You can see how your competitors are doing in AI search compared to you by looking at what ChatGPT and other AI assistants answer when your customers ask for a business like yours, and whose names come up next to yours or in its place.
Reachd asks those questions for your market every day and lays out the result for you: which businesses AI recommends in your category, where you stand among them, on which questions each competitor takes the customer, and what to change to get ahead of them.
Take a Florida cabinet maker we work with. In Tampa it’s third, behind two local cabinet companies. In Orlando every customer who asks AI gets sent to other companies. And on questions about warranties and European kitchens, assistants recently started naming a newcomer the owner had never considered a rival.
So “how are my competitors doing” has several answers at once, a rank, a city, specific questions and a name you didn’t expect, and each one tells the owner something different to do.
Where do you rank against your competitors in AI search?
Your rank here is your place among all the businesses AI names in your category, and that field is often different from the competitors you track in Google. Reachd finds them for you and shows your place, the leader, the businesses right behind you, and how the order moves from day to day.
The distance to the leader tells you what kind of job you have. A podcast studio we work with leads its category by a wide margin, and on “what’s the best podcast studio” ChatGPT has been naming it first for days. A flower shop is second, one step behind the leader, so a single well-chosen change can flip the order. A fulfillment company sits sixth while the two leaders are named about three times as often, which means a longer climb that starts with the questions where the leaders are weakest.
A number on its own can mislead you, and comparing yourself with real competitors is what makes it mean something.
Which customer questions your competitors win instead of you
A customer never asks about your category in general. They ask “best custom kitchen cabinets in Tampa” or “who gives a lifetime warranty on cabinets”, and each question can have its own winner.
Reachd shows every question your buyers ask and splits them into three groups: the ones you win, the ones where AI names you but could easily drop you, and the ones where a competitor gets the customer every time. For each question you see which assistants recommended you and which went with someone else.
If you serve several cities, each city is its own race, and even towns three miles apart get different lists from ChatGPT. That’s how the cabinet maker saw that Tampa is already a fight for the lead, while Orlando needs work from the ground up.
Why AI recommends your competitors over you
For each competitor that beats you, Reachd shows the phrases AI assistants use when they recommend it. Put next to what AI says about you, the reason is usually right there in the wording.
The cabinet maker has lost the warranty questions for weeks. On those questions AI quotes warranty details from competitors’ websites, while the cabinet maker’s product pages say nothing about its warranty, so the fix starts with a clear line about it on the site.
Reachd also shows the directories, review sites and editorial pages where AI finds your competitors and where you’re missing, ordered by how much each would help you. If one rival keeps appearing in your place, we’ve covered why a competitor shows up in ChatGPT and you don’t.
How to overtake competitors in AI search
Every day Reachd tells you what to change, mostly on your own website, with the text ready to publish, starting with the change that will move you up the most against the businesses ahead of you. Then you see in the daily results which competitor you’ve passed and on which questions.
A new kitchen showroom in Miami started with a brand new website and in about six weeks became the most recommended of its closest Miami competitors. Four months after the work stopped it was still first of the 61 businesses AI names in its category.
Find out for free how your competitors do in AI search compared to you
The first full analysis costs nothing and needs no card. You sign up, add your website, and get the whole picture: the businesses AI recommends in your category, your place among them, the questions your competitors take from you and what AI says about them.
After that a subscription keeps the comparison going every day, and each morning points you to the next change that will bring you the most.
Other AI search competitor analysis tools
Semrush and SE Ranking have added AI modules to their SEO suites with side-by-side views against competitors. Otterly.AI and Peec AI track share of voice across AI engines, and Profound works with large brands.
Most of these tools answer the first question in this article, where you rank. Reachd goes on to the rest of it, why the businesses ahead of you win and what gets you past them. The full comparison of nine tools on price and limits is in our guide to how to choose an AI visibility tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which competitors should I track in AI search?
The ones AI actually names when your customers ask, which often includes businesses you've never thought of as competition. Picking them by hand from your Google results misses exactly those.
What is share of voice in AI search?
It's the share of AI recommendations in your category that go to you, compared with the other businesses named for the same questions. When it rises, you're taking customers from competitors.
Do ChatGPT and Google AI recommend the same competitors?
Often they disagree. Each assistant leans on its own sources, so the leader in one can be missing from the other, as we saw when we asked both about the best pizza in New York.
Can a small local business beat a national brand in AI answers?
Yes, especially on local questions. Assistants favor the business whose information clearly matches the city and the need in the question, and a focused local business can say that better than a national chain.
How often do AI recommendations change?
Every day. New reviews, new pages and new mentions across the web shift the order, so today's leader can slip within a few weeks if a competitor keeps improving.