October 23, 2026
Competitors that aren't competitors
What a competitor is
A competitor is a business your buyers could choose instead of you. AEOTrack counts how often the answers name each one, for share of voice, Where you rank, Who was named instead and every rival count. Something that is not a business you compete with makes all of those wrong:
- A place, such as a city or a neighbourhood. As a competitor it counts every answer that mentions the area.
- A directory or listing site: Yelp, Tripadvisor, Google Maps, Trustpilot, Clutch, G2, Capterra, Houzz, Angi, Thumbtack and the like. Buyers find businesses there, so it is somewhere to get listed, not a rival, and it belongs in your off-site plan.
- A marketplace: Upwork, Fiverr, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Airbnb, job boards such as ZipRecruiter and the like, where buyers find sellers. For a business that sells a service it is not a rival.
- An everyday word, such as "Measure", which counts every answer that uses the word as a name, or part of a sentence.
- Something people buy or do: an ingredient, a food or a practice.
- A product model: track the company that makes it instead.
- Your own business, or a branch of it ("Acme Coffee Roasters - Downtown"), which counts your own mentions against you.
"Not a competitor?"
When one of your tracked competitors is one of these, the Dashboard says so in its Check your setup section, under the label Not a competitor?. Up to three of the answers that mention it are behind See 3 of the answers (fewer when fewer answers mention it), each with the engine, the date, the question and the words around the name. For example:
Yelp is a directory where buyers find businesses, not a business you compete with. Remove it from your competitors?
- Remove Yelp removes it in one click, with its share of voice.
- Keep tracking it hides the card. It comes back only if the evidence changes: another reason, or, for a name the answers never present as a business, twice as many answers mentioning it (and at least three more).
A Not a competitor? card with See 3 of the answers open: each answer mentions Yelp only as a place to read reviews.
The card also asks about a competitor with no website on record that the answers mention three times or more but never as a business: never with its own website, never in a list of businesses, never described as one. It is the one card that gives a count:
The answers mention "Morning Blend" 4 times but never as a business: never with its own website and never in a list of businesses. Is it a competitor?
A marketplace or a directory can be a real rival for a business that sells products: a review site competes with G2. For such a business, and while AEOTrack does not yet know what you sell, the card asks only once at least three answers mention it, and not when the answers list it beside you or another of your competitors. A company's product on a big platform's address, such as Google Cloud or AWS, is a real business and is never asked about.
The cards never change anything on their own, and they never email you. Every change is your click.
Never added automatically
AEOTrack suggests competitors in setup, pre-fills Who do you lose deals to?, offers Suggest competitors for me, lists brands Named by AI in your category, not yet tracked, and carries over the businesses your free audit found. None of these ever offers a place, a directory or listing site, an ingredient or a practice, or your own business. Once AEOTrack knows you sell a service, marketplaces are left out too.
They are left out because a wrong competitor quietly skews every count above, and a suggested list is easy to accept without reading it. A name you type, in setup or with Add competitors, is tracked as you wrote it, even a directory: that is your choice. If it looks like one of the kinds above, the card asks you once.
How a competitor's mentions are counted
An answer names a competitor when it writes, as a name:
- the competitor's name as you typed it, or without a suffix such as "Ltd" or "Inc";
- its website's name, such as "northwindroasters" for northwindroasters.example;
- its first word on its own, such as "Northwind" for "Northwind Roasters", only when that word is distinctive.
The first word does not count on its own when it is:
- a place: "Portland" of "Portland Coffee Works";
- a category or everyday word: "Premier", "Elite", "Royal", "Smile";
- a first name: "Robert" of a firm named after its founder;
- a word of your own brand name or of your questions;
- a word that two or more of your competitors share.
The full name always counts. Without this rule, "Portland Coffee Works" would be counted in every answer that mentions Portland, and a rival's share of voice could read many times what the answers really give it. A competitor you typed as one word, such as "Measure", is matched as you typed it, which is why the card asks about it.