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Competitor Benchmarking for AI Recommendation Position

Knowing where your brand stands in AI-generated recommendations is only half the battle. The other half is understanding how your competitors are doing and why. By benchmarking your brand’s AI presence against rivals, you can identify gaps and opportunities to improve your recommendation ranking. Here’s how to approach competitor analysis in the context of AI-driven search and recommendation systems:

Identify Relevant AI Touchpoints

First, list out the AI platforms or scenarios where customers might discover brands in your industry. For example:

  • Chat-based Q&A (ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Bing Chat) where users ask for product suggestions.
  • Voice assistants (Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant) responding to questions like “What’s the best [product type]?”
  • Recommendation widgets on e-commerce sites or apps that use AI (the “customers also liked…” style suggestions). Make a list of key queries or prompts in these environments that a potential customer might use. These should be questions or requests where ideally your brand or a competitor would be the answer (e.g., “top project management software 2025” or “affordable running shoes recommendations”).

Assess Competitor Visibility

Now, for each query or prompt you identified, research how the AI responds:

  • Run the query through the AI system (if possible). Note which brands or products get mentioned in the answer. For voice, you may need to do this verbally and note the spoken response.
  • If the AI cites sources (like Bing Chat often does), check which websites are being referenced. Are these sources favoring one competitor? Perhaps there’s a particular “Top 10” article that always gets cited, and your competitor is listed there but you aren’t.
  • Do this for multiple competitors and compile the results. You might create a simple spreadsheet with queries vs. whether Brand You, Competitor A, Competitor B, etc., are mentioned or recommended.

Analyze Why Competitors Are Ahead

For the cases where a competitor shows up and you don't, dig into why:

  • Content Presence: Does the competitor simply have more content on that topic or better SEO, causing the AI to find them? For instance, if they have a well-trafficked blog post titled “Best Budget Laptops 2025” and people ask the AI for budget laptop recommendations, the AI could be drawing from that.
  • Influential Citations: Maybe the competitor has been reviewed or mentioned by high-authority sources that the AI trusts (remember those trusted data sources we discussed). If a competitor is consistently recommended, find out if they are featured on influential “best of” lists or forums like Reddit, which might feed the AI’s knowledge.
  • User Sentiment: It’s possible that broad positive sentiment (from reviews, social media, etc.) causes an AI to lean toward suggesting a competitor. For example, if everyone on tech forums praises Competitor B’s customer service, an AI might pick up on that nuance.
  • Direct Integration: Sometimes a competitor might be integrated as a partner or data source in an AI platform. For example, an AI shopping assistant might have direct data feeds from certain brands. While less common, it’s worth investigating partnerships (like if Competitor X has an official Alexa skill, they might be more readily recommended by Alexa).

Plan Your Counter-Moves

Benchmarking is only useful if you act on the insights:

  • Fill Content Gaps: Create or improve content around queries where you were absent. If “how to choose a CRM” triggers competitors in AI answers, ensure you have a comprehensive guide or a high-ranking piece on that topic.
  • Earn Those Mentions: Target the sources that influence AI. If a particular review site or YouTube channel often gets referenced, try to get your product reviewed or listed there. Similarly, encourage happy customers to leave reviews on platforms the AI might be scraping (like popular forums or review aggregators).
  • Leverage Whaily for Tracking: Use tools to continually monitor where you and competitors stand. Whaily, for instance, can help track mentions and NCI scores for both your site and competitor domains. If a competitor’s influence score spikes, that’s a signal they gained new coverage or content (worth investigating).
  • Innovate with AI in Mind: Consider creating an official integration or presence on AI platforms. This could be a branded chatbot, a voice assistant skill, or providing your data to relevant AI services. It’s a more technical approach, but if Competitor A has a chatbot plugin and you don’t, they’re automatically one step ahead when users look for solutions via that channel.

By treating AI recommendation spots as the new battleground, you can stay proactive in outmaneuvering competitors. Regularly updating your competitive analysis (since AI outputs can change as models update or new content appears) will ensure you’re not caught off guard. The goal is to make sure that when an AI is weighing options to recommend, your brand shines as brightly as (or brighter than) any competitor.