3.2 · Calibrate your competitors
Check the roster agents measure you against, and add the competitors only your sales calls know about.
Open Competitors in your Context area and you're looking at the roster agents measure you against. The initial set comes from our research agents deeply understanding your market and product during onboarding: the rivals you named in your materials plus the ones research surfaced. Every content gap, every competitive comparison, and every position your articles stake out against the market starts from this list.
Which is why it deserves its own calibration pass: research finds who ranks near you, but you know who actually shows up in deals. A list that matches your real market means gaps measured against rivals who matter, and comparisons that read like you wrote them.
What a competitor record holds
Each competitor opens into a profile carrying the data agents reach for when they compare you against the market: use it to understand how your competitors are performing and where they are winning.
| Data | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Profile | Who they are, where they play, and how they overlap with you |
| Authority | How much weight their domain carries in search |
| Traffic | The audience their content actually reaches |
| Content | What they cover and where they rank: the raw material for gap analysis |
| Brief | An agent-researched write-up of who they are and how they position, refreshed from the row menu |
You don't maintain these numbers by hand. Agents enrich competitor data over time, and Enrich on a competitor's page pulls fresh numbers on demand.
Calibrate the roster
The bar for who belongs isn't "companies in our industry": it's who you lose deals to and who your buyers compare you against. Research can't tell those apart, and you can. Add, remove, or edit any competitor so the system understands how you see and prioritize your market.
| To | Do this |
|---|---|
| Drop a rival that doesn't matter | Archive it (restore later if it becomes relevant again) |
| Add the one research missed | Add Manually: a name, a domain, and any notes |
| Sweep your market for missing names | Research New: another deep research pass over your market, product, and existing competitors to surface any gaps |
| Refresh a competitor's numbers | Enrich on that competitor's page |
A focused list beats an exhaustive census. Every name here widens the gap analysis, so a roster padded with companies you never actually compete with turns into noise in your opportunity backlog.
How competitors flow downstream
The list isn't a reference page; it's an input agents read whenever competitive judgment is involved:
| Surface | What the list drives |
|---|---|
| Content Opportunity Map | The report reads your competitor set to find unclaimed territory: it needs at least three competitors to run |
| Comparison content | Articles that position against the market draw their claims from these profiles |
| Competitive Landscape report | Your position against these exact rivals; the report tells you if competitors are missing |
Calibrate once and all four inherit the fix, the same way every context edit flows forward.
Common questions
How many competitors should I keep? Enough to cover who you actually meet in deals, and no more. The list is the denominator for gap analysis, so precision matters more than coverage.
A new competitor just entered our market. Now what? The list isn't frozen: Add Manually the moment you hear the name, or run Research New periodically to let an agent sweep for entrants.
Do I need this before running reports? The Competitive Landscape report is built from this list, and the report dialog tells you if competitors are missing. If you calibrated during context review, you're already set.
Last updated at October 20, 2018