Competitor selection: who your page is compared with

This is the first step of every audit and the only thing that separates SEO, GEO and AEO. After it the pipeline is one: brief, copy, meta with structured data and a page mockup.

Three sources of competitors

Choosing the source is what choosing the audit means

The search top

We collect the results for your query in the region and on the device you pick. Competitors are the dominant-type pages.

SEO audit →

An AI assistant answer

We ask an AI about your topic. Competitors are everything it cited: they are in the answer and you are not.

GEO audit →

AI answer sources

We take the engine's AI answer. Competitors are its sources, flagged by whether the answer used them or only looked at them.

AEO audit →

How the service decides who to keep

Three rules, identical across all three audits

Page-type classification

Comparing a product page against a review article is pointless, so pages are classified first and only the dominant type becomes competitors. The report shows where that reference type came from.

A soft stop

If your page is already in the top 5, the audit stops and asks whether to continue: optimising what already ranks is usually wasted. In GEO and AEO the logic inverts — if you are already cited, the audit works on holding that position.

Your list wins

A competitor list you set by hand overrides the automatic pick in every audit. Useful when you know the real competitors better than the search results do.

Questions about competitor selection

How many competitors go into the analysis?

As many as could be selected and parsed. The audit has a minimum threshold: below it, it stops and names the reason rather than handing you a brief built on a single page.

Why do the competitors differ from my own list?

The automatic pick follows the surface: search results for SEO, and whatever the answer leans on for GEO and AEO. Your list may well be sharper — set it in the form and it takes priority.

Can the search top and the AI-cited pages be combined?

No, the audits are independent. What a page needs to rank differs from what it needs to be cited, and mixing the sources would produce a brief suited to neither.

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