TomHow / Search visibility
Competitor analysis that names the gap, not the competitor
Knowing who ranks above you is not analysis. Knowing which specific pages earn their position, and whether you can realistically take it, is.
Reviewed
The overview
What this work covers.
Competitor analysis compares the pages that appear for your buyer searches, rather than assuming your business rivals are your search rivals. TomHow reviews intent, page content, referring domains and selected AI answers. The output is a prioritised set of page opportunities, with the evidence and limits attached. It is included in the retainer. Tool estimates are distinguished from data measured on your own site.
01 / Who counts as a competitor
Your business rivals and your search rivals are rarely the same list.
The companies you lose deals to and the pages that outrank you often have very little overlap. Search competitors include publishers, directories, comparison sites and tool vendors who will never pitch against you but who own the results your buyers see first.
- Search competitors ranked by overlap on the terms that carry commercial intent
- Business competitors checked separately, so the two lists do not get confused
- Publishers and aggregators occupying the results, and whether they can be displaced
- Which competitors appear in AI answers for buyer prompts, which is a different set again
02 / What gets compared
Page level, not domain level.
Domain-level comparison tells you almost nothing you can act on. The analysis works page by page: what each ranking page covers, how it is structured, what supports it, and what it would take to build something better rather than something similar.
- The exact pages holding position for each target term
- Content depth, structure, and which buyer question each page answers first
- Referring domains supporting those specific pages, not just the domain overall
- Schema, internal linking, and how each page is connected to the rest of the site
- Freshness signals and whether the page is maintained or abandoned
03 / The output
A ranked list of contests, with the losing ones marked.
Not every gap is worth closing. Some terms are held by sites with authority you will not match this year, and chasing them wastes the retainer. The analysis marks those explicitly so effort concentrates where position is genuinely reachable.
- Terms where you already hold a position worth defending or improving
- Terms where a specific, buildable asset would make you competitive
- Terms to concede, with the reason stated
- Prompts where competitors appear in AI answers and you do not
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Before you decide
Straight answers.
Can I buy competitor analysis on its own?
No. It is part of the TomHow retainer. Analysis on its own produces a report; the value comes from the work that follows it.
How many competitors do you analyse?
Enough to cover the results your buyers actually see, usually between five and ten across search and AI answers. A longer list adds pages to the report without adding decisions.
Do you check AI answers as well as Google?
Yes. Buyer prompts are run across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini through official APIs when credentials exist. Google AI Overviews is excluded. The brands each one names are recorded with the date and the exact prompt. AI answers vary between runs, so single results are never treated as proof.
What if the competitors are much bigger?
Then the report says so, and points at the long tail instead. Competing on head terms against a site with far more authority is a slow way to spend a retainer. Specific, lower-competition intent is usually where a smaller site wins first.