PromptScout

How to see if competitors appear more often than you in AI answers

By Łukasz Starosta · Updated November 1, 2026 · 6 min read

The short answer

Ask AI assistants the same buyer questions on a schedule and count how often each brand appears, engine by engine. That share of mentions is your share of voice. Then check two things behind the number: whether the answer recommends a brand or only names it, and which pages it cites when it recommends a competitor.

Start with share of voice, engine by engine

Share of voice is simple: out of all the brand mentions in answers to your questions, how many are yours? To compare fairly, use the same questions, the same engines and the same competitor list every time.

Look at each engine on its own. ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Bing Copilot use different sources, so a competitor can lead on one and be missing on another. An average across engines hides that.

In PromptScout, the Competitors page shows each brand's visibility and share of mentions across your tracked questions, and Reports show your share of voice over time.

See:Competitor trackingReports

Real example: answers that name only a competitor

We sorted every completed answer in PromptScout's own monitoring into three outcomes: the tracked brand appears, only a competitor appears, or neither does. Being absent is two different problems, and they need different fixes.

PromptScout monitoring data

What actually happens to a brand in an answer

Every completed answer for a tracked prompt, sorted into three outcomes.

  • Gemini1,239 answers
    67%
    22%
    11%
    • Brand appears 66.8%
    • Only a competitor appears 21.9%
  • ChatGPT1,211 answers
    49%
    27%
    23%
    • Brand appears 49.5%
    • Only a competitor appears 27.3%
  • AI Overviews1,273 answers
    45%
    20%
    35%
    • Brand appears 45.0%
    • Only a competitor appears 19.6%
  • Perplexity1,275 answers
    38%
    20%
    42%
    • Brand appears 38.4%
    • Only a competitor appears 19.5%
  • Brand appears
  • Only a competitor appears
  • Neither appears

Being absent is not one outcome, it is two. On ChatGPT, 27% of answers named a competitor and not the brand. On Perplexity, 42% named nobody at all. Inspect the answer and buyer intent in either case; neither outcome alone establishes a commercial gap or the right work to do.

Source: PromptScout monitoring, May 28 – August 25, 2026. 5,436 completed answers across 135 tracked prompts. Aggregated across all monitored brands.

Recommended is not the same as Mentioned

An answer can name you in a list and still tell the buyer to pick someone else. Counting mentions alone makes that look like a win.

PromptScout labels each answer Recommended, Not recommended or Not classified for your brand. The Competitors page shows how many answers recommended you, and how many cited or mentioned you while recommending a competitor. Those are the answers to read first.

Find the pages behind competitor recommendations

When an answer recommends a competitor, it often cites the pages it drew on. Those pages are usually the reason.

On paid plans, the Sources page has a section called Pages behind competitor recommendations. It lists the pages cited in answers where a tracked competitor was recommended and you were not, with the page type, the domain, which competitors were recommended, how many answers cited it, and on which engines.

See:Source analysis

How to act on the gap

Start with the questions where a competitor is recommended and you are not. For each one, open the cited pages and ask what kind of page it is.

  • A list or comparison you're missing from: ask the author to include you, with facts they can check.
  • A review or directory site: make sure your listing exists and is current.
  • The competitor's own page: compare it with yours. Does it answer the buyer's question more directly?
  • Your own page, cited but not recommended: the page is found, so make the answer to the question clear on it.

A short checklist

  1. Track the same buyer questions and the same three to five competitors every run.
  2. Read share of voice per engine, not only the average.
  3. Separate answers that recommend you from answers that only mention you.
  4. List the questions where a competitor is recommended and you aren't.
  5. Open the pages those answers cite and sort them by type.
  6. Fix one page or listing at a time, then watch the next few runs.
  7. Judge the result over several runs. One run is not a trend.

Common questions

How can I track if my competitors are appearing more often than me in AI answers?
Run the same buyer questions on each AI engine on a schedule, record which brands each answer names, and compare your share of mentions with each competitor's. PromptScout does this on ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Bing Copilot on paid plans.
What is a good share of voice in AI answers?
There is no fixed benchmark. It depends on your category and how many brands compete in it. Compare yourself with the same competitors on the same questions over time, and watch the trend per engine.
Why does a competitor show up on one engine and not another?
Each engine searches and cites different sources. A competitor listed on a site one engine trusts can lead there and be missing elsewhere. Check the cited pages per engine.
Can I try it for free?
Yes. The free check at /get-started prepares buyer questions from your website and, after you sign up, shows free OpenAI answers with brand mentions and competitors. Scheduled monitoring is on paid plans.

See where your brand stands

The free check prepares buyer questions from your website and shows how AI answers treat your brand and your competitors today.

Run the free check

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