Attention competitors: you don’t analyze them, but they surpass you
Who are your three main competitors? You probably already have the answer in mind: the usual three or four companies that sell products similar to yours, perhaps with a slightly different price point or marketing strategy. That’s right. But that’s not the whole picture. Because today, you’re not just competing with those who sell what you sell, and it’s no longer enough to focus solely on your traditional business competitors. Competing means capturing attention, building trust, and being there at the right time—even when the user isn’t ready to buy.
That’s why your real competitors may be completely different from who you think: a magazine, an influencer, a forum, or even Google itself. In addition to the business competitors you already know, there is now a much broader and more insidious category: attention competitors, who steal traffic, trust, and opportunities from your brand — often without you even noticing.
This guide will teach you how to recognize both, but above all, it will provide you with a practical method for finding these “attention thieves” by analyzing the SERP. Because online, even before the sale, the real battle is fought for visibility and user trust. And I’ll show you how to use the right tools to get back in the game… before it’s too late.
The classic model: direct and indirect business competitors
When you think of competition, the first reference is clear: companies that sell something similar to you, to the same audience, with a comparable offering. That’s where you start, and rightly so.
But today, the reality of online competition is deeper and more complex, and the new model does not replace the traditional one, but rather complements and enhances it, projecting it into today’s digital context.
Direct competitors: the battle for the same customer with the same offer
Let’s start with the simplest definition, that of direct competitors.
This is a company that offers a product or service that is almost identical to yours, targeting the exact same market. You find it in the same searches, on the same channels, sometimes with the same keywords.
It is your classic nemesis, your constant yardstick. You have known it forever; it is the most obvious competitor, the protagonist of every traditional market analysis.
Examples are easy to imagine: Nike versus Adidas in the world of sportswear; Coca-Cola versus Pepsi in the carbonated beverage market; Samsung versus Apple in the high-end smartphone segment. In this case, competitive analysis typically focuses on tangible variables such as price, specific product features, customer service quality, and market share.
These are, in theory, the easiest to identify and monitor, and represent the first, indispensable level of any strategic mapping.
To analyze them accurately, you can use SEOZoom tools such as:
- Compare websites, to check for overlap in visibility, traffic, and keywords
- Discover competitors from keyword lists, which helps you find who is targeting the same strategic queries, even if you hadn’t considered them yet.
Indirect competitors: the battle for the same need, with a different offering
Then there are situations where the field widens and thinking becomes more strategic.
An indirect competitor is a company that meets the same fundamental need as your customer, but does so with a different solution or product. The competition shifts from the product to the underlying need.
For the need for “evening entertainment,” a movie theater and a streaming service like Netflix are indirect competitors. For the need to “quench your thirst on a hot day,” mineral water, fruit juice, and iced tea are all indirect competitors. A fitness app can compete with a gym, and a YouTube tutorial with a paid ebook. The customer is the same, but the ways to reach them are different.
Being able to identify these competitors is already a fundamental step forward, because it forces you to think in terms of “solving a problem” rather than simply “selling a product.”
It forces you to ask yourself, “What is the real need that my customer wants to satisfy?”
In SEO, this dynamic emerges when multiple sites rank for the same informational keywords, even though they have different goals in the funnel. And if you haven’t mapped them out, you risk underestimating those who are already taking away your visibility.
The necessary evolution: attention competitors
But today, we need to take another step forward. Competition is no longer limited to those who sell products similar to yours. The real challenge is to gain space in the minds—and over time—of your audience.
It is the paradigm shift that defines modern and digital marketing, particularly on Google’s results page, where competition is not just about who wins the final transaction. It’s for those who answer the question, educate the user, and capture their interest and trust throughout the entire purchase or customer journey. In this scenario, your real opponents are everyone who stands between you and the attention of your potential customer. These are your attention competitors.
Who are they really? Media, blogs, forums, and even Google itself
An attention competitor is any entity—another company, a website, a person, or even a Google feature—that ranks for your target audience’s keywords and search intent, even if it doesn’t sell anything like you.
They are everywhere, and they are often more visible than you are at crucial stages of the decision-making process.
Here’s a profile of your new, and often overlooked, adversaries:
- Media and editorial sites that publish guides and comparisons on topics related to yours. A large technology portal that publishes an article on “the best laptops for students” is a powerful attention competitor for brands such as Dell, HP, or Apple. It captures users during the information and comparison phase, heavily influencing their final choice.
- Niche blogs, content creators, and influencers who speak to the same audience with similar content but a more personal tone. A blogger specializing in personal finance who writes an in-depth post on “how to invest your first $1,000” is a competitor for attention for any bank, investment app, or financial advisor. They build trust, an asset that banks struggle to obtain.
- Forums and communities (Reddit, Quora, etc.) where people exchange advice and real solutions. These are places where real users discuss their real problems. A forum thread titled “What CRM software do you recommend for a small agency?” is a formidable competitor for Hubspot, Salesforce, or any other CRM provider.
- YouTube, TikTok, and other video platforms that explain the same things you do, but in a different format. For all queries that start with “how to,” a video tutorial is often the preferred answer for the user (and Google). A videomaker explaining “how to install a DIY irrigation system” is a competitor for attention for any company that sells and installs such systems.
- Google with its SERP features. Your biggest competitor for attention today may be Google itself. AI Overview, “People also asked” boxes (PAA), Featured Snippets, and Knowledge Panels are all features designed to provide a direct answer in SERPs, with the goal of satisfying the user without them necessarily having to click on an organic result—taking away space and traffic even from well-ranked sites.
Why are they dangerous? They intercept intent (and trust) before you do
The real strategic threat posed by attention competitors lies in their positioning within the conversion funnel.
In a nutshell, they get there before you do. They step in when the user has not yet decided what to search for or buy, and they manage to build trust, influence choices, and shape opinion.
More specifically, they operate and dominate the upper and middle stages of the journey, those of awareness and consideration. They capture the user when they are still defining their problem (“my garden plants are always dying”), looking for generic solutions (“best watering methods”) or comparing different approaches (“drip irrigation vs. sprinklers”). If a potential customer learns to trust the advice of a gardening blog or a YouTube tutorial, their final purchasing decision (“I’ll buy the drip kit from brand X”) will already be heavily influenced before they even visit your e-commerce site.
And if a piece of content gains visibility, clicks, shares, and dwell time — then it’s winning. It’s taking attention away from you. These competitors are winning the most important battle: the battle for trust, which is the essential prelude to the battle for the wallet.
How to find your attention competitors: a practical guide
While identifying business competitors is a relatively simple exercise, finding attention competitors requires a change of mindset and the right tools. You need to stop asking yourself “who sells what I sell?” and start asking yourself the fundamental question of the search era, the question that drives every successful SEO strategy: “Who ranks for the keywords that define my audience’s needs and questions?”
Map search intent, not just products
The first, crucial step is an exercise in empathy and strategy. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer and map out all the questions, problems, doubts, and curiosities they might have at every stage of their buying journey. Try to retrace their navigation, asking yourself what they type when they start looking for information. What kind of content do they consult before considering a purchase? What alternatives do they evaluate?
A good model to follow is:
- Awareness stage: the user has a problem but doesn’t know the solutions. Their queries will be informative. Example: “Why aren’t my social media campaigns converting?”
- Evaluation stage: the user knows the possible solutions and is comparing them. Their queries will be comparative or commercial. Example: “Is it better to use a marketing agency or a social media management tool?” “Reviews of Hootsuite vs. Buffer”.
- Decision stage: the user has chosen a solution and is looking for the best provider. Their queries will be transactional. Example: “SEOZoom subscription prices,” “discount code for [competitor name].”
To intercept these stages, you can use SEOZoom in a targeted way—without just checking commercial keywords!
Question Explorer shows you the questions related to a keyword and how they turn into real queries, while Suggest Article Keywords helps you explore related topics, which is useful for understanding what content others are already covering.
More generally, the new SEOZoom offers you at least three features for monitoring competitors in a concrete way:
- Monitor Social Profiles helps you see who is talking to your audience outside of Google—it lets you perform a social competitor analysis
- ADS Insight analyzes the advertising strategies of brands active on the same queries
- AI Overview shows you if Google is responding with AI to searches that interest you, and who is cited as an authoritative source.
Use SERP as your battlefield
Once you have a solid list of keywords and questions for each stage of the funnel, the next step is to use Google as your primary intelligence tool.
Search for those queries and look at SERP with fresh eyes. Don’t just focus on the domains of brands you recognize. Write down everything you see: which online magazines appear? Which personal blogs?
Are there YouTube videos? Forum threads? Who occupies the featured snippet? What questions appear in the PAA boxes?
You can also use AI Engine, which simulates an AI engine and tells you in advance if your content is competitive with what’s already published. This allows you to understand who is speaking best to your audience — and what’s missing from your content to be truly relevant.
By putting all this data together, you’ll get a map that’s no longer just a list of 3-5 companies, but a rich and complex ecosystem of entities competing for your target audience’s attention. That’s the true representation of your competitive landscape.
Find the gaps: your real opportunity
But wait a minute. You don’t have to beat everyone. Sometimes it’s enough to intercept what others are overlooking.
SEOZoom helps you here too, with tools designed to find uncovered areas:
- Opportunity Finder identifies keywords that are poorly or not at all covered by your direct competitors.
- Content Gap shows you what your competitors are picking up on — and you’re not. Also in AI Overview.
These are the gray areas where you can build better, more useful, and more targeted content. Often, these are also the areas where the difference between being ignored or noticed is made.
Competing (really) means understanding who you’re up against
The lesson is simple: if you just look at who’s selling the same products as you, you’re only seeing part of the picture. Today, you’re competing with those who occupy the SERPs and social media feeds, those who tell the best stories, those who build trust before you do.
Competition is about content, intent, and attention. And often, it’s not the best product that wins, but the one that manages to intercept the right questions at the right time. Your opponents are much more numerous, diverse, and elusive than you think—you’re competing with every single piece of content that answers your customer’s questions and needs.
This requires a new competitive map. And you need tools that help you see it clearly.
SEOZoom gives you everything you need: from organic visibility to social media, from content to competitors mentioned by Google in AI Overview. The ultimate goal is to become the most comprehensive and reliable source of information yourself, not just the final point of sale.
Understanding them is the first step to getting them to choose you again.
FAQ – Recognizing and analyzing competitors today
Closing the circle brings us back to where we started, but with a whole new awareness.
And to clarify things even further, here are some direct questions that can help you pin down the main concepts
- Who are your competitors to watch?
They are websites, creators, or content that target the same audience as you and rank for the same keywords, even though they do not sell the same product. They compete for visibility and trust, not just sales.
- How can you distinguish between a direct and indirect competitor?
A direct competitor sells the same product or service to the same target audience. An indirect competitor satisfies the same need with a different product or service.
- Why is it important to analyze competitors in SERPs?
Because in SERPs, you are competing for attention. Those who rank at the top influence the user’s choice even before they arrive on your site.
- What tools can I use to find my real competitors?
You can use tools such as SEOZoom to find out who ranks for your keywords, who is active on social media, who is publishing active ads, and who is mentioned by Google in AI Overview.
- Can Google be considered a competitor?
Yes. With featured snippets, PAA boxes, AI Overview, and zero-click answers, Google responds directly to user searches, reducing traffic to websites.
