TL;DR — AI can elevate a new competitor weeks before it shows up in your traditional market monitoring. Go to Overview > Compare and sort by trend velocity to surface brands growing fastest regardless of absolute share of voice, then scan Visibility > Responses for untracked brand names appearing in recent AI answers. Check Insights > Query Fan-Out for emerging entities entering your topic space. Pro tip: when you spot an emerging competitor, immediately add them to your Qwairy tracking list — even a few weeks of historical trend data is more valuable than waiting until they are dominant to start monitoring.
The Question
“Is a new competitor emerging that I should be aware of?”AI search creates a different kind of competitive signal than traditional SEO. A brand can gain significant AI visibility — and influence buyer decisions — weeks or months before it registers in your organic search rankings or analyst coverage. If you only monitor the competitors you already know, you will miss emerging brands that AI is quietly elevating. Early detection lets you respond while the gap is still small, rather than after a new entrant has established itself as a default recommendation. You might also be wondering:
- “Has a brand I’ve never heard of started appearing frequently in my monitored AI responses?”
- “Which new competitors have seen the fastest growth in AI visibility over the last 60 days?”
- “Is an emerging competitor gaining ground on specific providers or topics before it shows up broadly?”
Where to Go in Qwairy
Start here: Overview > Compare
Navigate to Overview > Compare and sort the competitor table by trend velocity or growth rate rather than overall share of voice. This surfaces brands whose AI presence is growing fastest, even if their absolute mention frequency is still low.
Focus on the evolution chart — any competitor whose trend line shows a sharp upward inflection in the last 30–60 days warrants closer investigation, regardless of their current absolute score.
Go deeper: Visibility > Responses
Navigate to Visibility > Responses (also accessible as Analyzing Answers) and scan recent AI responses for brand names that appear outside your tracked competitor list. The full-text response view lets you read what AI is actually saying, including any brands or products mentioned incidentally.
Set a date filter to “last 30 days” and sort by most recent — new entrants often appear first in a small subset of responses before spreading across your full prompt set.
Go deeper: Insights > Query Fan-Out
Navigate to Insights > Query Fan-Out. This view surfaces emerging query patterns, new terminology, and rising brands that AI is associating with your category. Look for brand names appearing in the “emerging entities” section — these are terms AI is starting to reference more frequently in your monitored topic space.
Complete the picture: Looker Studio + MCP
Connect the Qwairy Looker Studio connector using the Competitors evolution data source to build a rising competitors tracker that flags any brand crossing a visibility threshold (e.g., appearing in 5%+ of responses). For automated alerting, use the Qwairy MCP server and call
get_competitor_evolution to pull trend data into your monitoring workflow and set threshold-based notifications.What to Look For
Compare Page — Evolution Charts and Growth Sorting
The evolution chart in the Compare page is your primary early-warning tool. Most competitive dashboards show current state — the evolution view shows trajectory, which is far more predictive.| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Trend velocity | The rate of change in a competitor’s share of voice — a brand growing from 2% to 8% in 30 days is more significant than a brand stable at 15% |
| Inflection point | A date when a competitor’s trend line sharply changes direction — often correlates with a product launch, major press coverage, or AI model update |
| Absolute share of voice trajectory | Even if a competitor’s current share is low (under 10%), an upward trajectory sustained for 60+ days signals structural growth, not noise |
| New entrant flag | Brands that appear for the first time in the competitor table within the selected period — these are the clearest signal of AI newly recognizing a brand |
Responses View — Full-Text Scanning
Reading actual AI responses lets you detect brands that AI mentions but that are not yet in your tracked competitor list.| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Untracked brand mentions | Brand names that appear in responses but are not in your Qwairy competitor list — candidates to add and begin tracking |
| Context of mention | Whether the new brand is mentioned as a direct alternative, a complementary tool, or a passing reference — direct alternatives are highest priority |
| Provider of origin | Which AI platform first introduced the new mention — early emergence often starts on one platform before spreading |
Query Fan-Out — Emerging Entities
The Query Fan-Out view provides a category-level view of what concepts, brands, and tools AI is increasingly associating with your monitored topic space.Pro Tip: When you identify an emerging competitor through the Responses view or Query Fan-Out, immediately add them to your Qwairy competitor tracking list. Even a few weeks of historical data is more valuable than waiting until they are dominant to start monitoring.
Filters That Help
| Filter | How to use it for this question |
|---|---|
| Period | Use a short window (30 days) sorted by trend velocity to find fast movers; use a longer window (90 days) to confirm sustained growth vs. a one-off spike |
| Provider | New competitors often emerge on specific providers first — filter by provider to detect early-stage emergence on Perplexity or Gemini before it spreads to ChatGPT |
| Topic / Tag | Narrow to specific topic areas where you expect disruption — a new entrant will typically appear in a specific topic cluster before gaining broad visibility |
How to Interpret the Results
Good result
The evolution chart shows no new entrants crossing 5% share of voice in the last 90 days. The Responses view contains no untracked brand names appearing more than 2–3 times. Query Fan-Out shows stable entity associations with no new brands trending up in your topic space. Your established competitor set is stable, and you can focus on relative performance against known competitors rather than detecting new threats.Needs attention
The Compare page evolution chart shows one or more brands with a sharp upward trend over 30+ days, crossing from under 5% to above 10% share of voice. The Responses view surfaces a brand name you don’t recognize appearing in multiple recent responses — particularly if it appears in responses for your most commercially important prompts. Query Fan-Out flags a new brand as an emerging entity in your category. Any of these signals individually warrants adding the brand to your tracking list and investigating their content and citation strategy. Multiple signals at once suggest a new entrant is gaining meaningful AI traction.Example
Scenario: You are an electric vehicle brand competing in the mid-range EV sedan market. You have been tracking Tesla, BYD, and Hyundai Ioniq as your primary competitors. You want to run a monthly check for any new entrants gaining AI traction.
- Navigate to Overview > Compare, sort the competitor table by growth rate for the last 30 days. A brand called “Xiaomi SU7” appears at position 8 with a 410% growth rate — it went from appearing in 1.5% of responses to 7.6% in a single month. You have never tracked them before.
- Navigate to Visibility > Responses, filter to the last 30 days. Search for “Xiaomi SU7” in the response text. You find it appearing in 12 responses, all on Perplexity and Gemini, in the context of “best affordable electric sedans” and “Tesla alternatives under $30k.” The competitor table shows Xiaomi SU7 is not yet appearing on ChatGPT or Claude.
- Navigate to Insights > Query Fan-Out. Xiaomi SU7 is flagged as an emerging entity associated with “affordable EVs” and “tech-company electric cars” in your topic space.
- Add Xiaomi SU7 to your Qwairy competitor list. Over the next 30 days, you will have trend data to determine whether this is a sustained trajectory or a one-time spike. Concurrently, review their content strategy and citation sources — they have 5 major automotive publication features in the last month, which explains the Perplexity and Gemini surge. You flag these publications for your own outreach list.
Go Further
Rising competitors alert dashboard
Build a rising competitors dashboard in Looker Studio to track new entrants gaining share of voice
Automate competitor detection in Claude
Connect the Qwairy MCP server to Claude to automate detection and analysis of emerging competitors
Add new competitors to track
Read the Competitor Mentions documentation to add newly discovered competitors to your tracking list
Related Questions
Who are my biggest competitors in AI search results?
Get the full competitive landscape view before focusing on emerging entrants
How has my visibility changed?
Understand whether an emerging competitor’s growth is correlated with a decline in your own visibility
Campaign impact on AI visibility?
Understand how content campaigns can accelerate AI recognition — for your brand and for competitors
Monitoring the right prompts?
Ensure your prompt set will surface new entrants in adjacent categories before they become a direct threat