Competitor Intelligence

Overview

AEO Optima's Competitor Intelligence features let you track how competitor brands are mentioned in the same AI responses where your brand appears — or should appear. Instead of monitoring your brand in isolation, you get a complete picture of the competitive landscape within AI answer engines.

Understanding who AI models recommend alongside (or instead of) your brand is essential for building an effective AEO strategy.

Key Metrics

Three core metrics power the Competitor Intelligence view.

Share of Voice (%)

Share of Voice measures your brand's mentions as a percentage of all brand mentions detected across your snapshots. It answers the question: "When AI models talk about brands in my space, how much of that conversation includes mine?"

For example, if your snapshots contain 100 total brand mentions across all brands, and your brand accounts for 35 of those mentions, your Share of Voice is 35%.

A rising Share of Voice means your brand is gaining prominence relative to competitors. A declining Share of Voice means competitors are being mentioned more frequently — even if your absolute visibility stays the same.

Competitor Mentions

The raw count of how many times each competitor brand was mentioned across all snapshots in the selected date range. This metric helps you understand:

• Which competitors AI models mention most frequently.
• Whether certain competitors are gaining or losing AI visibility.
• Which brands the AI models consider your closest alternatives.

Brand Overlap (%)

Brand Overlap measures how often your brand and a specific competitor appear in the same AI response. A high overlap percentage means AI models frequently mention both brands together — often in comparison or "alternatives" contexts.

For example, if a competitor has a 70% overlap with your brand, it means that in 70% of the AI responses where that competitor appears, your brand also appears (and vice versa).

High overlap can be either positive (your brand is always in the conversation) or concerning (the AI model may be positioning the competitor as a direct substitute). The context depends on your sentiment and rank data.

Setting Up Competitor Tracking

Adding a Competitor

1. Navigate to Competitors from the sidebar.
2. Click Add Competitor.
3. Enter the competitor's brand name as it would appear in AI responses.
4. Optionally enter the competitor's website URL to help with identification.
5. Click Save.

Automatic Detection

Once a competitor is added, AEO Optima automatically detects mentions of that brand in:

• All future snapshots — Every new snapshot is analyzed for competitor mentions as part of the standard analysis pipeline.
• Existing snapshots — Previously captured snapshots are also scanned, so you get historical competitor data immediately without needing to re-capture.

No additional configuration is needed. The system handles detection across all AI models and all prompts.

Choosing Which Competitors to Track

Start with your most direct competitors — the brands that a potential customer would consider alongside yours. Common approaches include:

• Direct competitors: Companies offering the same product or service category.
• Aspirational competitors: Market leaders you want to be compared against.
• Emerging competitors: Newer brands that are gaining traction in AI responses.

You can add or remove competitors at any time without affecting your existing data.

Exploring Competitor Data

The Competitor List

The main Competitors page shows a table with each tracked competitor and their key metrics (Share of Voice, mention count, and Brand Overlap). The table is sorted by total mentions by default.

Drill-Down View

Click any competitor row to expand it and see detailed information:

• Which prompts mention this competitor — A list of your prompts where this competitor has appeared in AI responses. This reveals exactly which topics and questions are driving competitor visibility.
• Which AI models mention this competitor most — A per-model breakdown that shows if a competitor is prominent across all models or concentrated in specific ones.
• Mention trend over time — A mini chart showing whether this competitor's mentions are increasing or decreasing.

Tip: Click a competitor row to expand and see which prompts mention them. This reveals content opportunities — if a competitor shows up on a prompt where your brand does not, you know exactly which topic to address in your content strategy.

Strategic Use of Competitor Data

Identifying Content Gaps

The most actionable use of competitor data is finding prompts where competitors are mentioned but your brand is not. These are direct content opportunities:

1. Filter to a specific competitor.
2. Review the prompts where they appear.
3. For each prompt where your brand is absent, evaluate whether you should be mentioned.
4. Create or optimize content that addresses that topic, making it more likely that AI models will include your brand in future responses.

Monitoring Competitive Shifts

Track Share of Voice over time. If a competitor's share is growing:

• Check whether they've published new content recently.
• Review the specific prompts driving their increased mentions.
• Assess whether the shift is across all AI models or specific to one.

Benchmarking Progress

Use competitor data to set concrete goals:

• "Increase Share of Voice from 25% to 35% within 90 days."
• "Appear in AI responses for at least 3 of the 5 prompts where Competitor X currently appears but we do not."
• "Reduce Brand Overlap with Competitor Y below 50% by differentiating our positioning."

Competitor Intelligence and Other Features