What is Competitor Monitoring?
Competitor Monitoring lets you track how other brands appear in the same AI responses where your brand is (or should be) mentioned. By comparing your visibility, position, and sentiment against competitors, you can understand your relative standing in the AI landscape and identify strategic opportunities. When AI models answer questions about your industry, they often mention multiple brands. Knowing which competitors appear — and how often — gives you actionable intelligence for improving your own AI visibility.How it works
When First Answer collects AI responses for your monitored prompts, it scans each response for mentions of your brand and all your tracked competitors. This means every data point you collect is also a data point for your competitive analysis.Monitored competitors
The left panel shows all the competitors you are currently tracking. For each competitor, you can see:- Name: The competitor brand name
- Associated names: Alternative names or variations the AI might use to refer to this competitor (e.g., “AWS” for “Amazon Web Services”)
- Actions: Edit competitor details, view their website, or remove them from tracking
Associated names
AI models may reference a competitor using different names, abbreviations, or product names. Associated names ensure that all variations are captured and counted. For example, if you track “Microsoft,” you might add associated names like “MS,” “MSFT,” or “Microsoft Corporation.”Competitor suggestions
The right panel shows AI-powered suggestions for competitors you might want to track. These suggestions are generated based on:- Brands that frequently appear in the same AI responses as your monitored prompts
- Analysis of your industry segment
- Mention frequency across all collected responses
Competitor suggestions are dynamic — they update as you collect more data. A brand that appears frequently in your AI responses is likely a meaningful competitor in the AI visibility space, even if you don’t consider them a traditional competitor.
How to use Competitor Monitoring
Add your key competitors
Click + Add competitor to add brands you want to track. Start with your most direct competitors — the brands users would consider as alternatives to yours.
Configure associated names
After adding a competitor, click the edit icon to add associated names. This ensures all brand variations are captured in the analysis.
Review suggestions
Check the suggestions panel regularly. If you see a brand appearing thousands of times in your AI responses that you are not tracking, consider adding it as a competitor.
Compare on the Dashboard
Return to the Dashboard to see the full Competitive Positioning table with visibility, average position, and sentiment scores for each tracked competitor.