SEO competitor analysis: how to beat your competitors in Google (and in AI search)

An SEO competitor analysis starts by identifying who actually appears for your searches, which is not always who competes with you for sales. Then you compare, page against page, the intent they cover, their technical health, structured data, speed, links and local listing, and turn each difference into a prioritised task.

To check it on your own site: SEO audit

This analysis is one of the building blocks of SEO: an audit tells you what is wrong with your site, and a comparison tells you what the sites ahead of you have. What follows is the full method, with a template to fill in and a way to extend it to AI assistants.

Who are your competitors in Google?

An SEO competitor is any website that appears in the results for the queries you want to be found for, whether or not it is a commercial rival. For a local dental practice, the competitor for "dental implant cost" may be a national comparison site or a health portal, not the practice across the road.

That is why the analysis starts with queries, not names. This is how you build the list:

1. Pull your real queries. The Performance report in Search Console shows the queries your site appears for, with clicks, impressions and average position1. Pick 10 to 20 that relate directly to what you sell.
2. Add the ones you should have and do not. The questions customers ask you by phone or email are often searches where you do not appear yet.
3. Search each query from where your customer searches. Google determines relevance with hundreds of factors, including the user's location, language and device; its own example is that "bicycle repair shops" shows different results in Paris and in Hong Kong2. Use a private window, on a phone and, if your business is local, from your area.
4. Note who appears in the top five results for each query. The sites that repeat across several queries are your search competitors. Keep three.

Split them into two groups as you go. Directories, marketplaces and media sites take up space, but you cannot copy their model; they show you which format Google prefers for that search. The ones that look like you, with a comparable service or shop, are the ones you will analyse in depth.

What should you compare with them?

A useful comparison is made against the page that competes, not the home page. If your competitor ranks with a pricing guide and you rank with your service page, compare those two URLs.

These are the eight aspects to review, and how to see them without paying anything:

• Intent covered. Does the page answer what the visitor is looking for, including the follow-up questions? List the four or five a buyer would ask and mark which ones each page answers with a concrete fact.
• Depth and originality. Google's helpful content guidance asks whether a page provides substantial value compared with other pages in the search results, and whether it includes original information or analysis3. That is exactly the question of this analysis: prices, timescales, examples or first-hand data that you do not give.
• Technical health. Whether the page is indexed, has its own title and returns a 200 status code. The steps are in the SEO audit; for competitors, checking what is visible from outside is enough.
• Structured data. Google's Rich Results Test accepts any public URL, including your competitor's. Note which types of markup they use and whether there are errors; what each type means is explained in our guide to structured data.
• Speed. PageSpeed Insights also accepts any URL. If the page has enough traffic you will see field data from the previous 28 days; if not, data for the whole origin or only the lab test4. Compare LCP, INP and CLS against the Core Web Vitals thresholds.
• Links. You cannot see another site's links in Search Console, which only shows a sample of your own5. Ahrefs offers a free version of its backlink checker that works for any domain6. Look at what kind of sites link to them, not just how many.
• Local listing. If you compete on the map, Google ranks local results mainly on relevance, distance and popularity, and says more reviews and positive ratings can help a business's local ranking7. Compare primary category, number of reviews, average rating and whether they reply to them. The rest of the listing is covered in our guide to local SEO.
• Assistant answers. Ask ChatGPT and Gemini the same thing your customer would search for and note which sites they name or link to. We cover this in detail below.

Template for comparing page against page

Copy this table into a spreadsheet and fill one in per important query. Mark each cell "yes", "no" or the specific figure.

A single row rarely explains a difference in ranking. What you are after are patterns: all three competitors give price ranges and you do not, or all three have twice as many reviews.

How do you compare in AI answers?

With assistants the comparison changes for one reason: the answers move a lot. According to SISTRIX, between 42% and 74% of the domains cited by ChatGPT Search are new every week, depending on the country (60% in the UK, 74% in Germany), in a study of 82,619 prompts across six countries, including the UK and the US, from 17 December 2025 to 8 April 20268. For AI Overviews, the same study measured 5% weekly churn.

With that much rotation, a screenshot proves nothing. Ask the same question several times, on different days, and note which sites keep appearing. If a competitor shows up almost every time and you never do, there is a difference worth investigating. SmoothSeen does this tracking from the Professional plan: it regularly puts the questions you write to ChatGPT and Gemini, with web search turned on, and records whether they cite your site and which domains they cite instead.

For Google, the foundation is the same as for normal search. Google says that to appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet, with no additional requirements or special optimisations9. If your competitor appears there and you do not, start with the technical and content comparison above. The factors specific to assistants are covered in our guide to AI search optimization.

How do you turn the differences into a plan?

Sort each difference in the template into one of four groups:

1. Your own blocking problems. A page that is not indexed or returns a server error does not compete, whatever the competition does. These go first.
2. What all of them do and you do not. If all three give prices, have local business markup or reply to reviews, that is the baseline for that query. Second block.
3. What some of them do. It may be an advantage or a coincidence. Prioritise it by cost: a table of timescales takes an afternoon to write; fifty new reviews do not.
4. What none of them does. This is your chance to be the only one that has it: a price study with your own data, a calculator, real examples of past work.

Within each group, start with the pages that bring in the most business. And set a date to repeat the comparison: your competitors change too.

What should you not copy from your competitors?

Copying the format Google prefers for a search is reasonable; copying the content is not. Google's question about originality points the opposite way3. Rewriting other people's pages in bulk does not work either: Google calls generating many pages without value to manipulate rankings scaled content abuse, however they are produced10.

The same goes for links. If you find that a competitor buys them, do not follow suit: buying links, or exchanging them excessively, to rank is link spam under Google's policies10. What you can use are the legitimate sites that link to them: trade associations, local media or professional directories where you also belong.

Can the comparison be automated?

Partly. Declaration of interest: this blog belongs to SmoothSeen, a tool that, on its paid plans, compares your site with up to three competitors. It measures them with the same checks as your site and tells you who meets each one: what they have and you do not, ordered by how many of them have it, your advantages, and what none of you meets. It suggests competitors and you can replace them by hand. How it works is explained in features.

What it does not do for you is the reading: deciding whether your competitor's guide answers better than yours is still a job for someone who knows the business.

Frequently asked questions

How many competitors should you analyse?

Three per important query is a good balance. With fewer, one exceptional page can mislead you; with more, the analysis takes longer without revealing new patterns. Choose the ones that repeat across several of your queries and leave out directories and marketplaces, which take up results but cannot be compared with your business.

How can I see what my competitors are doing without paid tools?

Search your queries in a private window, from your area and on a phone, and read the pages that come up. Run their URLs through PageSpeed Insights and Google's Rich Results Test, which accept any public page. For links, the free version of Ahrefs' backlink checker gives you a first idea, and Google Maps shows their reviews.

Why does my competitor rank ahead of me if my site is better?

Because Google compares pages for a specific query, not websites in general. Your competitor may have a page that answers that search better, more reviews on its local listing or more sites from its industry linking to it. The template in this article helps you find which of those differences matters in your case.

How often should you repeat a competitor analysis?

Repeat it whenever you notice a change in traffic to an important page and, at the very least, every few months for your main queries. In AI assistants the answers change from one week to the next, so it is better to look at trends over several weeks than to react to a single answer.

What to do next

Pull your ten main queries from Search Console, search for them from where your customer searches and note who is in the top five. Fill in the template for the query that brings you the most business. To place this analysis in context, go back to our guide to what SEO is.