TL;DR — You may dominate awareness queries but disappear at the decision stage where purchases happen. Go to Overview > Compare > By Funnel to see your score vs. competitors at TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU, then open the GEO Matrix with the funnel filter to find topic-provider combinations where the BOFU gap is largest. Check Visibility > Prompts filtered to BOFU stage to see exactly which purchase-intent queries your competitors own. Pro tip: sort BOFU prompts by competitor mention frequency to find the high-stakes queries where even a small improvement in your mention rate can have a disproportionate commercial impact.
The Question
“How do competitors rank vs my brand at each funnel stage?”AI influences different stages of the buyer journey through different types of queries. A user asking “what is account-based marketing?” is at TOFU — they want education. A user asking “best ABM platforms” is at MOFU — they are evaluating options. A user asking “HubSpot vs Demandbase for enterprise ABM” is at BOFU — they are close to a decision. Your brand may be well-represented at one stage but virtually absent at another, while a competitor dominates exactly where the purchase decision is being formed. Understanding where your competitive gaps are by funnel stage lets you allocate content and citation-building efforts to the queries that actually influence buying decisions. You might also be wondering:
- “Am I losing to competitors only at the decision stage, or are there gaps higher in the funnel too?”
- “Which competitors dominate BOFU queries in my category — the ones closest to purchase intent?”
- “Does the competitive picture change significantly between TOFU and MOFU for the same provider?”
Where to Go in Qwairy
Start here: Overview > Compare > By Funnel
Navigate to Overview > Compare, then select the By Funnel tab. Choose your competitors and your analysis period.
The view breaks down visibility scores and share of voice by funnel stage: TOFU (awareness and educational queries), MOFU (comparison and evaluation queries), and BOFU (purchase-intent and decision queries). The funnel breakdown table shows your score and each competitor’s score at each stage — read across each row to find where gaps are largest.
Go deeper: Overview > GEO Matrix
Open Overview > GEO Matrix and apply the Funnel filter to view your performance at each stage. Enable the competitor overlay to see the side-by-side comparison within the matrix. The matrix adds the provider dimension — you can see whether a competitor’s BOFU advantage is broad across all providers or concentrated on one (e.g., Perplexity is often stronger for commercial-intent queries).
Go deeper: Visibility > Prompts
Navigate to Visibility > Prompts and use the Funnel stage column to segment your prompt list. Filter to BOFU prompts and enable the competitors column. For each purchase-intent prompt, you can see exactly which competitors appear alongside you (or instead of you). These are the highest-stakes competitive positions in your monitoring — they are closest to influencing an actual purchase decision.
Complete the picture: Shared Views
Create Shared Views of the By Funnel comparison for different stakeholders: a TOFU/MOFU view for your content team (focused on editorial opportunities) and a BOFU view for your sales and marketing leadership (focused on competitive displacement at the decision stage). Each shared link can have different filters pre-applied so each team sees the data most relevant to their role.
What to Look For
Compare > By Funnel Tab
The By Funnel tab is the primary view for this question. It translates the abstract concept of “funnel stage” into concrete, comparable scores for each brand.| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| TOFU score delta | Whether a competitor outperforms you on awareness queries — a significant gap here means they are building familiarity earlier in the buyer journey |
| MOFU score delta | The evaluation-stage gap — MOFU is where most buyers form their shortlist; a high competitor MOFU score with a low yours is a direct commercial risk |
| BOFU score delta | The decision-stage gap — a competitor consistently appearing on BOFU queries while you do not means AI may be influencing purchase decisions away from your brand |
| Funnel balance | Whether a competitor’s strength is uniform across all stages or concentrated — a brand that dominates MOFU but is weak at TOFU has a different strategic profile than one that leads at every stage |
GEO Matrix — Funnel Filter View
The GEO Matrix with a funnel filter applied gives you topic-level granularity within each funnel stage.| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Red BOFU cells | Topic-funnel combinations where your visibility is critically low — the highest-priority competitive gaps in the matrix |
| Competitor overlay scores | Where the competitor is strong on the same cell — confirms the opportunity is contested and that the topic-stage combination is reachable |
| Provider variation | Whether a competitor’s BOFU advantage appears on all providers or is platform-specific — platform-specific gaps have different fixes |
Prompts View — Funnel Stage Segmentation
The Prompts view gives you prompt-level evidence of where competitive displacement is happening.Pro Tip: Sort the BOFU prompts list by competitor mention frequency to find the purchase-intent queries where competitive density is highest. On these prompts, even a small improvement in your brand’s mention rate can have a disproportionate commercial impact. These are the prompts that most directly justify GEO investment to a CFO or growth lead.
Filters That Help
| Filter | How to use it for this question |
|---|---|
| Funnel stage | Apply the BOFU filter first — BOFU gaps have the most direct commercial consequence and should be addressed before TOFU or MOFU gaps |
| Provider | Some providers are disproportionately used for commercial-intent queries; Perplexity tends to be stronger for research and comparison queries, while ChatGPT and Claude handle a broader range |
| Topic / Tag | Narrow to your core product category to avoid mixing funnel performance across unrelated topic areas |
How to Interpret the Results
Good result
Your brand’s score at TOFU and MOFU is within 10 points of the leading competitor’s score. At BOFU, you are within 15 points — acceptable, as BOFU queries are harder to capture due to their high commercial intent and the tendency of AI to lean toward well-established brands. The Prompts view shows your brand appearing consistently on BOFU queries, even if not always in the top position. The funnel breakdown shows no stage where you are completely absent (score below 10) while a competitor scores above 50.Needs attention
You score above 40 at TOFU but below 20 at MOFU and BOFU — you have awareness-level AI presence but are being cut from the evaluation and decision conversation. Alternatively, you score reasonably at MOFU but a competitor consistently dominates BOFU queries for your core category — your brand is on the shortlist but AI is guiding the final choice elsewhere. A BOFU gap of 30+ points against a primary competitor, sustained over 60 days, represents a meaningful risk to pipeline quality from AI-influenced buyers.Example
Scenario: You run a food delivery app operating in major metropolitan areas. You want to understand whether your competitive disadvantage vs. DoorDash is worse at the awareness stage (TOFU) or at the decision stage (BOFU), and whether the funnel profile differs by AI provider.
- Navigate to Overview > Compare > By Funnel, select DoorDash. The breakdown shows: TOFU — your score 44, DoorDash 59 (gap of 15); MOFU — your score 35, DoorDash 68 (gap of 33); BOFU — your score 18, DoorDash 76 (gap of 58). The BOFU gap is dramatically larger than the TOFU gap. DoorDash is winning decisively at exactly the stage where users choose which app to download or order from.
- Open the GEO Matrix with the funnel filter set to BOFU and the provider columns visible. The BOFU gap vs. DoorDash is present on ChatGPT (your score 15, DoorDash 73) and Perplexity (your score 21, DoorDash 79), but on Claude the gap is smaller (your score 34, DoorDash 52). Claude is a relative strength at BOFU.
- Navigate to Visibility > Prompts, filter to BOFU stage. The competitor column shows DoorDash appearing on 15 of 18 BOFU prompts. You appear on 6 of 18. The 12 BOFU prompts where DoorDash appears and you do not include “best food delivery app with lowest fees,” “DoorDash alternatives for restaurant owners,” and “food delivery apps with fastest delivery times.”
- These three prompts become your immediate content priorities: create landing pages and comparison content specifically addressing delivery fees transparency and restaurant partner benefits, structured with the clear claims and authoritative language that AI cites for BOFU queries.
Go Further
Export funnel-stage competitor data
Export competitor performance broken down by TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU funnel stages as XLSX
Funnel competition heatmap
Build a funnel-stage competition heatmap in Looker Studio using the competitor-metrics data source
GEO competitive strategy playbook
Read the complete GEO Guide for strategies on winning at each stage of the AI-driven purchase funnel
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