Add competitors

Competitors are the brands Scout tracks alongside yours on every prompt. Once added, every AI response is annotated with who appeared, who was recommended, and who beat whom — turning a raw answer into a head-to-head scoreboard.

How to add them

You can add competitors three ways:

1. During onboarding

   Step 3 of the wizard asks for 1–3 competitors by name. This is the fastest path and the one we recommend for first-timers.

2. From the dashboard

   Open Competitors in the sidebar and click Add competitor. Paste the brand name, optional website, and a one-line note about why they're a competitor. You can edit or remove them at any time.

3. Let Scout suggest them

   On the Competitors page, click Suggest competitors. Scout uses your brand description and topic to ask the AI engines themselves: "Who are the main competitors of [your brand] in [your topic]?" and shows you a shortlist of names that came back.

Choosing the right competitors

• Pick brands a buyer would compare you against — not your favourite rival, the one your customer Googles before buying.
• Don't add 20. 3–7 is the sweet spot. More dilutes the dashboard; fewer gives you nothing to benchmark against.
• Include one "stretch" competitor — a bigger brand you aspire to beat. They show up often in AI answers, which gives you a clear ceiling to chase.

What happens after you add them

From your next scan onwards, Scout will:

• Detect every mentionThe analysis pass scans every AI response for each competitor name and stores who appeared.
• Track recommendation wins/lossesIf an AI recommends a competitor on a prompt where you weren't mentioned, that's a loss — Scout flags it.
• Compute a market shareThe Competitors page shows the share-of-voice of every brand you track on the same set of prompts.
• Surface "competitor reasons"Whenever an AI explains why it recommended a competitor, Scout extracts that reason — gold dust for positioning.

Last updated July 2026 · Suggest an edit