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Configuring competitor brands lets Cited measure your share of voice, identify prompts where competitors appear and you do not, and track how your competitive position changes over time.

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Why competitors matter in Cited

Without competitors, Cited can tell you your own visibility — but it cannot tell you whether that visibility is good or bad for your category. A 30% mention rate might be category-leading if your competitors are at 10%, or trailing if they are at 60%. You do not know until you measure against peers. Competitor data also unlocks gap analysis: the specific prompts where a competitor is mentioned in the AI answer and you are not. These are your highest-leverage optimization targets.

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How to pick the right competitors

  • Pick brands a customer would realistically consider alongside yours. Not aspirational comparisons — actual alternatives your buyer evaluates.
  • Include 3–5 competitors for the best balance of signal and noise. Fewer than 3 gives you a narrow view; more than 5 dilutes the analysis.
  • Mix direct and adjacent competitors. Direct competitors sell the same thing at a similar price point. Adjacent competitors target the same customer from a different angle.
  • Use brand names as they appear in the market, not legal entity names. “Minimalist” not “Minimalist Private Limited.”
  • Provide the primary website URL for each. This helps Cited identify the correct brand when names are ambiguous.

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Example competitor sets

A D2C skincare brand in India might track:
Minimalist, Plum, Dot & Key, The Derma Co, Foxtale
A B2B SaaS CRM might track:
HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Freshsales
A premium luggage brand might track:
Mokobara, Uppercase, Nasher Miles, Safari, Skybags
The right set depends on your specific category and positioning. If you are unsure, start with the 3–5 brands your sales team encounters most often in competitive deals.

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What Cited does with competitor data

  • Runs your prompt library and checks for each competitor. The same prompts used to measure your visibility are also parsed for competitor mentions and citations.
  • Calculates share of voice. Your mention rate compared to the combined mention rate of all tracked competitors, per platform and overall.
  • Surfaces gap prompts. Specific questions where one or more competitors appear in the AI answer and you do not. These are the prompts where you have the most to gain.

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Updating competitors later

You can add or remove competitors at any time by contacting your Cited account team. New competitors will have data from the next pipeline run forward — there is no historical backfill. If you change your competitor set, give it at least one week of data before drawing conclusions from the new comparisons.

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Next step

Invite your team so your marketing, content, and SEO teams can collaborate on improving your AI visibility.