Compare local competitors
How do I see which competitors are beating me in local search?
Open Marketing → SEO → Competitors. The Leaderboard lists the businesses Google shows on your grid, across all the keywords you track, ordered by average rank with the best first. You appear in it as You, in your real place. Select any business to see why it is ahead, what you could copy from it, and the points on your grid where it beats you. It answers "who is beating me overall", where the Overview answers "where am I strong or weak for one keyword".
Key facts
| Where it lives | Marketing → SEO, Competitors in the SEO menu |
| What it covers | Every keyword you track at the location, using each keyword's newest measured report. Last month's report is the comparison |
| How it is ordered | Average rank, best first. Ties go to the higher top-3 share |
| The one averaging rule | Every grid point of every keyword counts, and a point where a business is absent counts as 20+. It is the same rule as the Overview |
| Who is on it | Businesses Google actually ranks on your grid. There is no box to add one by hand |
| What you need | At least one keyword with a finished report. With none, the page says No competitors yet |
| What it costs | Nothing to read. It is built from reports you already have |
Why this matters
When one business is ahead of you across your area, it is usually not one weak spot you can patch. The leaderboard shows how many grid points each business wins, and the detail panel shows what differs between you and it, so you have something concrete to fix first.
Steps
Open Marketing → SEO, choose a client and a single location, and select Competitors in the SEO menu.
Read This month at the top if it appears. It names a business that entered your top 3 at N points this month or passed you at N points this month. Select the name to open that business below.
Read the Leaderboard. Its subtitle says how many keywords it covers, for example Across 3 keywords. Each row shows a position, the name, and one line of evidence: #6 avg · top 3 at 33% · ahead of you at 133 points.
- #6 avg is the business's average rank across every point of every keyword. A point where it does not appear counts as 20+.
- top 3 at 33% is the share of those points where it ranks in the top three.
- ahead of you at 133 points is the number of points where it ranks above you. A business that is below you reads behind you instead.
- The small arrow with a number shows how much its average moved since last month when the move is 0.5 or more. An up arrow means it moved up the rankings. The colour is from your side: a competitor moving up is red, a competitor moving down is green, and for your own row it is the other way round.
Scroll the list to find your own row, marked You with an orange bar, so you can see where you stand among them. Your row has no "ahead of you" line, because it is you.
Select a competitor. The panel on the right opens with its category, rating and review count, and how many of your points it beats you at. Work down its sections:
- Why they're ahead compares you and them factor by factor: Primary category, Name matches your keywords, New reviews a month, Total reviews and Rating. Each row ends with You lead, They lead, Even or Unknown. These are computed from the ranking data and review data, not written by a model.
- What to copy lists things that stand out about them, each with the action that goes with it. A review-pace gap offers Ask customers for reviews, praised themes offer Draft a local post, and recently added pages or a name that matches your keywords are shown as notes. If nothing stands out it says Nothing stands out that you could copy from them yet.
- Where they beat you is a 7 × 7 picture of your grid. Red squares are points where they rank higher, green where you rank higher, pale where neither ranks, and black is your location. The line above it counts both sides, for example Ahead at 45 spots · you at 0.
- Profile gaps lists profile features and opening hours they have that you lack, worded as No followed by the feature, or Closed followed by the days when they are open, when profile data is available for them.
Scroll to Rank over time. It plots average rank across all your keywords and grid points, month by month, for you and up to five competitors. Use the Competitors menu to choose which, and Chart or Table to switch the view. Lower is better.
A Sydekick read panel can sit above the alerts. It is a short written read of the page, generated in the background. Until one has been written it says No read for this page yet with a Write one button. It also offers example questions such as Who is gaining on me fastest? and What should I fix first to pass my top competitor?
What you'll see when it's done
- Alerts for a business that entered your top 3 or passed you this month, when there are any
- A leaderboard that includes you, so you can see how far down the list you are
- For each competitor, the factors where they lead, one or two things to copy, and a picture of where they win
- A trend line for you and up to five competitors, once there are two months of reports
Watch out for
- It is evidence, not a cause. The table shows what differs. It does not prove why a business ranks above you.
- "Ahead of you at N points" counts grid points across all keywords. With three keywords the total is three grids, so the counts can be above 49.
- Only businesses Google shows on your grid appear. If a rival you care about is missing, it is not ranking in your area for your keywords.
- Some details may be missing. Categories, rating, review pace, praised themes and new pages come from what Synup has collected about each competitor. A line is left out when the data is not there, and Profile gaps says No feature data available. when it cannot read a profile.
- A business that is not on your grid does not get a row. If you never reach the top 20 at any point you have no You row at all, and the Overview shows an average of 21.
- Names come from public search results, spelling and duplicates included. Two rows that look alike are usually separate listings for one place.
Questions people ask
Why is my average rank here different from the Overview?
It should now agree. Both count every point and treat a point where you are absent as 20+. The Competitors figure covers all your keywords at once, while the Overview card and list show one keyword at a time, so you will see the mean of your keywords here and each keyword on the Overview.
Can I add a competitor by name?
Not on this page. It only lists businesses that actually rank on your grid, so a name added by hand would show nothing the grid does not already show.
Why does the trend say my rank history appears after the second scan?
The chart needs two monthly reports. Until then it says Rank history appears after your second monthly scan.
What do the alerts mean?
Entered your top 3 names the business that newly reached the top three at the most points compared with last month. Passed you names the business that newly moved above you at the most points. Both compare the same keyword and the same point in the two months.