Practice
ChatGPT recommends your competitors? Causes and what you can do
1The short answer
When ChatGPT recommends your competitors, it is usually because more clear, easy-to-find information exists about them: sharper service pages, more frequent mentions in comparisons and specialist sources, or a more consistent brand profile. The cause can be narrowed down through a structured analysis of the answers and their sources.
The most common causes
- Your website does not answer the specific question – it describes your services in general terms, but not for the use case being asked about.
- Competitors appear in comparison articles, industry lists or specialist portals; you do not.
- Your company is described inconsistently across the web, for example with outdated services or locations.
- The AI providers' crawlers cannot reach your website or cannot read its content.
- Your brand is new or barely mentioned online, so the model's trained knowledge contains little about you.
How to find the cause
- Collect 20 to 50 questions your customers would actually ask.
- Ask these questions several times in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini and document who gets named.
- Note which sources the systems link to – the same pages often come up again and again.
- Compare how your website and your competitors' websites answer these questions.
- Check whether you appear on those recurring sources at all.
This is exactly the analysis we carry out systematically in the GEO Audit – including a competitor comparison and prioritised actions.
What to do next
- Fill in missing answers: pages for the specific questions and use cases of your customers – see Content for AI Search.
- Build a presence on the recurring sources – see Digital Authority.
- Make your core data consistent – see Entity Optimization.
- Remove technical barriers – see Technical GEO.
Important: changes in AI answers take time, and no agency can guarantee a mention. Progress can be measured, however – see AI Visibility.
Author
Fabian Schnabel · Managing Director, Strategy & Client Services
Positioning, strategy and working directly with management and marketing teams.
