Compare AI competitors
Who do AI assistants recommend instead of me?
Open AEO, choose a location and select Competitors. The tab ranks you against the businesses the answer engines name most often when they answer your discovery questions, plus any competitor you already track in Synup. It is a measure of who is winning the conversation, not of who you consider a rival, and it shows you engine by engine where each one is ahead.
Key facts
| Where it lives | AEO → Competitors, for one location. The tab label carries a count, such as Competitors (6), which is the businesses listed besides you |
| Who is listed | Up to the six businesses named most often across the engines' answers, plus any competitor you track, each with a score for the report's month |
| How they are scored | By the same method as you: points for rank on every question, and a miss scores 0 |
| Two views | Industry leaderboard (how often) and Ranking gap (how high) |
| Trend column | Appears once any business has scores for two or more months |
Steps
Open AEO, choose the client and location, and select Competitors.
Read the sentence above the table. It states your standing, for example "You rank #2 of 7 for AI visibility (49/100). Lakeview Smiles Dental leads at 64 — close the gap on the engines where they out-rank you." If you lead, it reads "You're the most visible of N businesses AI assistants name for these searches … defend the lead."
Find your row. It is labelled Your Business with a (You) badge, not your own name.
Compare each engine column, not just Overall.
Read Ranking gap below for how high each business is placed when it is named.
For a question you are losing, open its cell on Overview and read the captured answer.
Reading the leaderboard
The table is sorted by overall score, with a rank number, and has a column for each engine. In this example:
| Business | Overall | ChatGPT | Gemini | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lakeview Smiles Dental | 64 | 66 | 64 | 62 |
| Your Business (You) | 49 | 61 | 35 | 50 |
| Wrigley Family Dentistry | 47 | 49 | 45 | 47 |
| Belmont Dental Studio | 37 | 36 | 41 | 34 |
| Clark Street Dental Care | 27 | 28 | 24 | 28 |
| North Side Gentle Dental | 18 | 17 | 19 | 19 |
| Roscoe Village Dental | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Three things are easy to miss.
Your row says "Your Business". Competitors are named; you are not. The (You) badge identifies your row.
The overall rank hides the engine. You rank second overall. On ChatGPT you are also second, close to the leader (61 against Lakeview Smiles Dental's 66), but on Gemini you are fourth with 35, behind Lakeview Smiles Dental (64), Wrigley Family Dentistry (45) and Belmont Dental Studio (41). The overall number is an average, and only the engine columns tell you where to work.
A zero is not always a small business. A score of 0, like Roscoe Village Dental here, can be a competitor you track in Synup that the engines did not name for these questions. It is shown so you can see it is not appearing, not because an engine ranked it last.
Who appears, and why it changes
The list is not "every business the engines mentioned". For each update, Synup keeps the businesses named most often, up to six, and saves each with a score for that report's month. A competitor you track elsewhere in Synup can also appear with a zero if the engines did not name it. A competitor you removed does not appear.
Because the named businesses are rebuilt on each update, the list can change between refreshes: a business that was named in one update and not in the next drops off that month's list. The Trend column draws a small line for each business, and it appears once any business has scores for two or more months.
Competitors are scored the same way as you
A competitor that is not named for a question scores 0 for that question, just as you would. Points depend on the position the business was given in the answer, and the engine's score is the average over the questions, so the comparison is fair in both directions. One small difference: a question where an engine only asked for the customer's location is left out of your own score rather than counted as a miss, while a competitor's average is taken over all the questions. Read competitor scores as "scored the same way", not "identical to the digit".
That symmetry makes a low competitor score readable. A 27 does not mean the business is small; it means the assistants rarely name it for these questions.
Ranking gap: how high, not how often
Under the leaderboard, Ranking gap answers a different question. It takes only the answers where a business was named at all and splits them into three bands: ranked 1–3 (green), 4–10 (amber), and 11 or lower (red), as a bar per business.
A larger green share means the business ranked higher when it was named. Every bar is scaled to that business's own appearances, so its length does not show how often it appeared. Read the leaderboard for overall visibility across all questions, and read Ranking gap for placement among the answers where each business appeared. A business that was never named shows No AI visibility detected. If you are not named in any answer, the summary says it could not find any prompts where your business appears yet.
What to do with a competitor you didn't know about
When an unfamiliar business is beating you on a question that matters, open that question's cell on Overview. It opens a panel with the captured answer, your position and the cited sources, as described in How do I read the prompt coverage grid?. That evidence shows what the assistant returned; it does not prove why it chose that competitor.
What you'll see when it's done
- Your standing among the listed businesses, overall and for each engine
- The engine where a rival leads you most clearly
- A short list of questions to open on Overview to see what the assistants said instead
Watch out for
- The list is the businesses named most, not all of them. A rival that is named occasionally may not appear.
- The list can change at the next update. Compare scores month to month, not just names.
- A refresh updates the current month. A same-month refresh replaces that month's scores, so the Trend column needs at least two different months.
- Overall hides the engine. Check each engine column before deciding who your competitor is.
Questions people ask
Why is a competitor I track not scoring?
If the engines did not name it for these questions, it shows a score of 0. It is listed so you can see it is not appearing in AI answers.
Why did a competitor disappear from the list?
The named businesses are rebuilt each time the report updates. A business that the engines stopped naming drops off that month's list, and a competitor you removed from tracking no longer appears.
Can I add or remove competitors here?
No. This tab only reads the report. Competitors you track are managed elsewhere in Synup.
Where to go next
- How do I read the prompt coverage grid? — find the exact questions you're losing
- What should I fix first? — the ranked list Synup builds from this data