Competitor sources
What are competitor sources?
Just as the Sources section in the brand dashboard shows pages cited by AI about your brand, Competitor Sources shows the same kind of data — but filtered to the selected competitor.
It helps answer questions such as:
- Which domains does AI cite most often when mentioning a given competitor?
- Does it cite the competitor’s official site, media, or user forums?
- Which exact subpages did the model link to in specific snapshots?
How do you open a competitor’s sources?
- Go to Brand → Sources (the Sources tab in the brand dashboard)
- Change the Entity selector (top-left corner) from
Brandto the selected competitor - The view refreshes — all metrics and the domain table will be filtered to that competitor
What can you see in the view?
The Competitor Sources view has the same structure as the brand view:
Domain table
A domain ranking sorted descending by citation count:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Domain | Domain name |
| Citation count | Number of citations assigned to this competitor |
| Unique snapshots | Number of snapshots where the domain appeared |
| Avg. rank | Average citation position in the AI response |
| Source types | List of source types (badges) with separate counters |
Citation trend
A daily chart for the competitor’s top N domains + the aggregate Others category.
URL preview for a domain (drill-down)
Clicking a domain row opens a side panel with a list of specific URLs cited by AI in the context of that competitor.
For each URL, you can see:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| URL | Full address of the page (clickable) |
| Snapshot date | Snapshot date where the citation appeared |
| Rank in response | Citation position in the AI response |
| Source type | Source type |
| Proxy? | true if the URL is a redirect through Google Grounding API (vertexaisearch.cloud.google.com) instead of a direct link |
The panel loads up to 200 URLs, sorted from the newest snapshot.
How does competitor filtering work?
Each snapshot stores the entity_name field with cited sources — this is the normalized name of the entity to which AI assigned the link. The Competitor Sources view shows only records where:
entity_name IS NOT NULL— records must have an explicit assignment (legacyNULLis excluded)entity_namematches the main competitor name or one of its aliases (matched by lowercase + trim)
Alias matching comes from the configuration in Brand → Competitors → [competitor name] → Aliases.
If a competitor domain does not appear even though the LLM cited it, check whether the name used in the AI response matches the competitor name or alias exactly in GEORate. The LLM may use an abbreviation (for example,
UAinstead ofUnder Armour) — add it as an alias.
Difference vs the brand view
| Aspect | Brand view | Competitor view |
|---|---|---|
entity_name filter | IS NULL OR matches brand/aliases | IS NOT NULL AND matches competitor/aliases |
| Legacy records (NULL) | ✅ Visible (backward compatibility) | ❌ Excluded |
| Source of domain list | Your brand | Selected competitor from brand_competitors |
| URL drill-down | Starter+ | Starter+ |
Requirements
Competitor source data appears only for snapshots created after the entity_name field was introduced in the answer_sources schema. Older snapshots have entity_name = NULL and are not included in the competitor view.
To backfill historical data, run Reanalyze on key snapshots — n8n will populate the entity_name field based on the current LLM configuration.
Availability
| Plan | Competitor Sources |
|---|---|
| Free | ❌ Locked |
| Trial | ❌ Locked |
| Starter | ✅ Full access |
| Enterprise | ✅ Full access |