Comparing Pages With Your Competitors

What a Competitor Analysis Is

You start from one of your tracked keywords — the searches you’ve asked us to check your position on every night; you pick them on the Rankings screen. We read your page and up to three of the top results Google showed for it, and measure the same things on each — with every measurement anchored to that exact phrase. Is the phrase in their page title, and in yours? In the main heading? In the page’s own web address? How much does each page actually say about it?

Anchoring everything to one search is what makes the comparison fair — both pages are measured as answers to the same question. A generic side-by-side of two pages tells you which is the tidier page; this tells you which is the better answer to the search you both want, which is the only contest that matters.

How to Run an Analysis

On the Competitors screen, pick a tracked keyword. The screen has the same sections every time, whichever search you pick — only what is inside them changes:

• Your page is the page Google actually shows for that search — never just your homepage. We record the best-ranking page of yours once a night, so if Google has moved between two of your pages recently you will see them listed with the date each was last seen, and you pick the one to measure. If you are not ranked yet, Google’s results give us no page of yours to start from, so the screen asks you to pick which of your own pages should compete — choose one from the list of your pages, or type any address on your site.
• “Who to compare against” lists the top results we recorded — each with the position it held, the site, and the page — and ticking one adds it to your comparison. If we haven’t recorded them for that search, the heading stays and one note says so: “We don’t have a record of the top 3 for this search.” A result whose page address we never captured is shown but can’t be ticked — there is no page to read.
• Adding a competitor yourself is the box underneath: paste any page address and press Add page. A real competitor who is not in the results yet is a fair target. A page you added this way is stamped “Not in your tracked results for this search — your pick.” on the report, because no observed position exists for it and we will not invent one.
• The list at the bottom is what the run will actually compare your page with. Every page on it shows where it came from — the position and day we recorded it, or that it was your own pick — and each has a Remove. You can hold up to three at a time; at that point the Add box and any unticked result switch off and say why; untick or remove one and they come back.

The recorded results start on the list, so the usual run is one click. If that is not the comparison you want, untick or remove what you don’t need and add what you do.

You can also start from the Rankings screen: open the details for one of your searches, and each competitor we captured a page address for has a compare link that opens the Competitors screen with that competitor’s page already filled in.

If an address you add looks like a directory or listings site (a site that lists many businesses rather than being one), the screen says so — “This address looks like a directory rather than a competing business’s own page — comparisons read best against a business like yours.” — but it never overrules you: the page is added anyway. Pages on your own site are refused as competitors — that side of the comparison is already taken — and the same page can’t be on the list twice. Each of those is answered as you add it, before anything is spent.

One run covers every page you chose — comparing against three competitors counts as one analysis, the same as comparing against one.

What's Included, and What's Kept

Your Pro subscription includes 100 analyses a month. What each plan costs is on the billing guide. The allowance resets each billing period on your own renewal date, not on the first of the month. The screen shows how many you have left before you spend one — never a silent limit. A run only counts when it delivers a comparison: your page read, and at least one competitor’s page read. A run that can’t do that isn’t counted against your 100 analyses.

Every analysis you run is saved on the Competitors screen for as long as you’re subscribed. That is deliberate: run the same search again in three months and you can put the two reports side by side and see whether the gap moved.

Reading the Report

Each side gets a score measured against the search — the same 0 to 100 score your check-up and audits use, pointed at one page and one phrase. Below the scores, the comparison runs one row per measurement, and every row follows the same pattern: what we measured, your value, their value, and what to do about it.

Colour in the table means one thing, and the line under the heading says it: a green cell is a competitor’s figure that beats yours — the number worth aiming at. Your own figures are never coloured, and a row with no green in it is information rather than a task.

Every run measures the same things, and the first few are the heart of it, because they are where “a good page” and “a good answer to this search” stop being the same thing. In the order the table prints them:

Search term in the page title

Whether the words someone typed show up in the title — the line that appears as the link in results.

Search term in the main heading

The one big heading at the top of the page, and whether it names what the page is about in the customer's words.

Search term in the page's words

How often the phrase appears in the body text, and what share of the words that is.

Search term in the address

Whether the phrase shows in the page's web address.

Content depth

How much the page actually says before it asks for the call.

Questions answered in headings

Headings phrased as questions are what AI assistants quote when someone asks.

Reading ease

How hard the writing is to read, on a 0–100 scale.

Structured data

A code block that describes the page to search engines.

Title & description basics

Whether the title and description exist and sit in a workable length.

Images described

The share of images that carry a written description, for people using a screen reader and for search.

Allowed in for automated readers

Whether your site lets search engines and assistants read this page at all.

Response speed

How quickly the page answered when we asked for it. One measurement, reported as a band rather than a false-precision number.

When a Lower Score Outranks You

Expect this. The most common shape a report takes is a competitor whose page scores lower than yours while ranking higher — and that is not a contradiction or a bug in either number. When it happens, the report says so itself, in one sentence:

“History” there means how long a site and its pages have been around. The reason is a boundary the report states on every analysis: “We compare what’s publicly visible on competitor pages — wording, structure, markup, speed. Links, traffic and ad spend sit outside this report.” A page’s score measures what is on the page; a ranking is also moved by everything around the page. Neither number is wrong — they answer different questions, and the one you can act on is the score, because the page is the part you control.

When We Can't Read a Page

Sometimes one of the pages you chose comes back without a comparison. Each of these is an answer about our read, not a claim about their site — and the rest of the analysis still stands. The report keeps them apart on purpose:

They asked not to be read

A site’s robots.txt file states its rules for automated readers, and we follow them — a competitor’s in full, always, because nobody has shown us that site is theirs. A page we were asked to stay out of is not read at all. The report says it in one sentence: “Their robots.txt asks us not to read this page — we honour that.”

The page couldn't be read

Their site was down, too slow, or answered with an error when we asked. The report carries the exact sentence describing what happened, and claims nothing about the page beyond that.

We had already read as much of their site as politeness allows

“We've read as much of their site as we politely can today — this one will be ready to run again tomorrow.” There is a daily limit on how much of any one site we will read, so that we are never a burden on somebody else’s server. A popular competitor can reach it. This never means their page is broken — it means try again tomorrow.

It took too long

“This page took longer than the time we give each page in an analysis, so we stopped waiting.” Each page gets a fixed slice of time so one slow site can’t stall the whole analysis.

What This Can't Tell You

A competitor analysis cannot tell you why a page ranks where it does. Google does not publish its reasons, and a tool that claims to know them is guessing. What the report states is what we measured on each page and the action each difference implies — nothing more.

And it only compares what is publicly on the pages. We don’t buy data about who links to a site, its traffic, or its advertising spend, so none of that appears here — the report says so on its face rather than letting the comparison look more complete than it is. For a deeper read of your own site, there’s the monthly audit — the full report that measures your whole site, not one page (Reading Your Audit). And for what positions themselves mean, the Rankings screen has a guide of its own.