Outerank Pulse
Your own strategic-intelligence agent — twice-weekly competitor & niche intel, with ideas you can ship.
What it is
Outerank Pulse is a paid add-on ($19/mo) that gives you your own AI research analyst. Twice a week (Monday & Thursday) it scans your tracked competitors' new content, the news in your niche, and shifts in AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews), then the AI synthesizes a short, tailored brief: an executive summary, what your competitors are doing, trending topics you should write about, market shifts to ride, and 3–5 concrete ideas for YOUR site — each tagged small/medium/large effort. You can promote any idea to a task in one click, and the brief is emailed to you.
Why it matters
SEO isn't a set-and-forget game — competitors publish, Google changes how it cites, and new search behaviors appear weekly. Most owners find out months late. Pulse turns that constant scanning (which would take you hours every week) into a 2-minute read that tells you exactly what changed and what to do about it, while there's still room to act first.
How to use it (step-by-step)
Follow these in order. Each step is 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
Step 1
Enable the add-on
Pulse is a $19/mo add-on. If you don't have it yet, the page shows how to switch it on for your account.
Step 2
Pick a project
Use the project selector — Pulse personalizes the brief to that project's tracked competitors, niche, and keywords.
Step 3
Read the brief
Open the latest brief: executive summary, competitor moves, trending topics, market trends, and prioritized ideas. New briefs land automatically Mon & Thu 07:00 UTC (and in your inbox).
Step 4
Watch the freshness banner
When you open a new brief, an emerald 'Since your last brief' row shows exactly what changed — how many new signals, which source shipped the most, and how many new trending topics.
Step 5
Promote ideas to tasks OR draft in Scribe
On any idea card: 'Promote to task' drops it into your notifications for later. 'Draft in Scribe' opens Outerank Scribe with the idea prefilled as a keyword — one click from intelligence to article draft.
Step 6
Run it on demand
Need a fresh scan now? Click 'Run now' (rate-limited to 12h between manual runs — auto-refreshes twice weekly anyway).
Step 7
Pause auto briefs when needed
Keep the add-on active but skip the Mon+Thu auto run — the pause toggle on the Pulse page lets you take a break without cancelling.
Twice-weekly intelligence scan.
Pulse runs Monday + Thursday automatically. It scans your niche's SERP changes, competitor publications, AI-engine citation shifts, and emerging-topic signals. The result is a digest brief — not a wall of alerts.
- Mon + Thu auto-cadence (or manual on demand)
- Scans SERP shifts + competitor content + AI engines
- Compound knowledge from all Outerank projects
- Per-user pause if you want to throttle
Scan scope · per brief
Editorial-quality brief, not a metric dump.
Each Pulse brief is written like a strategic memo — what happened, what it means, what to do. References real URLs from your competitors, real prompts that flipped, real SERPs that changed. Not a CSV.
- Strategic memo format (executive-readable)
- Cites real URLs + prompts + SERP screenshots
- Sectioned: what / why / so what / action
- Saved forever — searchable history
Brief · this week
What · 3 of your competitors shipped "leather care 2026" guides this week.
Why · Search volume on the parent topic spiked +45% MoM.
Action · Queue a definitive guide via Scribe → estimated +18% citation rate.
Brief → Scribe topic queue in one click.
Every actionable insight in a Pulse brief becomes a Scribe topic with one click. The agent-to-agent handoff means strategic intelligence directly drives content production. No copy-paste, no losing the thread.
- 1-click Pulse → Scribe topic handoff
- Pulse-fed Scribe mode (fully auto)
- Brain reads Pulse + boosts related recommendations
- Topics retain Pulse-brief source for context
From brief · queued
Signal density tells you when to lean in.
A heavy-signal brief (20+ signals) = your niche is volatile, double down on intel cadence. A light brief (sub-10) = quiet week, deeper work pays off. Outerank surfaces the trend in the hero so you don't miss it.
- Signal density per brief, last 10 visualized
- Cadence indicator: heavy / normal / light
- Brain flags 3+ heavy weeks in a row
- History tab — every past brief, searchable
Signal density · last 6 briefs
Why Outerank
What an analyst would charge $2k/month for.
Pulse is the SEO consultant's strategic-intelligence layer — bundled in, agent-driven, auto-cadenced.
Twice-weekly auto cadence
Mon + Thu, no setup. Your strategic intelligence runs on a schedule — not a dashboard you forget to open.
Strategic memos, not metric dumps
Executive-readable briefs with real URLs, real prompts, real SERPs cited. The kind of report you forward to a co-founder.
Agent-to-agent handoff
Pulse → Scribe in one click. Strategic intelligence becomes production-ready content without the copy-paste handoff.
Brain reads Pulse
Pulse signals influence Brain's recommendation weighting. Your strategic context shapes the action list.
Signal density trend
Heavy week = volatile niche. Light week = quiet. The cadence indicator tells you when to lean in.
Searchable brief history
Every past brief saved + searchable. The intelligence archive your team can reference, not just this week's email.
What costs credits
No surprises. Browsing and viewing saved results is always free.
Pro tips
- →Track your real competitors in Competitor Intel first — Pulse scans whatever competitors you've added, so the more accurate your list, the sharper the brief.
- →Act on the 'small' effort ideas the same week — they're chosen because there's a first-mover window.
- →The brief is emailed too, so you can skim it on your phone and decide what to action when you're back at your desk.
- →AI Advisor now cites the latest Pulse brief in its answers — ask 'what should I focus on this week?' and it'll pull in fresh competitor moves + trending topics automatically.
Questions, answered
Site Audit FAQs
Is Pulse included in my plan?
Where does it get its information?
How is this different from the AI Advisor?
Can I turn a Pulse idea into an article?
How we compare
Honest comparison — where we win, where the big tools win.
vs. Manually following blogs & Reddit
You'd spend hours a week reading and still miss things. Pulse reads it all for you and only surfaces what matters for your site — with the action attached.
vs. Ahrefs / Semrush alerts
They alert you to ranking/backlink changes on your own site. Pulse watches the whole landscape (competitors + niche + AI search) and hands you ideas, not just data.
Ready to try Outerank Pulse?
Open it on one of your projects.
Come back here whenever you need a refresher.