TL;DR — Your competitors’ AI visibility is often powered by third-party sources that validate them but not you. Go to Visibility > Citation Sources and use the competitor filter to surface domains that cite a competitor but not your brand, then check Overview > Compare > Overlap to see which displacement prompts rely on those exact sources. Check Strategy > Backlink Opportunities for impact-scored outreach targets ranked by AI citation frequency. Pro tip: sort backlink opportunities by AI citation frequency rather than traditional domain authority, since a niche publication that AI cites heavily is more valuable for GEO than a high-DA site AI rarely references.
The Question
“Which sources are cited for my competitors but not for me?”AI models cite sources to support the claims and recommendations they make. When a competitor is consistently recommended by ChatGPT or Perplexity, it is often because a cluster of authoritative third-party sources — industry analysts, review platforms, publications, community forums — reference and validate that competitor’s brand. If those same sources do not mention you, you are structurally disadvantaged in AI results regardless of how good your own website content is. Identifying citation source gaps is the foundation of an effective GEO link-building and PR strategy. You might also be wondering:
- “Which specific domains does AI cite when recommending my competitor on a given topic?”
- “Are there industry publications or review sites that cover my competitor but not my brand?”
- “Which of these missing sources would have the highest impact if I got listed on them?”
Where to Go in Qwairy
Start here: Visibility > Citation Sources
Navigate to Visibility > Citation Sources. This view lists every external domain that AI cites in responses related to your monitored prompts.
Focus on the domain frequency table — each row is a source domain, with columns showing how often it is cited across all responses, whether it cites your brand, and whether it cites tracked competitors. Use the competitor filter to show only domains that cite a competitor but not your brand.
Go deeper: Overview > Compare > Overlap
Navigate to Overview > Compare and select the Overlap tab. Choose a specific competitor and run the overlap analysis. The view shows you which prompts mention both your brand and the competitor (co-occurrence), which mention only the competitor, and which mention only your brand.
For prompts where only the competitor appears, inspect the source domains cited in those responses — these are the highest-priority missing citations, because they are directly linked to competitive displacement on specific queries.
Go deeper: Strategy > Backlink Opportunities
Navigate to Strategy > Backlink Opportunities. This page cross-references the citation gap data with domain authority metrics to surface the highest-impact sources you should prioritize. Domains that cite your competitor, have high domain authority, and are frequently cited by AI models represent the intersection of competitive gap and SEO value.
Complete the picture: MCP Integration
Connect the Qwairy MCP server and call
get_source_domains to retrieve the full citation domain list programmatically. Filter by competitor presence vs. your brand presence to export a prioritized outreach list directly into your PR or link-building workflow tool.What to Look For
Citation Sources View
The Citations view gives you a domain-level map of the source ecosystem surrounding your monitored topic area.| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Citation frequency | How many times this domain appears as a source across all monitored AI responses — higher frequency means higher AI reliance on this domain |
| Cites your brand | Whether this domain currently references your brand — if “No,” it is a gap regardless of competitor status |
| Cites competitor | Whether this domain references a tracked competitor — a “Yes” here combined with “No” for your brand is a priority gap |
| Domain type | Review platform, industry publication, analyst report, community forum, etc. — different types require different outreach strategies |
Compare > Overlap Tab
The Overlap tab surfaces citation gaps at the prompt level, making the competitive displacement concrete and queryable.| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Competitor-only prompts | The specific queries where the competitor appears and you do not — review the citations in these responses to find the sources driving the exclusion |
| Source domain list per response | Expanding a competitor-only prompt shows every domain cited in that AI response — each one is a potential gap domain |
| Co-occurrence rate | The proportion of prompts where both brands appear — a low rate combined with a high competitor-only rate indicates significant citation profile divergence |
Backlink Opportunities — Competitive Filter
The Backlink Opportunities view adds domain authority and impact scoring to the raw citation gap data.Pro Tip: Sort the Backlink Opportunities list by “AI citation frequency” rather than by traditional domain authority. A niche industry publication that AI cites frequently is more valuable for your GEO citation profile than a high-DA domain that AI rarely references in your topic area.
Filters That Help
| Filter | How to use it for this question |
|---|---|
| Competitor | Focus on a single competitor’s citation profile to build a targeted outreach list specific to that competitive relationship |
| Provider | Some source domains are predominantly cited by specific AI platforms — filter by provider to match outreach to the platforms where you most need improvement |
| Topic / Tag | Narrow to a specific topic to find the source domains relevant to that subject area — avoids building a generic outreach list |
How to Interpret the Results
Good result
The citation gap between your brand and your primary competitor is limited to 3–5 domains, most of which are niche publications or community forums. Your brand is already cited by the highest-authority domains in your category (major industry publications, top-tier review platforms, well-known analyst firms). The Backlink Opportunities view confirms that the remaining gaps are on domains with moderate AI citation frequency, making them lower priority.Needs attention
The Citations view shows 10 or more high-frequency source domains that cite your competitor but not your brand. Among those domains are tier-1 sources for your industry — analyst reports, major review platforms (G2, Capterra, Gartner Peer Insights), or editorial publications that AI cites consistently and across multiple providers. The Overlap analysis shows that on your most important prompts, the competitor’s citations come from these exact missing domains. This indicates that your citation gap is both broad and strategically significant — not just a long-tail problem.Example
Scenario: You offer a legal tech platform for contract lifecycle management. Your competitor consistently ranks higher than you in Perplexity responses for “best contract management software for law firms.” You want to understand what source domains are driving their visibility advantage.
- Navigate to Visibility > Citation Sources, apply the competitor filter. The table shows that G2, Capterra, Legaltech News, and a publication called “Above the Law” each cite your competitor but not your brand. G2 and Legaltech News are cited in 31% and 24% of relevant AI responses respectively.
- Navigate to Overview > Compare > Overlap, select the competitor. The Overlap tab shows that on 13 of 20 monitored “best contract management” prompts, the competitor appears and you do not. Expanding those responses confirms that G2 and Legaltech News are present as sources in 10 of those 13 cases.
- Open Strategy > Backlink Opportunities. G2 and Legaltech News are flagged as high-priority gaps with high AI citation frequency. You already have a G2 profile but it has only 6 reviews — insufficient for G2 to include you in its curated legal tech comparison content that AI cites. Your immediate action: run a customer review campaign targeting G2 among your law firm clients.
- Use
get_source_domainsvia the MCP server to export the full competitor citation domain list into your CRM for structured outreach tracking.
Go Further
Export competitor-only citation sources
Export the list of domains cited for competitors but not for your brand as CSV for outreach planning
Source gap tracker
Build a source gap tracker in Looker Studio using the source-domains data source to monitor citation asymmetries
Build your outreach list
Read the Backlink Opportunities documentation to turn competitor-cited sources into your outreach targets
Related Questions
Which websites influence AI about my brand?
Map the complete domain ecosystem shaping your AI brand narrative
Backlink opportunities for AI?
Find and prioritize backlink targets that boost AI citation frequency
Pages with most AI citations?
Identify which of your own pages are already strong in the AI citation ecosystem
Where do my brand and a specific competitor overlap?
See the full co-occurrence picture — where you appear together and where you don’t