Competitor Analysis

See where competitors are ahead of you, check by check, and what to change on your own site

Competitor Analysis Competitor Analysis shows where the sites you compete with are ahead of yours. QueryCatch checks their pages and your own with the same ten checks, then shows you, check by check, who is ahead and what to change on your site where they are. Overview: the competitors you have saved, each checked against your site. Quick Analysis: any single page of any site, looked at on demand Add a competitor Admins choose Add competitor on the Overview tab and enter the competitor's website address, with a name if you like. QueryCatch starts checking their site straight away. You can save up to 10 competitors. /assets/documentation/competitor-analysis/add-competitor.webp How a check works QueryCatch looks at up to 30 of the competitor's pages: their home page, the pages it links to (usually their menu), then the top-level pages listed in their sitemap.. Your own site is checked the same way, so the two are compared like for like. It is checked when you check a competitor, at most once a day, and that check is used for every competitor. If your site couldn't be checked, it is tried again an hour later at the earliest.. The check runs on QueryCatch's servers, so it carries on if you leave the page. It usually takes a minute or two, and the card shows how far it has got.. QueryCatch follows the competitor's robots.txt: pages it asks automated checkers not to visit are left out, and a site that asks them to stay away entirely, or whose robots.txt can't be read, isn't checked. /assets/documentation/competitor-analysis/checking.webp Once a check has finished, the card shows when it ran, how many pages were checked, and how many of the ten checks you are ahead on, behind on or level on. Choose Open to see the comparison. Check again checks the competitor's site again, once a day. /assets/documentation/competitor-analysis/overview.webp You vs them Open a competitor to see the ten checks side by side, with your figure, theirs, and who is ahead. Where they are ahead, QueryCatch says what to change on your site and which of your pages to start with. Page titles: pages with a title of 30 to 60 characters. Meta descriptions: pages with a description of 70 to 160 characters. Main heading: pages with exactly one main heading (H1). Canonical tags: pages with a canonical tag. Structured data: pages with structured data. Image alt text: images with alt text. Content depth: pages with at least 300 words of main content. Open to search engines: pages not marked noindex. Secure links: pages that load nothing over http://. Server response: the typical time for the server to answer Longer isn't counted as better. A title or description passes when its length is in the range shown, on their site and on yours. Figures within 10 points of each other count as level, and so do server responses within 0.3 seconds or about a quarter of each other. /assets/documentation/competitor-analysis/you-vs-them.webp Below the checks, Structured data they use that you don't lists the kinds of structured data on their pages and none of yours, with a link to make each one in the Schema Markup Generator where there is one. Pages checked Pages checked lists their pages and yours, where each was found and what happened to it. A page that couldn't be checked says why, for example that the site refused automated checks or that the page took too long, and isn't counted in the figures. /assets/documentation/competitor-analysis/pages-checked.webp When a check can't compare Some sites can't be checked. When that happens the card says why instead of showing figures, so you never compare against an error page: The site refused automated checks, or showed a bot check instead of its pages. Its robots.txt asks automated checkers not to visit. It sends visitors to another address: add that address as the competitor instead. It couldn't be reached: check the address, then try again /assets/documentation/competitor-analysis/check-failed.webp At a glance, and the PDF At a glance, below the cards, puts your site and every checked competitor side by side, one row per check. A competitor's figure is green where you're ahead of them and red where they're ahead of you. Choose Download PDF at the top of the page for the same comparison as a PDF, with what to change for each competitor. /assets/documentation/competitor-analysis/at-a-glance.webp Limits Each competitor can be checked once a day. A check that failed can be tried again straight away.. Each organisation can run up to 11 checks a day, counting your own site's.. One competitor is checked at a time in each organisation, and a competitor can't be removed while it is being checked.. Up to 30 pages of each site are checked, and each page for up to 10 seconds.. Your own site needs its website address in Profile settings to be compared. Saved competitors live on the active profile. They do not transfer between profiles, so an agency managing multiple clients will save competitors per-profile. Quick Analysis The fastest way to look at any single page. Paste a URL on the Quick Analysis tab and QueryCatch fetches the page and returns a structured summary, which you can compare with one of your own pages. /assets/documentation/competitor-analysis/quick-analysis.webp Ask your AI assistant If your profile has AI assistant access switched on, an assistant connected to QueryCatch, such as Claude, can read your saved competitors. Ask it "how do we compare with Example Bakehouse?" and it answers from what you see when you open a competitor: who is ahead on each check, the figures for both sites, what to change where they're ahead, and which pages were checked. Assistants read the last check of each site. They never check a site themselves, so choose Check again first when you want fresher figures. They don't read Quick Analysis results. To connect an assistant, see AI Assistants in the documentation. Best practices Save the three to five competitors you most want to outrank, not every site you bump into. Start with the checks they're ahead on: the advice names your pages to fix first. Check again after you've made changes, to see the comparison move. Pair Competitor Analysis with Page Optimisation and the Schema Markup Generator to make the changes it suggests