USE CASE
SEO competitor intelligence,
across Google and AI.
The brands you compete with in Google and the brands an assistant recommends beside you aren't always the same ones. This guide shows how to find both sets, what to compare, and how to decide which gaps are worth closing. SEORCE compares rankings, content, links and AI answers for the same rivals.
What is SEO competitor intelligence?
SEO competitor intelligence is the practice of studying the sites and brands that compete with you for search visibility, to find what they have that you lack. That means looking at the results they hold, the content they've published, the sites that link to them and how often AI engines name them. The aim is a short list of gaps you can realistically close, in the order worth closing them.
Key facts
- It compares four views: rankings, content, backlinks and AI answers
- Your search competitors are whoever appears beside you, which is not always the list your sales team uses
- A gap is only worth closing if you can realistically win it. Some positions a rival has earned
- It works from public information: results pages, links, published content and AI answers. No tool sees a competitor's private analytics
- A baseline matters. Without one, a rival who just arrived looks the same as one who was always there
- SEORCE compares backlink profiles against up to five competitors, and shows which brands AI engines name in your place
Last reviewed 15 October 2026 by the SEORCE team.
Who AI recommends in your category.
Competitor research tends to stop at keywords and backlinks. Ask an assistant about your category, though, and it will name a few brands, and you may well find one you've never tracked. That brand is taking shortlist places from you.
Competitor research usually covers
- –The keywords a rival ranks for
- –Their backlinks, as one long export
- –A snapshot, taken once a quarter
- –Google, and nothing else
Competitor intelligence adds
- ✓Who AI engines name in your place, and why
- ✓The link gaps worth chasing, in order
- ✓Content gaps turned into briefs
- ✓A recorded baseline, so changes show
The same rivals, seen four ways.
Each view turns up a different kind of gap. Between them you can usually work out why a rival is ahead.
The sites holding the results you want
Start with the results page. It shows who you are up against on each keyword, and what kind of page is winning.
- Top-ranking domainsFor any keyword, see who ranks and the type of content each one uses.
- AI Overview presenceWhether an AI Overview appears above the results.
- Positions over timeFollow your own positions on the same keywords as they move.
What they cover that you don't
A rival's content shows you which questions they have chosen to answer. The ones you've skipped are your gaps.
- Topics from competitor coverageContent opportunities are drawn from your own rankings and from what competitors cover.
- Tagged by typeEach one is marked as a competitor gap, a ranking opportunity or a high-volume topic.
- A suggested templateEvery opportunity comes with the kind of page that suits it.
- Straight into a briefPick one and the brief is filled in for you.
The sites linking to them and not to you
A link gap is the most concrete gap there is: a named site that already links to a rival.
- Up to five competitorsCompare your profile against each of them in one view.
- Ranked by opportunityGap domains are ordered by authority and by how realistic the outreach is.
- Scored for AI citations tooLink Impact Score and Citation Potential show whether a gap domain would help rankings, AI citations or both.
- Ready to exportThe gap list goes straight to whoever does outreach.
links to 3 rivals82
links to 2 rivals74
links to 2 rivals58
links to 1 rival41
Who AI names in your place
When an answer leaves you out, it names someone else. Collect those names and you have your competitors in AI search.
- The brands on your promptsStart with the ones engines name beside you.
- The sources behind themSee which pages earn a rival its place.
- Changes since the baselineA recorded history shows when a rival arrived.
How to run competitor intelligence, in six steps.
Steps one to three are research. The fourth is the one that matters, because that's where you decide which gaps to ignore.
Pick the right rivals
Make three lists: who you sell against, who ranks beside you, and who AI names in your category. Track the brands that appear on more than one.
Competitor citations →Compare the four views
Rankings, content, links and AI answers, for the same rivals over the same period. Record it as your baseline.
Backlink gap analysis →Find what earns them the place
Behind each lead there is something specific: a page, a set of links, or a source that mentions them.
Backlink checker →Choose the gaps you can win
Some positions a rival deserves. Leave those. Go after the questions you can answer well and currently don't.
Link quality →Close them in order
Brief the missing content, start outreach to the strongest gap domains, and fix the pages that are close.
Content opportunities →Measure against the baseline
Check positions, links gained and AI mentions against where you started.
Rank Tracker →Look at a rival's page the way a crawler does.
Open any competitor page with the extension running and you'll see its headings, meta tags and schema laid out. The free tools add how the page links internally and which tags it runs.
What to report on your competitors.
Use the same rivals in every report. Swap them around and the numbers stop meaning anything.
| Metric | View it counts | What it tells you | Read it with care |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share of voice | AI answers | Your mentions set against rivals' on the same prompts. | Only fair when every brand is measured on the same prompt set. |
| Competitor citation sources | AI answers | Which pages earn rivals their mentions. | A rival strong on one engine usually has one source doing the work there. |
| Referring domain gap | Backlinks | Sites that link to rivals and not to you. | A long list is no help. Rank it by what each domain would do for you. |
| Content gaps open | Content | Topics rivals cover that you don't. | Covering a topic badly closes nothing. Count gaps you can answer well. |
| Positions on shared keywords | Rankings | Where you sit against rivals on the keywords you both target. | One position is a snapshot. Follow the trend. |
Why one rival kept getting named.
Ledgerly is our demo account, a B2B accounting tool for agencies. Quillbook kept turning up where Ledgerly expected to be. The team wanted to know what was behind it, and what to tackle first.
Quillbook was on all three lists
Sales met it in deals, it ranked beside Ledgerly, and AI engines named it most.
Four views, one baseline
26 of 40 prompts, a 14-domain link gap and a missing guide were recorded on the same day.
Two sources did most of the work
A multi-currency guide and a directory listing sat behind most of Quillbook's mentions.
Three gaps to close, one to leave
Payroll was left alone. Quillbook has a payroll product and Ledgerly doesn't.
A brief and an outreach list
The guide was briefed in Content Studio. The three priority-zone domains went to outreach first.
Checked against the baseline
Prompts, links and positions are compared with the day the gaps were recorded.
There's no result here, deliberately. Whether a rival loses ground depends on what they do next as much as on you.
The same rivals, in every module.
Most teams have a link export from one tool and a keyword export from another, each on a different list of competitors. Nothing lines up. In SEORCE you set the rivals once, and rankings, content, links and AI answers are all compared against that list.
Figures as reported by SEORCE, September 2026. The 7 AI engines are ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Llama.
Every module talks to the others.
A rival's lead usually comes down to a few specific things: a page you haven't written, and a handful of sources that mention them and leave you out.
With everything in one SEORCE project, those show up as a single list of gaps. You aren't stitching four exports together to see it.
Ask SEORCE sits on top. It is your AI agent, in the app and on WhatsApp. Ask it a question in plain language and it answers from your project's data.
To start, sign up, link your WhatsApp number and text "Hi" to +1 (363) 200-3169.
Meet Ask SEORCE →How SEORCE handles each part of the job.
This page covers the subject as a whole. The pages below are product pages and related guides. Each goes deeper into one part.
Backlink gap analysis
Domains linking to competitors and not to you.
See backlink gap analysis →Competitor citations
Who is named in your place, and which sources put them there.
See competitor citations →Content opportunities
Topics from your rankings and your competitors' coverage.
See content opportunities →SERP analysis
Who ranks for a keyword, and with what kind of page.
See SERP analysis →Link Impact Score
Which linking domains help rankings, AI citations or both.
See Link Impact Score →Backlink checker
See who links to any domain, yours or theirs.
Open the backlink checker →Referring domains
Authority spread across the sites that link to a domain.
See referring domains →Prompt diagnosis
Why an answer named a rival, and what to change.
See prompt diagnosis →Rank Tracker
Your positions over time.
See Rank Tracker →Keyword Explorer
Keyword research with intent and entities.
See Keyword Explorer →AI visibility tracking
The guide to measuring whether AI engines name and cite you.
Read the tracking guide →AI brand monitoring
The guide to checking what AI says about your brand.
Read the monitoring guide →Frequently asked questions.
SEO competitor intelligence is the practice of studying the sites and brands that compete with you for search visibility, to find what they have that you lack. It compares rankings, content, backlinks and AI answers.
Look at who appears beside you. Check the results pages for your main keywords, and the brands AI engines name when buyers ask about your category. Those lists often differ from the rivals your sales team would name.
Not always. AI engines group brands by the sources they read, so a company you never meet in Google results can be named beside you in an answer. Track both lists.
A handful. Backlink gap analysis in SEORCE compares up to five per project. For AI answers, start with the brands engines name beside you.
A backlink gap is the set of sites that link to a competitor and not to you. It is the most concrete kind of gap, because each entry is a named site that has already shown it links to companies like yours.
A content gap is a topic a competitor covers and you don't. It matters when buyers ask about that topic and you could answer it well.
No. SEORCE works from public information: results pages, links, published content and AI answers. No tool can see inside a competitor's own analytics.
Yes. The backlink checker works for any domain or URL, including ones that aren't your tracked project.
No. Some questions a rival answers better, and contesting those is expensive and unconvincing. The useful targets are questions you can answer well and currently don't, and questions nobody has claimed.
No, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. You can make your own case better and easier to find. Trying to suppress a rival is neither possible nor a good use of effort.
Engines draw on different sources and refresh them at different rates. A rival who is strong on one engine usually has a specific source doing the work there, which is a narrow thing to investigate.
Link Impact Score is SEORCE's own score from 0 to 100 for a linking domain. With Citation Potential, it shows whether a domain in your link gap would help your rankings, your AI citations or both, so you know which to chase first.
Regularly, against a recorded baseline. The baseline matters more than the frequency, because it is what tells a new arrival from a rival who was always there.
Ask SEORCE is SEORCE's AI agent, currently in beta. It works in the app and on WhatsApp, and answers plain-language questions from your project's data, such as where a competitor gained on you this month. It is included for every user, with no usage limit. To use it on WhatsApp, link your number and text Hi to +1 (363) 200-3169.
No. What a rival does next is out of anyone's hands. SEORCE shows where they are ahead, why, and which gaps are worth closing, then measures what happened.
Yes. The SEORCE browser extension audits whatever page you have open, including a competitor's: headings, meta tags, schema and whether AI crawlers can read it. It's free and needs no account.
See who's ahead, and by how much.
Add your site and up to five competitors. The link gaps and content gaps appear first, then the brands AI names in your place.
Not ready for an account? Use the free browser extension or any of the free tools.