Competitor Intel
Spy on what's working for your competitors — keywords, content, backlinks.
What it is
Competitor Intel is a competitor-watching system. You add your competitors' URLs to a project, then: (1) 'Scan now' (or weekly auto-schedule) takes a fresh snapshot and tells you everything they changed since last time — new pages, rewritten titles, new pricing, new blog topics; (2) the content gap report shows topics they cover that you don't; (3) Site Explorer pulls their whole sitemap so you can see every blog post and product page they bet on; and (4) backlink + keyword overlap reports compare your link/keyword profile against theirs to find easy wins. For any change, Claude writes a plain-English summary, an urgency level, and the counter-moves you should ship this week — with fact-check guardrails so you never pay for a broken AI response.
Why it matters
If your competitor is already ranking, they've already done the hard work of figuring out what Google rewards in your niche. Watching their moves means you copy what's working, fill the gaps they leave, and never get blindsided by a big change. Faster than building a strategy from scratch.
How to use it (step-by-step)
Follow these in order. Each step is 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
Step 1
Add your competitors
Pick a project, then add competitor website URLs in the 'Tracked competitors' box. These are the sites we'll watch for this project.
Step 2
Click 'Scan now' (or set a weekly auto-schedule)
We snapshot each competitor and compare to last time. New headings, new pricing pages, rewritten titles, fresh blog topics — they all appear in the Intel feed with a suggested counter-move. The 'Schedule auto-scan' card lets us re-scan every Monday automatically.
Step 3
Watch the 'Since last scan' strip
After the second scan, a green strip at the top shows how many new events and opportunities arrived in the last 14 days — same convention as Site Audit and Keyword Research.
Step 4
Read the content gap report
It lists topics your competitors cover that you don't yet — your easiest content wins. Write those articles next.
Step 5
Use Site Explorer
Paste any competitor URL and click 'Explore' to pull their sitemap. You'll see their blog posts and product/pricing pages — the topics their whole content engine is built on. Cached per project.
Step 6
Click 'AI analyze' on a feed event (1 credit)
Claude explains what the change means, rates urgency (low/medium/high), and lists concrete counter-moves. Fact-check guardrails mean: if the response is empty or broken, you don't get charged. 'Mark actioned' once you've handled it.
Step 7
Run overlap reports for link/keyword wins
'Backlink overlap' (10 credits per successful competitor) finds domains that link to them but not you — your easiest backlink targets. If a competitor's profile fails to load, we don't charge for that one. Keyword overlap does the same for keywords.
Step 8
Export the report
The hero top-right has Download · Print · Share (90-day public link) — same as Site Audit, Internal Links, and Keyword Research. Hand it to a client without screenshots.
Step 9
Read the visual content diff on 'content_changed' events
When the homepage hash changes but headings don't, we now ship the first 500 chars of body text BEFORE and AFTER in side-by-side rose/emerald cards. You see what actually changed instead of a generic 'homepage updated' line.
Step 10
One-click handoffs close the loop
Every new_topics event has an 'Add to KR' button (jumps to Keyword Research with the topics as seeds). Every content_changed event has a 'Draft a counter-article' button (jumps to Content Writer with the topic pre-filled). Every unique-to-them backlink domain is a one-click 'Add to Outreach' button.
Scrape what each competitor actually covers.
Outerank fetches each tracked competitor and pulls their title + H1/H2/H3 topics. Not their meta keywords, not their schema — the actual content topics they're publishing about. The truth, not their self-description.
- Title + H1/H2/H3 topic extraction
- Run on any URL — no integration needed
- Skips noindex / login-gated pages
- Saved per competitor; refresh on demand
Competitor scan · result
Side-by-side coverage matrix.
See which topics you cover, which they cover, and the gap. The matrix is the source of truth — every cell is auditable. No "AI-summarized" hand-waving.
- Topic coverage grid (you × them)
- Sortable by coverage delta
- Click a topic → see source URL on their site
- Export to CSV for content planning
Gap topics per competitor
The topics they cover and you don't.
Outerank ranks the gap topics by commercial intent + competitive density. "They have an article on X and you don't" is just the starting point — the gap list shows you which gaps actually move the needle.
- Gap topics ranked by impact
- Volume + KD pulled inline (no separate research)
- 1-click: send a gap topic to Content / Scribe
- Brain prioritizes the top 3 to chase this week
Top 3 gaps · this week
One click to write the gap article.
From any gap topic, click 'Write this' → Content opens with the topic + competitor URL pre-filled, the SERP brief includes their article structure, and your generation is positioned to outflank it on word count + depth.
- Topic + competitor URL pre-filled
- Brief inherits their structure to beat
- Coverage score targets > their score
- Tracker auto-adds the keyword on publish
From a gap topic
1 · Content opens, topic pre-filled, brief includes competitor's H2 list.
2 · Generate the article (5 cr) — coverage target > theirs.
3 · Publish + Tracker auto-adds the keyword.
Why Outerank
What "competitor research" tools tell you to do manually.
The competitor gap → article workflow, end to end — not a dashboard you stare at.
Real topic scrape, not estimates
Title + H1/H2/H3 from their live pages. Not Ahrefs's "top keywords they rank for" guess — what they're ACTUALLY publishing about.
Gap topics ranked by impact
Volume + KD pulled inline. The top 3 are the ones to chase this week — not a 200-row dump.
One-click write the gap
Topic + brief + coverage target — pre-filled. From "they have this and you don't" to draft in 90 seconds.
Coverage matrix, not dumps
You × them topic grid, sortable, exportable. The matrix is the source of truth — no AI hand-waving.
Skip noindex + gated pages
We only scan what's actually crawlable. No false-positive gaps from pages Google can't see either.
Refresh on demand
When you ship a gap article, re-scan to confirm the gap closed. Loop closes — you don't just leave the report frozen in time.
What costs credits
No surprises. Browsing and viewing saved results is always free.
Pro tips
- →Skip the 'Scan now' button — set the 'Schedule auto-scan' card to weekly + Monday + 9:00 UTC and the feed fills itself.
- →The content gap report is the fastest content roadmap you'll ever get — those are proven topics with demand you're simply missing.
- →Don't copy a competitor's exact title — Google penalizes obvious dupes. Use their structure as inspiration; write something more complete.
- →Feed the URLs Site Explorer finds into the AI Content Writer to compete on the same topics, but better.
- →AI analyze costs 1 credit BUT only charges on success — try it freely; if Claude returns garbage you get a refund automatically.
Plain-English glossary
Every bit of jargon on this page, explained.
- Snapshot
- A saved copy of a competitor's page at a point in time. We compare snapshots to detect what changed.
- Intel feed
- The timeline of detected competitor changes (new topics, title rewrites, new pricing pages, etc.).
- Content gap
- A topic a competitor covers that you don't yet — a clear opportunity to publish and win that traffic.
- Counter-move
- A specific action Claude recommends in response to a competitor's change (e.g. 'publish a comparison page').
- Backlink overlap
- Websites that link to your competitor but not to you. The easiest backlinks to win because they already link in your space.
- Urgency (low/medium/high)
- How quickly you should respond to a competitor's change, as judged by Claude.
Questions, answered
Site Audit FAQs
Why is the feed empty?
How often should I scan?
Does scanning cost credits?
What happens if Claude fails on 'AI analyze'?
What if DataForSEO is down when I run a backlink overlap report?
Why does the backlink overlap cost 10 credits per competitor?
Can I download or share the report?
What does the keyword-overlap report do now?
What's the visual content diff?
How do the one-click handoffs work?
How we compare
Honest comparison — where we win, where the big tools win.
vs. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb gives traffic estimates (often wildly off). We give you actionable change-tracking + counter-moves you can use today, plus per-project auto-scan that you set up once and forget.
vs. Ahrefs Site Explorer
Ahrefs is deeper for raw backlink data. We add the 'what changed + what to do about it' layer with AI counter-moves, refund-on-fail on every paid endpoint, and a shareable branded report.
vs. Visualping / change monitors
Generic page-change monitors tell you SOMETHING changed. We tell you what it means for your SEO, exactly how to respond, AND we surface gap reports + backlink overlaps in the same dashboard.
Ready to try Competitor Intel?
Open it on one of your projects.
Come back here whenever you need a refresher.