← Resources

Playbooks

How to find website competitors

Step-by-step on identifying website competitors with confidence - the tools, the manual checks, and the tiered output you actually use.

Updated

Before you start

  • The website you're researching (your own or a competitor's)
  • Free accounts on Similarweb + Ahrefs / Semrush (free tiers cover most of this)
  • 30-45 minutes for a complete discovery cycle
  • A simple spreadsheet to consolidate findings

The playbook

7 steps

0/7

  1. Start with traffic-overlap on Similarweb

    Similarweb's Competitors tab is the fastest first pass. Paste the URL, scan the top 5-10 results. These are sites whose audience meaningfully overlaps with the target - your starting candidate list. The free tier limits depth but gives you the breadth pass for free.

    Expected outcome

    5-10 traffic-overlap candidates captured in your spreadsheet.

  2. Layer in keyword-overlap from Ahrefs or Semrush

    Different tools surface different competitors because they measure overlap differently. **Ahrefs Site Explorer → Organic competitors** lists sites ranking for the same queries. **Semrush Competitive Research → Organic Competitors** does the same with different weighting. Run both if you have access; either alone is incomplete. Add new names to your candidate list.

    TipSort by 'common keywords' descending, not 'authority'. A small site ranking on 200 of your terms is a sharper competitor than a giant site ranking on 50.

    Expected outcome

    Keyword-overlap competitors merged into your candidate list, deduplicated.

  3. Pull paid-search competitors

    If you have Google Ads access to the target, **Auction Insights** is the ground truth - it shows the domains you actually compete with at auction. If not, **SpyFu → enter URL → Competitors → PPC tab** approximates the same. Paid-search competitors are usually the most operationally aggressive members of the set.

    Expected outcome

    Paid-search competitors added with 'source: ppc-overlap' tag.

  4. Mine the SERP for the target's top 10 commercial keywords

    Take 10 commercial-intent keywords the target ranks for. Search each in incognito Google. Document the top 10 organic results + top 4 paid ads per query. Brands appearing repeatedly across queries (3+ of the 10) are core competitors. One-off appearances are tangential.

    # Example workflow:
# 1. Get top 10 commercial keywords from Ahrefs Top Pages
# 2. Open each in incognito Google
# 3. Tally brand appearances in top 14 results (10 organic + 4 ads)
# 4. Brands at 3+ appearances = core competitors

    Expected outcome

    SERP frequency tally identifying core vs peripheral competitors.

  5. Check 'alternatives to <target>' and review-site mentions

    Google '<target> alternatives' and '<target> vs'. Open G2, Capterra, Reddit threads, and any 'best of' listicles. The brands explicitly compared to the target are the competitive set buyers actually consider. This step finds the recent entrants and niche players the tool-based methods miss.

    Expected outcome

    Mention-graph competitors captured from review sites and listicles.

  6. Verify paid-social activity per competitor

    For each candidate, do a 30-second check in **Facebook Ad Library** and **LinkedIn Ad Library**. Active paid spend = operationally serious. Dormant = either bootstrapped/profitable (rare) or in a slowdown (common). Tier serious operators above dormant ones.

    Expected outcome

    Per-competitor activity flag (active / dormant / unknown).

  7. Synthesize into a tiered output

    Three tiers. **Tier 1 (3-7 brands)**: appears in 3+ discovery methods AND active in paid. Weekly monitoring. **Tier 2 (3-7 brands)**: appears in 2 methods. Quarterly audits. **Tier 3 (everything else)**: 1 method, low priority - Google Alerts only. The tiered output is what your team actually uses; an unstructured list of 20 brands gets ignored.

    Expected outcome

    Final 3-tier competitor set ready for weekly, quarterly, and passive monitoring cadences.

Shuttergen

Discovery finds them. Shuttergen helps you outship them.

Once your competitor set is tiered, the next move is shipping creative that beats theirs. Shuttergen runs a live creative audit on your Tier 1 set and generates variants tuned to outperform.

Run a competitive auditSee a real audit →

Pitfalls

What goes wrong

  • Relying on a single tool

    Each tool measures overlap differently. Similarweb finds traffic overlap, Ahrefs finds keyword overlap, SpyFu finds paid overlap. The intersection is the real set; the union is what you should research.

  • Skipping the SERP mining step

    Tools index slowly. New entrants and niche players show up in manual SERP searches months before they show up in tool databases. Manual mining is non-optional.

  • No tiering on the output

    A 20-brand flat list is intelligence overload. Team doesn't know who to watch weekly vs quarterly vs passively. Tier the list or it won't get used.

  • Quarterly re-discovery skipped

    Competitive sets shift every 6-12 months. Discovery is not one-and-done. Re-run quarterly to catch new entrants and exits.

Limits

When this playbook won't work

  • Sites under 6 months old - tools haven't indexed enough traffic/keyword data
  • Hyper-local single-city service businesses - international tools underindex them
  • Very small TAM B2B - overlap signal is too thin
  • Affiliate-dominated niches where the visible URL isn't the operator

What 'website competitor' actually means in 2026

Definition has gotten messier. A website competitor isn't just 'another company selling the same product.' It's any site competing for the same audience attention, search intent, ad inventory, or buyer consideration set. A SaaS competitor might lose more eyeballs to an unbundled adjacent tool than to a direct competitor. A DTC brand might lose more buyers to a content site running affiliate links than to a head-to-head DTC.

The implication: multi-method discovery is non-optional. Single-method discovery (e.g. 'who else sells my product?') misses 50% of the competitive set. The methods in steps 1-6 above each surface a different slice; the union approximates reality.

The output should drive weekly action, not annual decks. A competitor list that gets refreshed annually and reviewed once a year is a decorative artifact. A tiered list with weekly monitoring on Tier 1 turns competitive intelligence into shipped strategic moves. The discipline is the difference.

Internal: find-competitors, competitive-analysis-software, competitor-monitoring-tools.

Discovery finds them. Shuttergen helps you outship them. Once your competitor set is tiered, the next move is shipping creative that beats theirs. Shuttergen runs a live creative audit on your Tier 1 set and generates variants tuned to outperform.

Run a competitive audit

Free vs paid: when each is the right call

Free is enough for the first discovery cycle. Similarweb free tier + manual SERP mining + ad-library checks find 70-80% of the competitive set. Sufficient for a single-shot research project.

Paid earns its weight when discovery is ongoing. If you're refreshing quarterly, monitoring weekly, and feeding the data into creative/positioning decisions, paid tools (Ahrefs, Semrush, Similarweb Pro) speed up each cycle by 3-5x. The breakeven is usually around 'this is a recurring workflow' rather than 'this is a one-time question.'

The most underused free tool is Google itself. Manual SERP mining and 'alternatives' searches catch recent entrants months before they appear in paid tool databases. For competitive intelligence on emerging categories, manual beats paid every time.

Internal: keyword-monitoring.

FAQ

Frequently asked

What's the fastest way to find website competitors?
Similarweb's Competitors tab on the free tier. Paste the URL, get 5-10 candidates in under a minute. Layer in other methods for completeness.
Are free competitor research tools good enough?
For one-time discovery: yes. Similarweb free + manual SERP mining + ad-library checks cover 70-80% of the competitive set. Paid tools earn their weight only when discovery is ongoing.
How many competitors should I research?
Cast a wide net during discovery (10-20 candidates), then narrow to a tiered output: 3-7 Tier 1 weekly, 3-7 Tier 2 quarterly, rest passive.
Do tools find the same competitors?
No - each tool measures overlap differently (traffic, keyword, paid). Use multiple methods and consolidate. The union is the real competitive set.
How often should I refresh the competitor list?
Full re-discovery quarterly. Monthly check on 'alternatives to <target>' Google searches for new entrants. Sets shift faster than most teams think.
What if my tools find no competitors?
Three usual causes: site is <6 months old (no data yet), niche is too narrow for tool coverage, or you're in an affiliate-dominated category. Fall back to manual SERP mining and review-site research.
What's the difference between SEO competitors and business competitors?
SEO competitors rank for your keywords - they may or may not sell the same thing. Business competitors sell the same thing to the same buyer. Both matter; both deserve tracking.

Related

Keep reading

Resource

Find competitors

Sister keyword variant.

Resource

How to find competitors of a website

Long-form variant of this playbook.

Resource

Competitor monitoring tools

Tools for ongoing monitoring.

Resource

Competitive analysis software

Software roundup.

Research

Anatomy Of Good Meta Ad Library

Apply discovered list to a creative audit.

Discovery finds them. Shuttergen helps you outship them.

Once your competitor set is tiered, the next move is shipping creative that beats theirs. Shuttergen runs a live creative audit on your Tier 1 set and generates variants tuned to outperform.

Run a competitive auditSee a real audit →