When a competitor gain deserves attention

Competitor Benchmarking & Regression Alerts

A competitor alert fires only after its lead clears the agreed variance threshold across the matched prompt set, with the source difference attached.

Each brand faces the same questions, platforms, markets and run conditions. Reviewers inspect the sources behind any gap to distinguish a persistent displacement from category drift, source changes or an isolated answer. Category and brand leads who need to know whether a competitor's AI-answer gain persists before reacting to it.

You get an alert only when a competitor's gain survives normal answer variance, with the exact sources behind the shift named.

Figure watching two brand lines cross on a monitoring panel with an alert bell

Some of the 500+ brands we've worked with

See all references
  • Marks & Spencer
  • Apsiyon
  • CHIP Online
  • HangiKredi
  • İstanbul Gedik Üniversitesi
  • Doritos
  • GS Store

From governed set to a justified alert

An alert has to clear the variance threshold

Comparable brands, eligible questions, event definitions, and repeat rules are fixed before cross-brand answers and sources are collected.

How we hold ourselves to it

  • Same questions, same conditions
  • Gap adjusted for variance
  • Sources checked before copying
  • No single category rank

  1. Normalize the comparison set

    We agree competitor roles, category boundaries, market scope, aliases and explicit exclusions for each question family.

    Governed competitor register with rationale and owner.

    AI assist
    Extracts proposed competitor roles, aliases, exclusions and category boundaries from approved inputs.
    Human gate
    The client category owner approves who is comparable for each prompt family and market.

  2. Stratify prompts by intent and market

    We build a matched prompt panel and freeze event definitions, platforms, modes, markets and repeat policy.

    Comparable opportunity matrix naming the eligible brands and the runs each share is counted against.

    AI assist
    Builds the matched opportunity matrix and freezes event definitions, modes, markets and repeat rules.
    Human gate
    The measurement lead approves comparability, denominators and holdouts.

  3. Capture repeated platform results

    Repeated answers and exact sources are collected for every eligible brand-question pair.

    Cross-brand answer corpus with complete run conditions.

    AI assist
    Runs every eligible brand-question pair and captures complete answers, sources, failures and run conditions.
    Human gate
    An operator audits matrix completeness and applies the same validity rule to every brand.

  4. Classify presence and source portfolios

    Reviewers classify mention, recommendation and citation events and resolve the exact source portfolio.

    Brand-event table and cited-source inventory.

    AI assist
    Applies mention, recommendation and citation labels and resolves all exposed sources to canonical pages.
    Human gate
    Calibrated analysts approve ambiguous events and exact-page resolution.

  5. Benchmark source portfolios and event shares

    We compare source relevance, credibility, concentration, support and coverage alongside event shares.

    Category source-portfolio benchmark with explainable gaps.

    AI assist
    Classifies source type, relevance, credibility, support and concentration and calculates matched shares.
    Human gate
    Source and domain reviewers approve classification and challenge weak evidence.

  6. Translate gaps into ethical opportunities

    We adjust conclusions for observed variance and turn persistent, controllable differences into bounded tests.

    Stability-adjusted opportunity map with action and non-action decisions.

    AI assist
    Compares repeated-run ranges, identifies persistent gaps and drafts bounded experiments plus non-actions.
    Human gate
    Zeo and client owners approve only controllable opportunities with an explicit stop rule.

The regression brief you get

A regression brief that says who moved, where, and with what evidence

The handoff shows persistent displacement, source-portfolio shifts, category changes, and the bounded tests worth running, plus the gaps too weak to act on.

  • Category visibility benchmark

    A like-for-like category baseline sliced by platform, prompt family, market and event type.

    Accepted when

    Accept the comparison, revise category membership or withhold a weak slice.

    Cadence: Like-for-like checked

  • Competitor citation portfolio

    Where each brand is mentioned, recommended and cited across the matched opportunity set.

    Accepted when

    Choose which question or decision context deserves investigation.

    Cadence: Matched set only

  • Stability-adjusted opportunity brief

    A stability-adjusted set of gaps with bounded tests, expected learning and explicit non-actions.

    Accepted when

    Strengthen owned evidence, pursue legitimate source coverage or avoid copying an irrelevant tactic.

    Cadence: Variance adjusted

  • Ethical source and content action plan

    The domains and exact pages supporting category answers, including concentration and support quality, paired with the approved source and content actions.

    Accepted when

    Test, monitor, defer or reject an opportunity based on evidence and controllability.

    Cadence: Controllability scored

  • Platform-specific mention share

    Use only within the matched opportunity set. Mention share is not recommendation share.

    Accepted when

    Brand mention events divided by all eligible valid brand-runs in the fixed platform and prompt slice, reported against the category total.

    Cadence: Denominator matched

Before the team follows a rival

A competitor gain needs comparable evidence

Rivals may appear more often while your brand drops out of familiar questions. This method establishes whether the movement survives matched conditions and an honest count of the runs behind it.

A good fit when

  • A competitor gap is visible but unexplained — Question coverage, recommendation context, sources, and ordinary volatility are still mixed together.
  • The comparison mixes unlike brands or prompts — Category membership, eligible questions, or market conditions differ across the brands being compared.
  • Visible tactics are being copied without evidence — A competitor uses a format or source, but no controlled comparison shows that it explains the observed gap.
  • Competitor roles differ by prompt family — We name direct, alternative, and reference competitors and record why each belongs.
  • Every brand faces the same eligible questions — We hold platform mode, market, repeat policy, and event definitions constant.
  • One category rank hides different events — We compare mention share, recommendation coverage, and citation exposure before reading one category rank.
  • The exact sources behind the gap remain ungrouped — We group cited domains and pages by type, credibility, relevance, diversity, concentration, and support.

Better handled as other work when

  • You want one category rank from incomparable evidence — We withhold the league table when prompt eligibility, run conditions, brand roles, or sample strength differ.
  • You need one guaranteed rank across platforms — Each engine, prompt family, and source pool keeps its own result because cross-platform evidence is not one rank.

People who watch how AI cites a brand

GEO work starts with recording what AI answers actually say about a brand today, then moves to the parts you can influence. The consultants below work on the specific capability this page covers.

Tools we use

Tools behind this work

  • Peec AI

    runs every tracked competitor against the identical prompt panel and conditions

  • Ahrefs

    surfaces a competitor's own cited sources, so a gap can be checked against a source change

  • Jupyter

    runs the variance-threshold check that decides whether a gap clears the bar for an alert

A gap that survives variance is worth a response

Decide whether the competitor gain merits a response

Name the competitors, question families and markets behind the concern. We will construct the matched set and show whether the gap outlasts ordinary variance before recommending an investigation.
Assess the competitor gap

Questions we hear

We assign direct competitors, substitutes and reference organizations for each question family and market, then the client category owner reviews the rationale and exclusions.