT_

## FAQ

### Who are my SEO competitors?

The sites that win the searches and AI answers your buyers see, which are not always your business competitors. For many queries the winners are publishers, review sites and roundups. List who ranks and who is named for your buying questions, then separate business rivals from the pages that decide the answers.

### What should an SEO competitor analysis include?

Who wins each of your important queries and questions, which of their pages win, why those pages win, which sites link to or cite them and not you, and the specific pages you need to create, fix or get onto. It should end in a ranked list of work, not a report.

### How is competitor analysis different for AI search?

In AI answers there is no list of ten results. Several brands may be named in one answer, and the answer is built from third-party pages. So you measure how often each competitor is named, which pages the answers cite when they name them, and which of those pages you could appear on.

### How often should I redo a competitor analysis?

A full analysis once or twice a year is enough for most teams, with a monthly look at the queries and questions that matter most. If you track AI answers daily, you can watch competitor mentions continuously and only redo the deeper page-level analysis when the picture changes.

### Can I do competitor analysis without paid tools?

Partly. Google search, your own Search Console data and reading AI answers by hand cover who wins and why. Paid tools add estimated traffic, keyword lists for competitors and backlink data, which save time but are estimates.

## Sources

Each entry below is one claim on this page. `retrieved` is the date the exporter or a human last saw the source say this, and nothing more: it is not a publication date and not a promise of re-verification. `cite` is the anchor on the canonical page where this claim is rendered.

### competitor-same-denominator

Attensira computes competitor share of voice with the same denominator as the brand's own, all successful runs in the window, so competitor rates do not sum to one.

- source: https://docs.attensira.com/measure/share-of-voice (docs.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/how-to-do-competitor-analysis-in-seo#claim-competitor-same-denominator
### deciding-sources-moves

Attensira classifies each deciding source as yours, a competitor's or someone else's, and turns each into a next move such as get listed, pitch, publish our answer or fix our page.

- source: https://docs.attensira.com/measure/deciding-sources (docs.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/how-to-do-competitor-analysis-in-seo#claim-deciding-sources-moves
### helpful-original

Google's helpful content guidance asks whether content provides original information, reporting, research or analysis.

- source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content (developers.google.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/how-to-do-competitor-analysis-in-seo#claim-helpful-original