SEO Competitor Analysis: How to Measure the Businesses on Page One

What an SEO competitor analysis answers

Google's own hiring advice expects this. It says "Your SEO should ask questions about what makes your business unique, who your competitors are", among other things [1].

Your search competitors are not always your business rivals. For a given phrase, page one may hold a directory, a national chain or a publisher next to the practice down the street, and the analysis measures whoever is there. Keep three places apart from the start: the map results, the organic results and Google's AI answer. They reward different things, as the weights in Whitespark's 2026 survey of local search experts show [2]:

These are expert-opinion weights from a survey of 47 practitioners, not Google data; Whitespark says none of them has special access to Google's algorithm [2]. The pattern is still useful: a business can lead the map results on the strength of its profile and reviews while its website sits on page three, and the reverse.

Step 1: Build the phrase list (service × modifier × place)

Services come first. Your Business Profile is a good inventory: a profile has one primary category and can add up to nine more, and Google suggests services by business type, noting that a listed service "may be highlighted on your profile" [3] [4]. Then add the modifiers people use. Google says autocomplete predictions "reflect real searches that have been done on Google" and vary with the location a search comes from [5].

Then add places. Keyword Planner's "Nearby" option suggests places near the one you entered, and Google applies the searcher's location even when no place is typed, so a plain "dentist" search is a local search too [6] [7]. That gives you two kinds of phrase: those that name a place, and those that don't but are still judged by location. Measure both.

Treat volume figures with care. Keyword Planner averages searches over 12 months by default, rounds the result and shows historical figures for exact matches only [8]. Close variants share one number: when we checked this very topic on September 27, 2026, "seo competitor analysis", "competitor analysis seo", "seo competitive analysis", "competitive seo analysis", "competitor seo analysis" and "seo competitor research" each returned 1,300 searches a month, one bucket rather than six [9]. In the same request, 158 of 606 phrases came back with no figure at all, so a blank is not a zero [9].

Your own data closes the loop. A verified Business Profile's Performance report lists the search terms people used to find you, and Search Console's queries show what already brings your pages up [11] [12]. Our guide to local SEO keyword research covers this step in depth.

Step 2: Capture each results page from the right location

Google says its systems look at many signals, including "your location and settings" [13]. Search Console adds that your position for a search can differ from its average because of search history and location [14]. A national check is no stand-in for a local one: when we searched "near me seo" US-wide on September 27, 2026, the map results included an agency in France [15].

The type of phrase changes the page. Our 36 national checks of informational phrases on that date each showed an AI Overview, and only one showed map results [15]. Our 12 commercial searches made from Las Vegas the same day were the opposite: map results on 11, an AI Overview on 2 [16]. SISTRIX makes the same point from click data: the search intent behind a phrase sets the layout of the page, and the layout sets how many organic clicks there are to win [17].

Google calls the parts of the page "visual elements": "Visual elements are the building blocks of the Google Search results page that a user can perceive or interact with." [18] Record them per phrase:

A rank tracker or a SERP API set to your city does this at scale; for the Las Vegas checks in this guide we used the DataForSEO SERP API with the location set to the city. Capture AI answers more than once. In SE Ranking's August 2025 study of Google's AI Mode, only 9.2% of URLs matched across three runs of the same searches [19]. Our guide on how to check Google rankings covers the tools.

Step 3: Measure the map pack (categories, reviews, distance)

Google says local results are "mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity", that prominence draws on how many websites link to a business and how many reviews it has, and that complete, accurate profiles are more likely to show [20]. It also says the categories you choose affect your local ranking [21]. Whitespark's experts rank the primary category as the top local pack factor, ahead of the searcher's distance from the business and keywords in the business name [2].

Reviews: count, rating and pace

Measure the pace of reviews, not just the pile. Whitespark's experts list the recency of reviews and a sustained influx of reviews over time, rather than bursts, among the top local pack factors [2]. In Sterling Sky's correlational study of 8,186 businesses in 200 US cities, the reviews gained in the current month mattered more to "near me" rankings than the total [22].

Reviews also decide who gets chosen once a business shows. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, 68% said they would only use a business rated four stars or higher, 47% would not use one with fewer than 20 reviews, and 74% look for reviews written in the last three months [23].

When the review gap is large, close it the honest way: ask real customers, for example with a link or a QR code [24]. Google bans paying or offering incentives for reviews, and asking only happy customers [25].

Distance, hours and names

Distance is the one input you cannot work on, so measure it: Google says that when a customer doesn't share a location, it uses what it knows about where they are [20]. Hours can matter at the margin. Whitespark's experts rank a business being open at the time of the search fifth, and the report warns not to list hours "other than what they actually are" [2].

Google says unnecessary information in a business name "isn't permitted" and could get the profile suspended [26]. Our Google Business Profile optimization guide covers the profile itself.

Step 4: Measure the ranking pages (intent, topics, links)

Start with intent and format. If page one is all service pages, a blog post will struggle; if it is all guides, a thin service page will struggle too. Then the content. Google says the most basic relevance signal is a page containing the words of the search, and that its systems then look for "other relevant content beyond the keyword" [13]. Its helpful-content questions include: "Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?" [27] Its Search Essentials say to place the searched words in prominent places, "such as the title and main heading of a page" [28].

Record word count as a rough proxy only. Google's starter guide says "there's no magical word count target, minimum or maximum" [29]. What matters is what the page covers against the pages beside it.

Links: count referring domains page by page

Links are the classic competitor backlink analysis. Google names other prominent websites linking to a page as one sign of quality [13]. Ahrefs' Keyword Difficulty score is built from the number of referring domains pointing at the top ten organic results for a phrase, on a 0 to 100 scale, and it ignores on-page factors [31]. Semrush's KD% blends median referring domains, median authority scores and features of the results page into bands running from "0-14 = Very easy" to "85-100 = Very hard" [32].

Ahrefs gives the rule of thumb behind matching the leaders, then beating them: to reach the top ten, acquire "as many backlinks as the current top-ranking pages have (if not more)" [33]. It adds that matching the leaders is no promise of the top result, though it calls a top-ten place "a very good chance", and that because its score averages the top ten, it "can sometimes hide specific weaknesses in the search results that you can exploit" [33]. That is why we count links to each ranking URL separately and look for the weakest.

Two notes. Authority scores from tools are not Google's: Google says third-party "reputation" or "authority" scores "don't correspond to any of Google's own signals nor come from Google" [34]. And Google's spam policies list "Buying or selling links for ranking purposes" as link spam [35]. Ahrefs' Link Intersect, for example, lists the sites that link to your competitors but not to you, which is where outreach starts [36]. Our guide to keyword difficulty explains the scores in more detail.

Page experience: measure it, then keep it in proportion

Google's "good" Core Web Vitals thresholds are a Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, an Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and a Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1 [37]. Google says "Core Web Vitals are used by our ranking systems", but also that "Google Search always seeks to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is sub-par" [38]. Record the numbers, and fix a slow page, but don't expect speed alone to beat a more relevant one.

Step 5: Check the AI answer: who is named or cited

Google's own rules are short. "To be eligible to be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet, fulfilling the Search technical requirements. There are no additional technical requirements." [39] It adds that AI Overviews "often don't trigger", and that its AI features can use "query fan-out", issuing related searches across subtopics, which lets them show "a wider and more diverse set of helpful links" than a classic search [39].

So the AI answer is its own competitor set. Studies of how often AI Overview citations also rank in the organic top ten disagree: 16.7% (BrightEdge, September 2025), 76% (Ahrefs, July 2025) and about 38% (Ahrefs, March 2026) [40] [41] [42]. Google's two AI surfaces differ too: Ahrefs found only 13.7% of citations shared between AI Overviews and AI Mode (December 2025) [43].

Record names as well as links. In our US-wide capture for "near me seo", the AI Overview named two of the three businesses in the map results, with their star ratings and review counts, and linked none of them; it is one observation, but it shows why a strong profile can matter here [15].

What seems to feed the AI answer, per the studies:

• Business Profile data. Google says Business Profiles "can help" products and services show in AI responses [44].
• Mentions and citations. In Ahrefs' study of 75K brands (May 2025), brand web mentions correlated with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks [45]. Whitespark's experts put a business's presence on expert-curated "best of" lists first among AI search visibility factors, and a dedicated page for each service second [2].
• Sources the business controls. Yext, which sells listings software, counted 6.8 million AI citations for location searches and found 86% came from sources brands already control, split mainly between websites (44%) and listings (42%) [46].

Two first-party reports help measure this: Search Console's Generative AI performance report, on every site by August 31, 2026, which shows how often your pages appeared in Google's AI features, and Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report, public since February 10, 2026, which shows how often Microsoft's AI answers cite your content and the phrases used to find it [47] [48]. Our AI search optimization guide goes further.

Step 6: Find the gaps (missing, weak, untapped)

Semrush's Keyword Gap tool uses the same three groups, comparing your site with up to five competitors [49]. "Missing" means every competitor you entered ranks and you don't. "Weak" means you rank, but lower than all of them. "Untapped" means at least one competitor ranks and you don't. Ahrefs' Content Gap does the organic version against up to 10 competitors, listing the keywords they rank for and you don't [50].

Apply the same logic in each place, with the weakest page-one business as the bar. This is the method, not a measured result:

A gap list is more useful when it is honest about what you cannot change. You cannot move closer to a searcher; you can add a missing service page, earn a link, fix a category or ask more customers for reviews. Our guide to content gap analysis covers the organic side in detail.

Step 7: Size the work and put it in order

The time estimate is a judgment, so anchor it to what is known. Google says "Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months", and suggests waiting "a few weeks" before judging a change [29]. Ahrefs found that high-volume keywords take longer to rank for than low-volume ones, and that of the new pages in its sample that reached the top ten within a year, 40.82% did so within a month [51]. It suggests updating a page that is still outside the top ten after about six months [51].

Google also changes the ground under the plan. Its core updates come "Several times a year", and it confirmed core updates on March 13, 2025, June 30, 2025, December 11, 2025, March 27, 2026 and May 21, 2026 [52] [53]. A plan with no slack for that is not a plan.

This is how we size a first page guarantee. The written terms measure the share in each of the three places separately, so the plan is sized three times: enough phrases in the map results and in the organic results to reach at least 20% of the list on page one by day 90, 40% by day 180 and 50%+ by the end of the first year, and the same shares in Google's AI answer, counted over the phrases for which Google shows one when we check. The promise is made only after that assessment, and only if you qualify. No public data give odds for such a schedule, so we quote none. Our guide to how an SEO guarantee works shows the full math, and the SEO guarantee explained sets out what we promise.

Tools and their limits: third-party data, not Google's

Google says third-party SEO tools "don't have access to Google's internal ranking data", and its AI guide adds: "No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems." [1] [44] Difficulty scores disagree with each other for the same reason. Ahrefs notes that the tools "all use the same 0-100 scale, but each one calculates it differently", and concedes that a metric that accurately predicts your chances of ranking "doesn't exist" [33].

Share of voice is worth a note. Ahrefs calculates it from the clicks your site receives against all clicks on the tracked keywords, and Semrush's version weighs each keyword's volume and estimated traffic [54] [55]. That makes it a good traffic measure, and a poor way to check a promise about page one, which is a plain count of phrases. Search Console has limits of its own: it records nothing for a results page the user never saw, and counts an AI Overview as a single position shared by all its links [14].

Get the analysis for your own market

To see where your own business stands, start with a free SEO audit. When the numbers support it, the analysis in this guide is what our first page guarantee is sized from: see the SEO guarantee explained. You can see the businesses we have worked for on our client results page.