AI competitor analysis: find the questions where rivals appear

Choose a rival that competes for the same buyer

Braign's Competitors section starts with brands ranked by mention share. Review entered and discovered brands before selecting a rival. A marketplace, parent company, or adjacent product may receive many mentions without competing for the same purchase.

Keep brand variants grouped consistently and correct classifications where needed. A spelling variant should not become an apparent new competitor. Adding or excluding a brand can change everyone's share-of-voice denominator.

Choose one commercially relevant rival for the first pass. The report then lets you compare that brand with yours by model, question group, cited domain, and individual question. Share of voice and presence explain the two counting methods used in those views.

Read the gap at question level

Here is an illustrative comparison across four completed model answers per question. Each brand counts once per answer in this table.

The cleaning question has the largest presence gap. Open those four answers first. Does the rival receive a specific recommendation? Is your product omitted, rejected, or discussed under another name? Check the source links for product facts behind the comparison.

The replaceable-parts question also deserves attention if your product has that feature. If it does not, the gap may accurately reflect the product difference. A visibility report cannot decide which features you should claim.

Check whether the gap is concentrated

Compare the selected rival by model. If it leads in only one model, inspect that model's captured answers and sources. An overall average can hide a pattern limited to one part of the sample.

Next, review the question groups. Saved topics take precedence in Braign. Questions without a saved topic are grouped using their wording into purchase intent, comparison and recommendations, or category and education. Those labels describe the question; they are not topics extracted from the answer.

Read the numerator and denominator for each group. A rival appearing in two of two answers deserves a different level of confidence from one appearing in 40 of 50. Neither result estimates how often all buyers encounter the rival.

Turn one verified gap into a content brief

A brief should carry enough evidence for another person to reproduce the finding. For the cleaning example, it might read:

Illustrative brief: Answer the question “Which bottle is easiest to clean?” on our product care page. Include the cleaning instructions and component details confirmed by the product team. Review the cited buying guide for factual omissions. Save the four captured answers as the baseline.

Attach the question, model IDs, run date, relevant source URLs, and the page you intend to change. State what the existing content is missing. Avoid instructions such as “make this page more AI-friendly” without identifying the buyer's unanswered question.

Use the citation review workflow before contacting a publisher. A source cited beside a rival's name may not mention the rival on the page itself.

Follow up with comparable evidence

Record the work in marketing activity and review the same questions in the next recurring run. Report what changed in the captured answers, which sources appeared, and how much of the scope was comparable.

For an agency handoff, include the decision, the evidence, and the responsible team in the shared report or export. Check annotations before enabling link sharing. The report's settings, source reviews, and activity are visible to people with the shared link.

Braign for agencies describes the reporting workflow. For an in-house review, the consumer-brand page shows how the same evidence fits a brand team's work.