Every AI answer has a shortlist. Two or three sources get named; everyone else is invisible. So the honest version of "are we visible in AI search?" is not really about you at all — it is about who is standing in your slot.
Competitive Analysis in ApexaRank.ai exists to answer that. It does not ask who you think your competitors are. It looks at who is actually being cited for the questions you are measured on, and works backwards from there.
The answer is usually not the list you would have written down.
Who It Finds, and Why It Surprises You
The analysis runs against your top three competitors by real citation overlap — the domains that keep appearing in answers to your questions. Overlap, not market position, is the selection rule.
That produces a list most teams find uncomfortable at first, because it mixes three different kinds of rival:
THE LIST YOU WROTE
THE LIST AI USES
Step 1 — Run the Analysis
Open Competitive Analysis and you land on the Overview tab. Before any data appears there is a bar showing what the run covers and what it costs — your top three competitors by citation overlap, the credit cost, and your remaining balance.
Press Run Competitor Analysis. Until you do, the page shows an empty state rather than stale numbers, and the Query Gap and Content Gap tabs will tell you to run it here first.
The four tabs narrow from a feeling to a task. Stopping at Overview is the most common way to waste this screen — a ranking tells you how you are doing, not what to do.
Step 2 — The Visibility Ranking
The Overview tab leads with AI Visibility Ranking: you and your competitors ordered by score, each with a bar, your own row marked You. Alongside it sit AI Citations and Key Advantages per competitor.
Read the shape of the bars, not just your position. Three shapes recur:
One long bar, then a cluster
A single dominant source owns the category. Displacing it head-on is expensive; the realistic play is the questions it answers thinly, which is what the Query Gap tab will show you.
Four similar bars
Nobody owns the category yet. This is the best position to be in and the most time-sensitive — modest, consistent work moves you to the front while the field is still level.
You far behind, competitors clustered
Usually structural rather than competitive: something about your site or content is keeping you out of answers generally. Fix that before comparing yourself to anyone.
Key Advantages is worth reading slowly. It is a plain statement of what each competitor is doing that earns citations — and it is frequently something unglamorous, like having a genuine pricing page or an FAQ that answers the question outright.
Step 3 — Platform Comparison
The Platform Comparison tab breaks the same ranking down per assistant — Score Comparison by AI Platform, with your row alongside each competitor and a YOU LEAD marker wherever you are ahead.
This is where a single overall number stops being useful. A competitor five points ahead overall might be forty points ahead on one platform and behind you on the rest.
Losing badly on one platform is a narrower, cheaper problem than losing slightly on all of them.
And the platforms where you lead are not just morale. They tell you which format of content already works for you — reuse that shape on the platforms where you do not.
See Who Is Standing in Your Slot
ApexaRank.ai finds the domains actually competing for your citations, ranks you against them platform by platform, and shows the exact questions where they win.
CHECK YOUR AI VISIBILITYStep 4 — Query Gap Analysis
The Query Gap Analysis tab is where this screen starts producing work. It opens with a Query Gap Summary, then Query-Level Gap Analysis — question by question, whether you are cited and how large the gap is.
Each row is a specific question where a competitor is being named and you are not. That is more actionable than any score, because the demand is proven and the answer is possible — someone is already giving it.
Take three from the top two rows. A short list you finish outperforms a long one you file.
Step 5 — Content Gaps
The last tab, Content Gaps, answers the question the query gaps raise: why are they winning those answers?
Content & Feature Gap Analysis lists each topic or feature a competitor covers and you do not, with an Impact rating. Critical Gaps to Close pulls the highest-impact ones to the top.
Two kinds of item appear here, and they need different responses:
A feature gap you never address is a feature gap the AI describes on your behalf, in a competitor's words.
Turning a Gap Into Work
Everything above collapses into a short sequence:
Pick three query gaps, not thirty
Highest intent first. Write the three exact questions at the top of a document — those sentences are your headings.
Check what already exists
Most gaps map to a page you already have that never answers the question directly. Editing that page is faster than writing a new one and usually works better, because the page already has some authority.
Answer in the first paragraph
The passage that gets cited is the one that stands alone. Lead with the answer, then explain — not the other way round.
Re-run and compare
Competitive position moves on the timescale of published content. Re-run after you or a rival ships something substantial, and check whether the gap you attacked actually closed.
Run It Once, Properly
Check the credit cost, run the analysis from Overview, and let the other three tabs populate before drawing conclusions.
Accept the Competitor List
Read the domains you did not expect as findings, not errors. They are taking real citations.
Note Your Rank, Not Your Score
Being #3 of 4 is a different problem from being #1 with everyone close behind.
Find Your One Weak Platform
A single platform where a rival leads is the narrowest, cheapest fix on the page.
Pick Three Query Gaps
Highest-intent first, not highest-volume. Three you will actually act on beats thirty you will not.
Match Gaps to Existing Pages
Strengthening a page that nearly qualifies beats starting a new one from nothing.
Common Mistakes
Dismissing the competitor list
"That is not a competitor" is technically true and strategically useless. The measurement is citations, and the citation has gone.
Stopping at the ranking
The Overview tab is the least actionable of the four. The instructions live in Query Gaps and Content Gaps.
Copying the leader
Rewriting your page to look like theirs gives an assistant two versions of the same answer and a reason to keep citing the original. Answer something they answer badly instead.
Re-running instead of shipping
Each run costs credits and reports on a landscape that has not changed since yesterday. Change a page first.
Frequently Asked Questions
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