Similar websites to a competitor: a founder's market map in one sitting

Finding similar websites to a competitor is one of the cheapest ways a founder can map a market. You already know one rival. Start from its domain and work outward, and within a sitting you have the neighbours: the sites chasing the same searches, the brands buyers put beside it, and the publications that write about the category. That map tells you where to compete and where to stay out.

Why start from a competitor and not from yourself

Early companies rank for little and get mentioned rarely, so a lookup on your own domain often comes back thin. An established rival has years of rankings, reviews and press. Its neighbours are the market you are entering. Run the work on its domain and you borrow its history.

Step 1: pull the search neighbours (about 15 minutes)

Use a keyword overlap lookup on the rival's domain. On seogeoaeo.ai, Competitor Finder takes any public domain and a Google country, and returns up to 30 sites that share the most ranking keywords with it. For each you get shared keywords, the site's own keyword total, estimated monthly visits and average rank.

Read the overlap share before anything else. Sites where at least 5% of their keywords overlap with the rival are marked close competitors. Very large general sites share terms with nearly everyone and are listed apart. Close matches are your real search neighbours.

One run costs 38 credits.

Step 2: pull the buyer neighbours (about 20 minutes)

Search the rival's name with "vs" and "alternatives" and note what Google's autocomplete suggests. Then read independent comparison articles and keep any brand that turns up in three or more. Leave out pages written by vendors, which put themselves first.

Add what your own customers say. Ask the last five who signed up what else they looked at. That list is small but it is the most accurate one you will get.

Step 3: pull the mention neighbours (about 15 minutes)

Pick two brands from steps 1 and 2 that you are sure are alike. Search for pages that mention both, with each name in quotes. Note the publications, newsletters and roundups that cover the category. Those are where you want your own name to appear.

Then ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini which products are like the rival, and ask twice. Brands named every time are the ones AI answers treat as peers.

Step 4: sort into tiers (about 10 minutes)

Put every name into one sheet with three columns: search, buyer, mention. Then sort.

The search-only tier often holds blogs and media sites that sell nothing like you but take the traffic you want. That is useful to know before you hire a writer.

Step 5: go one level deeper on the core rivals

For two or three core rivals, see which searches bring them visitors. Competitor Keywords (35 credits) lists a site's top 100 Google keywords by estimated traffic with volume, difficulty and cost per click. Domain Overview (50 credits) adds link counts and the estimated ad value of a site's Google visits, which is a rough gauge of how much its rankings are worth.

The budget

The Indie plan is $29 a month for 2,000 credits, so one full map uses about a seventh of a month. Each tool shows its price before it runs, and failed runs are refunded. Monthly credits do not roll over, which suits a founder who does this once a quarter.

What the map will not show

Keyword overlap only covers Google search. A rival that sells through a field team or only through paid ads will not appear in step 1, which is why steps 2 and 3 exist. Visit numbers are estimates. And if you later want to track daily rankings, seogeoaeo.ai does not do that; a suite with a rank tracker is the right tool then.

Start with one domain

Pick the rival you lose deals to most often and run its domain through Competitor Finder. The rest of the map grows from that list.