Topics and competitors in the report

Topics and Competitors are two tabs of every report. Topics shows where your AI visibility is gained or lost, one subject at a time, with each topic's prompts and wins one step away. Competitors shows the share of AI voice you gained or lost against a fixed comparison set of brands.

Open them when the Overview's lead number moves and you want to know where. Both read the report's filter bar (date range, comparison period, dataset, platform, topic and granularity), and your choices travel with you from tab to tab. A row in the Overview's "Topic movement" table opens that topic here.

The Topics tab

The tab opens on All topics, unless you picked a topic in the filter bar. Click a topic to read it on its own; the screen dims and says "Updating…" until its numbers are in.

All topics

• The cover, "AI visibility · All topics": how often AI answers named your brand across every tracked prompt in the period, with its change. It is the number the Overview leads with.
• Two tiles: "Tracked share of voice" and "Verified wins".
• The chart "Visibility trend and competitor context": your line, competitor lines on the same prompts, and a numbered marker for each verified win.
• The "Topic movement" table: every topic with its prompt count, Visibility and its change in points, Wins, and Evidence (the strongest label among that topic's wins). The biggest rise sits at the top.

One topic

• A row of pills, led by "All topics" (the way back), then every topic with its live prompt count.
• The cover, "Topic visibility" and the topic's name: your visibility on that topic's prompts, always with how many prompts it covers.
• The same two tiles, scoped to the topic.
• The chart "Topic trend and competitor context". Its markers are the verified wins linked to this topic.
• "Linked prompt performance": each prompt with its check count, the engines that answered it, its visibility and change, and a status.
• "Wins linked to this topic": each placement with how many prompts it is linked to, its movement in points after it went live, and its evidence label. Click a placement to open it on the Impact timeline.

Prompt statuses

In the wins table, "Early data" means the period after the win has not ended, and "Insufficient" means too few checks to compare. The evidence labels are explained in Impact and outcomes.

The Competitors tab

Position and tiles

The cover, "Position · share of AI voice", shows your rank in the comparison set and how it moved: "Up 2 places", "Down 1 place" or "Held position". Its sentence gives your share, its change and how far you sit behind the leader.

• "Tracked share of voice": your share of the brand mentions in AI answers to your tracked prompts, against your comparison set.
• "Gap to leader": how many points you trail the leading brand. When you lead it reads "Leading", with your margin over second place.

The chart and the ranking

"Share of AI voice over time" draws your share and the competitor lines you switched on, with numbered markers for your verified wins. Click a marker to open that win on the Impact timeline. "View chart data" shows the numbers as a table.

"Current competitor ranking" lists every brand by share this period: Brand (with its rank, a share bar and your row marked "You"), Share, Change in points, and Topics won (topics where the brand was mentioned more than any other; a tie counts for nobody). It shows the top ten and your own row; "Show all N brands" opens the rest in place. The note under it says how many brands the comparison set holds and names any brand added or removed during the period.

Topic-by-topic position

One row per topic: Topic, Your share, Leader, Gap, Your movement and Leading brand, all on that topic's tracked prompts, with your strongest topics first. It shows where a rival leads and by how much.

Comparison set

Every brand the shares are measured against, as a chip. Hover one to see when it joined. A brand you removed stays, struck through, with "Removed" and its date, so older periods still compare like with like. Past 36 brands the list folds behind "+N more".

The set is your competitor roster, built on the Competitors page (see Competitors). With no competitor in it, the cover shows a dash and "No competitors in the comparison set yet", and only the comparison set panel shows below it until you add one.

Switch competitor lines on and off

• Presets above the chart: "Only mine", "Top 5" and "All". Until you pick otherwise, charts draw "Top 5": you and the five strongest competitors.
• The legend: click a drawn competitor's key to hide its line. Your own line is always drawn. Past eight lines, the rest are counted as "N more brands"; switch those from the brand list.
• The brand list: the "N of M brands" button lists every brand with a line, searchable.
• The ranking: on Competitors, the key beside each brand reads "Show on the chart", or "On the chart. Click to hide it." once drawn.

How to compare yourself with one competitor

1. Open the report, then the Competitors tab.
2. In "Current competitor ranking", click the key beside the brand to put it on the chart.
3. Read "Share of AI voice over time" for when the gap opened or closed, and which of your wins went live around then.
4. Read "Topic-by-topic position" for the topics where that brand leads.
5. Open Topics and click one of those topics. The same brand's line is drawn there, on that topic's prompts.

To rank every brand on one topic's prompts only, pick the topic in the filter bar while on Competitors.

Tracked prompts or Ahrefs market

The "Dataset" toggle switches between your tracked prompts and the Ahrefs Brand Radar market benchmark, never blended (see Visibility and share of voice).

• Topics: the market benchmark has no topic breakdown, so the tab shows a dash and points you back to tracked prompts.
• Competitors: the tab ranks the brands on your Ahrefs Brand Radar report, and the tile reads "Market share of AI voice". A competitor whose name is a category phrase is held out of this ranking, and the note under it says so. Topics won shows a dash, and topic-by-topic position stays empty.
• A topic filter: with one set on the market dataset, Competitors ranks nothing.
• Win markers appear on tracked prompt data only.

Good to know

• Where topics come from. The AI groups your prompts into topics when they are added and after every import. Until the first grouping, the tab says no topics exist yet. See Prompts.
• History-only topics. A topic whose every prompt was removed keeps its earlier checks in the period. Its pill is dashed and reads "removed", and its table row says "History only".
• Win counts. The "Verified wins" tile on All topics also counts wins filed under no topic, so the Wins column can add up to less.
• Two kinds of line. On Topics, a competitor's line is how often answers named it. On Competitors, it is the brand's share of voice. The same brand can look different on the two charts.
• Category phrases. A brand whose name is also a category phrase (such as "AEO Agency") is counted with care so the phrase alone does not inflate its share. Its row carries a "Category phrase" hint with how many mentions were left out.
• The report and the Competitors page. The Competitors page, where you add or remove brands, shows how often your answers from the last 30 days name each brand. The report shows each brand's share of all brand mentions in the set, over its own date range. They measure different things, so the numbers differ.
• What clients see. Both tabs appear on the share link with the lines you had on, and the PDF lists every brand. See Sharing, printing and briefings.