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. You are looking at the roster agents, the automated workers that research, draft and score, measure you against. The initial set comes from the research agents that studied 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.
It deserves its own calibration pass because research finds who ranks near you, and 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 do not 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 is not "companies in our industry": it is who you lose deals to and who your buyers compare you against. Research cannot 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 does not matter | Archive it: restore it later if it becomes relevant again |
| Add the one research missed | Click Add Manually: a name, a domain, and any notes |
| Sweep your market for missing names | Click Research New: another research pass over your market, product, and existing competitors to surface gaps |
| Refresh a competitor's numbers | Click Enrich on that competitor's page |
A competitor added without start research keeps an empty brief. Adding the record does not research it: click start research on the new competitor to have its brief written.
A focused list beats an exhaustive census. Every name here widens the gap analysis, so a roster padded with companies you never compete with turns into noise in your backlog of opportunities, the pages agents propose writing or rewriting.
How competitors flow downstream
The list is not a reference page; it is 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 3 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 dialog tells you if competitors are missing |
Calibrate once and every surface inherits the fix, the same way every context edit flows forward.
Common questions
How many competitors do 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 entered our market. Now what? The list is not frozen: click 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 are already set.
Last updated at August 13, 2026