Competitors

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Purpose

The Competitors page is where you manage how Athena tracks your brand and your competitors in AI search responses. It allows you to add known competitors, review AI-discovered competitor candidates, and configure the specific keywords (identifiers) and URLs (domains) used to detect when a brand is mentioned or cited. Because AI engines often refer to brands by varying names or abbreviations, this page is critical for ensuring accurate Share of Voice tracking. When you make changes to identifiers or competitors, this page also provides the tools to “backfill” those changes, spending credits to reanalyze your historical data so past charts reflect your new tracking rules.

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What’s on the page

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Identifier Suggestions Bar

Appears above the Tracked competitors table if Athena’s AI detects new ways engines are referring to your tracked brands. It displays the suggested keyword, how many responses it was seen in, and offers inline buttons to Dismiss or Add the suggestion. A Review all button opens a detailed modal to bulk-process suggestions.

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Discovered Competitors Table

Found on the “Discovered competitors” tab. Lists brands Athena has noticed in your data that you aren’t tracking yet.

• Competitor: The candidate’s logo, name, and domain. Clicking the row expands it to show “Evidence”—specific snippets and prompts where the brand was mentioned by models like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini.
• Mention %: The share of analyzed responses mentioning this brand.
  • Tooltip: “Percentage of AI responses that mention this competitor”
• Mentions: The raw count of mentions.
  • Tooltip: “Total number of times this competitor was mentioned across all responses”
• Mentioned in: The unique response count.
  • Tooltip: “Unique responses mentioning this competitor out of total analyzed”
• Last seen: The most recent date the brand was mentioned.
• Actions: An Add button to instantly track the candidate.

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Deleted Competitors Table

Found on the “Deleted” tab. Lists previously removed competitors by Name and Website, with a Restore button for each.

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Change Queue Bar

A persistent bar at the bottom of the screen that tracks pending tracking changes (like adding a keyword or renaming a competitor).

• When changes are queued, it summarizes the count (e.g., “3 pending changes”) and offers a Review & backfill button.
• When a backfill is running, it shows a progress bar (e.g., “Reanalyzing X of Y responses”) and a Details button.
• If a backfill fails, it shows “Backfill failed” with Dismiss and Retry buttons.

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What you can do here

• Add a new competitor: Click Add competitor. You can add a single brand, paste a list of names/URLs under the “Multiple” tab, or upload a spreadsheet via the “Upload a CSV or Excel file” section. You can optionally have Athena’s AI generate identifiers for your imports.
• Manage Identifiers: Click the identifiers count on any row. From the dropdown, you can type to Add a new keyword, click an existing one to edit it, or click the X icon to remove it. You can also toggle Match case to enforce exact capitalization.
• Manage Domains: Click the domains count on any row. You can Add a domain (including wildcards like *.example.com), remove one, or hover over a secondary domain and click Make primary to set it as the brand’s main URL.
• Edit a brand’s name: Click the three-dot menu (⋯) on a row and select Edit. For competitors, you have the option to automatically update your identifiers to reflect the new name.
• Delete a competitor: Click the three-dot menu (⋯) and select Delete. You will be asked to confirm: “Are you sure you want to delete {name}? You can restore it later from the deleted competitors section.”
• Bulk Actions: Select multiple checkboxes to reveal the bulk action bar at the bottom. You can Delete, Export (download a CSV of the selected brands), or Reset your selection.
• Restore a competitor: Go to the Deleted tab, click Restore, and confirm the action to bring the brand back into your active tracking.
• Review and Backfill Changes: When you add/remove identifiers or domains, those changes apply to new responses immediately. To apply them to your historical data, click Review & backfill in the bottom bar. In the dialog, you can:
  • Click the Undo arrow icon on any specific change to revert it.
  • Click Undo all to cancel all pending edits.
  • Use the Date range picker to define how far back to reanalyze data. The dialog calculates the credit cost dynamically.
  • Click Start backfill to spend credits and update history, or Skip backfill to clear the queue and keep your changes for future tracking only (spending no credits).
• View Mention Evidence: On the Discovered tab, click a row to reveal snippets. Clicking a specific snippet opens the Responses Drawer, showing the full AI response and citations.

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Data shown

This page displays your own brand configuration alongside the list of competitor brands you have chosen to track. It also analyzes the text of your previously collected AI responses to suggest new competitor candidates (brands frequently mentioned alongside yours) and new identifiers (terms engines frequently use to refer to your tracked brands).

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Common workflows

Adding competitors via CSV

1. Click Add competitor in the top right.
2. In the drawer, select the Multiple tab, then scroll to the “Upload a CSV or Excel file” section.
3. Optionally click Download Template to see the required format (Name, URL(s), Identifiers).
4. Upload your file. Check the box if you want Athena to use AI to generate missing identifiers.
5. Review the parsed companies in the preview, make any necessary edits inline, and click Add N competitors.

Updating a brand’s keywords and backfilling

1. In the Tracked competitors table, click the Identifiers dropdown for a brand.
2. Add a new keyword that an AI engine has been using to refer to them.
3. Notice the bottom Change Queue bar appears, indicating 1 pending change.
4. Click Review & backfill.
5. In the dialog, leave the date range as “All time” (or select a shorter window to save credits).
6. Click Start backfill to reanalyze your historical responses for this new keyword.

Handling AI Identifier Suggestions

1. If Athena detects new aliases for your brands, the Identifier suggestions bar appears at the top of the table.
2. Click Review all to open a detailed dialog.
3. Page through the suggestions for each brand. Click Add for accurate aliases, or Dismiss for irrelevant ones.
4. Alternatively, if all suggestions for a brand are accurate, click Add all N identifiers.
5. Run a backfill from the bottom bar to apply these new aliases historically.

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Empty, loading, and error states

• No website selected: If you haven’t selected a workspace from the main sidebar, the page displays a building icon and “No website selected. Choose a website from the sidebar to see its tracked competitors.”
• Empty tables: If a tab has no data, you will see “No results.”, “No discovered competitors yet”, or “No deleted competitors”.
• Loading: While tables are fetching data, an animated skeleton loader appears.
• Backfill errors: If a backfill job fails, the bottom bar turns red and reads “Backfill failed. Something went wrong while reanalyzing…” with a Retry button to start it again at no extra cost, and a Dismiss button to clear the alert.

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Common support questions

Why isn’t my new keyword showing up in my past charts? When you add a new identifier or domain, it applies to future AI responses automatically. To apply it to past data, you must click “Review & backfill” in the bottom bar and click “Start backfill” to reanalyze your history. What is the difference between an Identifier and a Domain? Identifiers are text keywords used to detect mentions of a brand in the body of an AI response (e.g., “Acme Corporation” or “AcmeCorp”). Domains are URLs used to track citations (e.g., footnoted links back to acme.com). Can I delete my default identifier? No. The default identifiers (derived from the exact brand name and primary domain) are permanent. If the brand name is wrong, you can edit the brand’s name via the row’s action menu, which allows you to seamlessly update the underlying identifiers. Why is the Export button asking me to upgrade? Data exports (downloading CSVs of your competitors) are a premium feature. Customers on the Free plan will be prompted to upgrade when clicking the Export button. How much does a backfill cost? The cost depends on the number of historical responses being reanalyzed. When you open the “Review & backfill” dialog, it will calculate and display the exact credit cost before you confirm the action.