How to Find Every Site That Mentions Your Competitors and Skips You
AI Search
Step-by-step
Third-party mentions
Trigger Marketing
The Trigger team
⊹
Picture a dinner party. Your competitors have a seat, a plate and a crowd saying nice things about them. You are standing outside holding a very well-optimized homepage.
Awkward. Let's get you a chair.
AI answers lean on what other websites say about a brand. This post shows you how to find those websites and turn them into a to-do list. We call it a mentions gap list.
Four creators in our notes point at the same thing:
Neil Patel says off-site reviews are the top outside signal, community second, awards last (Oct 8, 2026).
Nathan Gotch says reviews come first (Oct 19, 2026).
Kasra Dash puts third-party coverage and review sites in his top tier (Oct 20, 2026).
Surfer says follow your buyer to Reddit, Trustpilot and review sites (Sept 30, 2026).
Quick words (one line each):
Third-party mention: another website talking about your brand (a review, a list, an article, a directory profile).
Search operator: a special symbol you type into Google to filter results.
Citation (in AI answers): a page an AI tool names as its source.
Step 1: Set your three inputs
Write down:
Your brand name.
Three to five competitors, with their websites.
The one category you want to win.
Gotch's rule is to pick one category. A gap list for "everything" is a gap list for nothing.
Step 2: Run the free Google search (Surfer)
Type this into Google, with the competitor's name in both spots:
competitor -site:competitor.com competitor
The -site: part removes the competitor's own website. What is left is everybody else talking about them. Surfer shows this trick at about 20:00 in the video.
Now add -yourbrand to the end. You now see pages that mention the competitor and do not mention you. That is the gap.
Save each URL and note what kind of page it is.
Step 3: Search each competitor's name alone (Kasra Dash)
Google each competitor's brand name by itself. Write down which other sites and businesses rank underneath it: lists, guest posts, directories. Mark every one where you have nothing. Kasra Dash calls this his competitor brand search trick.
Step 4: Go bigger with AI citations (Gotch)
This version takes more time and gives you more pages. Grab coffee.
Write many questions a buyer would ask in your category.
Run them in each AI tool you care about. Copy out every page the tool cites.
Also copy the Google top 30 for each question.
Remove duplicates.
Gotch says this gives roughly 500 to 1,000 pages.
Step 5: Sort the pile into two buckets
Directory and review profile pages. These need a listing or reviews.
Editorial pages (lists, articles, roundups). These need outreach, one by one.
Step 6: Find the 3 to 5 sites that keep coming back
Look for the same few review and directory sites showing up again and again. Gotch names examples: Yelp (for ChatGPT), Avvo, Angi, Thumbtack, G2, Capterra and Trustpilot. Which ones matter depends on your industry.
His advice: treat each of those profiles like its own mini website and ask for reviews there. Stop mass-building local citations. Kasra Dash adds that Google Business Profile reviews alone are not enough, and that Yelp and directory coverage is part of his top tier.
Step 7: Put it in one sheet
Columns:
URL
Site type (directory, review, editorial)
Who is mentioned
Are you there? (yes / no)
Next action
Owner
You now have a work list. Start with the directory and review sites you found in Step 6, then work down the editorial pages.
Bonus check: search what buyers search about you
Kasra Dash says AI tools run extra searches behind your question, like "[brand] reviews" and "[brand] scam reviews". Search those two phrases for your own brand. Whatever shows up is what the AI reads. Neil Patel adds: track your mentions and the tone of your reviews.
Where the experts split
Awards. Neil Patel found awards last on his list. Kasra Dash rates them A tier. We don't have a tiebreaker, so test it on your own category before spending money.
Reddit. Kasra Dash moved it down his list. Gotch says be present, but go slowly. Nobody says spam it.
Heads-up
Gotch's numbers come from his own tool's data, and Surfer's video is a product video. Treat counts as rough.
Never post fake reviews or pretend to be a customer. Ask real customers.
Do this today
Pick one competitor and one category.
Run competitor -site:competitor.com competitor -yourbrand in Google.
Save the first 20 pages in a sheet with the six columns above.
Circle every review or directory site that shows up twice.
Sources
Surfer Academy ? The 90-Day SEO Plan For A Brand New Website (Google + AI Search) (2026-09-30)
Kasra Dash ? I Ranked 32 AI Search Factors S to F (2026-10-20)
Don't worry if this seems like it's a pain in the ass for someone who doesn't build websites. That's because it is. The good news: just click the link below, pull the trigger, and we'll take care of the rest.
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