Compare review competitors

Where your location stands

The as of month beside the heading is worth noticing. A figure that looks behind your live rating usually is, and that is expected rather than a fault.

Sydekick's read states the headline in a sentence before you read a single number. Until the written summary is ready it shows a plain numeric line, such as "You trail on rating (3.9 vs 4.4 avg)", and it can be replaced by a fuller summary.

Strengths vs gaps splits themes into what rivals get praised for and what you get praised for. Where rivals win is the most directly actionable list on the page: things customers in your area care about and are not currently crediting you with. Select a topic to see which businesses earn it, or pass it to Sydekick to work on.

Rating alone doesn't tell the competitive story

Read the columns left to right.

• Total reviews is the credibility column. Compare it before you compare ratings. A flawless score on three reviews is not really a score yet, and customers and search engines both treat a large body of reviews as stronger evidence than a small one, so a 5.0 on three can lose to a 4.2 on several hundred.
• New this month shows who is still collecting reviews. A rival adding reviews steadily will overtake a static competitor regardless of today's average.
• Net sentiment and Distribution show whether an average is earned consistently or is the midpoint of a lot of fives and a lot of ones.
• Avg rating and Total reviews can be sorted. Your own row is marked You and stays at the top.

The Review velocity chart underneath draws reviews per month for the same businesses and reports what share of all the reviews in the set are yours. You can switch businesses on and off from the picker.

When rating is already high and volume is low, the useful work is asking happy customers to leave reviews, not defending the rating.

Why a business appears in the summary but not the scorecard

The Scorecard lists you and the competitors Synup has analysed in depth, which is a small set of up to five: businesses you add yourself come first, then the top automatic ones by review count. The note under the table reads "Up to 5 top competitors, plus those you add", but the table follows the five-business set. Synup tracks more businesses than that in the background, often a couple of dozen, and records only their headline rating and review count.

So a name in Strengths vs gaps or a larger count in Manage competitors that you cannot find in the table is normal, not a bug.

Manage the competitor list

Choose Manage competitors. Discovery is based on your Google category and location, so it errs on the side of including too much. Removing the businesses you do not really compete with is normal housekeeping, and adding the ones you do by name is usually the first thing worth doing.

Two things to know before you use it:

• Removing is close to permanent. The dialog says "Removed competitors stay excluded", so Synup will not re-discover that business automatically. Add it back by name if you change your mind.
• Some entries carry a warning mark that Synup could not match them to a Google place, with the hint "Couldn't resolve a Google place — reviews may not pull". Those are tracked but contribute no rating or review data, so they will not appear in the Scorecard.

Refreshing

At a single location that already has competitors, refreshing lives in the Data freshness control beside the page title: it shows when the competitor reviews were last checked and has a Refresh button. A refresh updates the businesses you are already tracking; it does not look for new ones. It needs competitors to refresh, and it may say it needs a verified Google review profile for the location.

When a location has no competitors yet, the page offers Discover competitors and Add by name instead. At the all-locations scope there is a Refresh button on the page itself.

Refreshing does not change the numbers at once. Each business is pulled in the background, and the cards keep the previous figures until the new ones land. Because the comparison is built monthly, use it when you have changed the list rather than expecting it to move the numbers day to day.

All locations: the brand-level view

At the all-locations scope the tab shows a banner: "Brand-level view — competitors are tracked across all of this brand's locations." Competitors here belong to the brand rather than to one location, and a tag filter does not apply. Choose a single location to see its own competitors.

Next

• What should I look at in Review Analytics?
• Track the themes customers mention