Competitors

The Competitors page is where you decide which brands count as competition and read how often AI answers name them instead of you. It sits beside Prompts and Keywords in your project's navigation. Open it when a new brand keeps turning up in your answers, or when a competitor's name or website needs correcting.

The Roster and Mentions & citations views count the AI answers stored for your tracked prompts over the last 30 days, the newest 5,000 at most. The Visibility view is different: it shows Ahrefs Brand Radar's own numbers for the brands on your report.

What you see

Three views run across the top: "Roster", "Visibility" and "Mentions & citations". The "Re-read site" control sits at the end of the same line.

Your share of AI answers

On the Roster and Mentions & citations views, one band leads the page: "Your share of AI answers · last 30 days". It shows your share as a large percentage, a trend chip ("↑ 2.3 pts", "↓ 1.0 pts" or "→ flat"), "Named in N of M answers" and one sentence on where you stand, such as "3 competitors are named more often than you." Beside it, bars draw you and the five most named competitors on one scale. If the band asks you to add your brand name, open Settings, then Project details, and fill in "Brand name".

Brands seen in your answers

Under the band, the Roster view opens with the suggestions queue, "Brands seen in your answers · N not tracked": brands found in your AI answers that are not on the roster yet. Each row shows the brand and its evidence, "N prompts · N answers", counted since monitoring began. The six companies with the most evidence come first, then "Show N more · M not shown".

Names made only of category words, such as "GEO Agency", sit apart in a folded line, "N category phrases held back until their site is cited". Such a name joins the roster only once its own site is cited in your AI answers. At the foot of the queue sits the rule "Add brands automatically once named in N or more prompts". When the queue is empty, the line in its place says why.

The roster

"Roster · N tracked" lists who AI names in your answers, with a "Find a competitor…" box and a sort ("Share of answers", "Biggest movers up", "Newest first", "Name A–Z").

Under the table, "Phrase uses left out · Acme −12 · N answers in the last 30 days" counts the answers every figure on the page leaves out for that competitor.

Visibility

This view fills in once a Brand Radar report is connected and imported. Until then it reads "No visibility data yet." A lead line names the brand with the highest AI share of voice beside yours, with the date of the import. One row per brand, yours marked "you": Mentions, Citations, Impressions, AI Share of Voice and a 30-day "SoV trend" sparkline. The first three are sums over the last 30 days; AI Share of Voice is the average of Ahrefs' daily readings. A dash means nothing was recorded, not zero. Category-phrase names are listed apart under "Held out · category-phrase names".

Mentions & citations

The stored answers, broken down per competitor:

• "Named in responses": answers from the last 30 days whose text names the competitor.
• "Cited in responses": answers that cite one of its pages, named or not.
• "Prompts named in": prompts with at least one answer naming it.
• "Cited pages": every page from its site in your cited pages, all time. A "+" marks a floor.
• "Sample prompts": a few of the questions where it was named.

A competitor with nothing to show reads "Tracked, not observed in your response data".

The detail sheet

Click any row, name or bar to open the competitor's sheet: "Last 30 days" tiles for the four Ahrefs numbers and a "Daily timeline" of them, "AI answers naming or citing this competitor (N)" with excerpts (engine, date, prompt and "Open in snapshot →"), and "Pages from this domain cited by AI (N)", an all-time list with "Open →" into Opportunities.

How to build the roster from the queue

1. Open Competitors; the queue sits at the top of the Roster view.
2. Press "Add" on each real competitor. Its website is worked out for you; if it cannot be, "Couldn't work out a domain for “Name”. Add it manually." opens a site box with "Save".
3. Press "Dismiss" (the cross) on names that are not competitors. A dismissed brand is not suggested again.
4. Press "Add all" to take the queue's companies in one press (it reads "Add top 50" past 50 companies). Brands whose site cannot be worked out stay in the list.
5. For a category phrase that is a real company, press "Site" and enter its domain. Until that site is cited in your AI answers, the add is refused with the reason and the phrase stays in the queue.
6. Check "Add brands automatically once named in N or more prompts" and set the number (default 3). Switching it on runs a pass at once; after that, qualifying brands join after each data update. Each needs a website that can be worked out; the rest stay in the queue.

How to correct a competitor's details

1. Find the row with "Find a competitor…".
2. Press "Edit" (the pencil) and change the Name or Domain.
3. Press "Save changes". The toast "Competitor updated" confirms it, and the brand's recorded history follows the new name.
4. To take a brand off the roster, press "Remove" (the bin), then "Remove" again under "Remove Acme from the cohort?". Its history is kept for reporting, and re-adding the brand later restores it with that history.

Limits

• Shares, trends, wins and sources count the stored answers of the last 30 days, the newest 5,000 at most. Cited pages count all time.
• "Add all" acts on the 50 companies with the most evidence per press. The automatic rule takes a whole number of 1 or more.
• A site read adds up to 100 prompts and 15 competitors per go. "Re-read homepage" is on every plan. "Deep dive" comes with Growth, Agency and Enterprise, and on a trial it waits for a paid plan (Plans and limits).

Good to know

• "Re-read site", then "Re-read homepage" or "Deep dive", proposes competitors (and prompts) from your own pages; you press "Add selected" on the ones you keep. An empty roster with nothing waiting in the queue also offers "Add one by hand", which opens the competitors section of the setup page.
• AI platforms and big-tech properties (ChatGPT, Google, YouTube and the like) never join the roster. If one truly competes with you, edit an existing competitor's name and domain to it.
• A removed brand may be suggested again if it keeps appearing in your answers.
• Suggested brands also reach you as "New competitor" cards on the Autopilot deck, where "Track competitor" adds them (The deck). Spot can list the roster and the queue and add up to 10 competitors at a time, previewed before you press Apply (Spot, the in-app agent).