Track competitors
Your competitor set is the field your brand is ranked against. AppearIn measures Share of Voice as your share of brand mentions on non-branded prompts versus the competitors you track, scored separately per engine. Pick the rivals you actually lose deals to, read them on the leaderboard, and open the saved answers to see who took the slots you missed. The set you choose decides whether your ranking is honest.
Before you start
Competitors live inside a project. AppearIn detects likely rivals when you create the project, and you refine the set here. They are who your Share of Voice is measured against, across the same prompt set.
Review and manage the set
Review detected competitors
AppearIn reads your brand profileand the engines' answers to suggest competitors. Start from that list. Keep the ones you genuinely compete with in buying decisions, and remove anyone who showed up by accident.
Add the ones we missed
Add competitors manually by name. Three to five direct rivals is a strong working set. These are the brands a customer would weigh against you in the same answer, like Acme against Beta, not the category giant you rarely face head to head.
Read the leaderboard
The leaderboard ranks you and your competitors by Share of Voice for each engine. Because the engines disagree, read each column on its own: you might lead on Perplexity and trail on Gemini. Watch the ranking over many runs, not a single one.
Find who took your slot
When a competitor outranks you on a prompt, open the saved answer for that run. You see the exact wording the engine returned and which brand it named instead of you. That tells you whether you were left out, mentioned weakly, or beaten on a specific claim.
Worked example
Acme tracks Beta and two others over the prompt "best project management tools for startups". On a recent week the leaderboard reads:
| Brand | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Gemini |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beta | 62% | 55% | 71% |
| Acme | 48% | 50% | 22% |
Acme is close on ChatGPT and Perplexity but far behind on Gemini. Opening Gemini's saved answer shows it names Beta and cites a startup-tools roundup that never mentions Acme. That single source explains the gap and points to where Acme should work next.
What good looks like
A healthy competitor set has:
- Three to five direct rivals you actually lose deals to.
- No aspirational names you never appear beside in real answers.
- A leaderboard you read per engine, since the engines disagree.
- The habit of opening saved answers to see who took a slot and why.
- Attention to competitor sentiment and the sources that keep them winning.
Common mistakes
Adding aspirational competitors.Track who you appear next to in answers, not the market leader you rarely face. Otherwise your Share of Voice looks bleak when it isn't.
Tracking too many. A long competitor list dilutes the leaderboard and buries the rivals that matter. Keep it to the handful that decide real deals.
Comparing across different prompt sets. Share of Voice is only comparable when brands run against the same prompts. Change the set and you reset the baseline, so compare like with like.