Do-it-yourself game plans · No. 09 / 22
Stage 3: How do you explain competitor visibility gaps?
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Investigate plausible explanations separately. Do not jump from “competitor appears” to “we need more content”.
Use this diagnostic sequence:
| Question | Evidence to inspect | Appropriate next step |
|---|---|---|
| Do we genuinely fit the requested use case? | Approved product facts and actual requirements | Correct positioning or accept legitimate exclusion |
| Is the result recurring? | Repeated answers under comparable conditions | Expand or narrow the investigation |
| Can important pages be accessed and indexed? | Native search tools, crawler policies and logs | Technical ticket |
| Are our buying facts clear and consistent? | Pricing, product, integration, security and support pages | Product-information correction |
| Which sources accompany competitor recommendations? | Exact cited pages and supporting claims | Source-specific investigation |
| Is the answer wrong despite accurate sources? | Answer claim versus source content | Accuracy register and product feedback |
| Did the measurement method change? | Prompt versions, settings, collection route and engine labels | Mark a break or establish a new baseline |
These are diagnostic branches, not a claim that all factors have proven causal effects on recommendations.
How do you build a competitor citation map?
For each captured answer:
- Extract every displayed citation URL.
- Preserve the original URL; also store the resolved destination and a normalised version for grouping.
- Classify the source: vendor-owned, editorial, review platform, community, directory or other.
- Record which brands the page actually discusses.
- Identify the claim the citation appears to support.
- Check whether the accessible page supports that claim.
- Record publication/update dates where available and the date you checked it.
- Mark inaccessible or paywalled material as unverified rather than assuming its contents.
Count a domain once per answer when measuring domain recurrence, while retaining page-level detail. Otherwise, several links to one publisher can overwhelm a frequency table.
Interpretation rule: a source repeatedly cited alongside a competitor is an investigation lead. It is not proof that obtaining a mention on that source will produce the same recommendation.
Which gaps should you fix first?
Use a priority queue rather than a pseudo-precise “AI opportunity value”:
- Urgent: materially false or sensitive product claims.
- Foundational: confirmed access, indexing or factual-consistency problems.
- Commercial: recurring gaps on important buying questions with a plausible, controllable intervention.
- Exploratory: one-off omissions, speculative source opportunities or low-priority questions.
For every item, write the observation, hypothesis, proposed change, responsible owner, acceptance check and recheck date.