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Direct answer

Use Monitor > Competitor Mentions to find brands that appear in your monitored answers, then define biggest with an explicit metric. Confirm that each brand is a relevant alternative before classifying it as DIRECT.

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Data required

  • Completed answers for a fixed prompt and provider scope
  • Detected competitor entities, aliases, and mention occurrences
  • Distinct answered prompts containing each competitor
  • Current SELF, DIRECT, INDIRECT, and ignored relationships
  • Full answer text showing competitive context

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Workflow

  1. In Monitor > Competitor Mentions, set the period, provider, model, country, language, topic, and funnel scope.
  2. Compare both mention occurrences and distinct answered-prompt breadth.
  3. Read representative answers for the leading entities.
  4. Exclude subsidiaries, products, ambiguous names, and unrelated brands that do not represent alternatives.
  5. Classify relevant alternatives as DIRECT before using Cockpit > Compare.
  6. Record the classification date because changing relationships affects Product Mention Rate and Share of Voice denominators.

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Interpretation

The result identifies competitors most present in the selected stored dataset. It does not identify the largest companies or complete market set. Repeated mentions in one answer can raise occurrence volume without broad prompt coverage. Once competitors are classified as DIRECT, Product Share of Voice compares SELF mention occurrences with SELF plus DIRECT occurrences. Product Mention Rate uses answers with at least one SELF or DIRECT mention as its denominator.

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Possible next actions

  • Add a relevant observed brand as DIRECT and monitor it as a reversible hypothesis.
  • Merge aliases before ranking entities.
  • Investigate the topics and providers where a competitor appears broadly.
  • Ignore an entity when answer context shows it is not a competitive alternative.

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Limitations

  • Entity detection can merge or split names.
  • The monitored prompt set determines which competitors can be observed.
  • Provider output varies between runs.
  • Competitor presence does not establish market share, customer preference, or revenue.