About the Tool

The Growthack Competitor Coverage & AI Visibility Gap tool traces the chain that builds a brand's presence in AI search: media coverage earns citations on authoritative sites, and those citations are what AI answers draw on. Enter a competitor and a topic, and it shows you three things:

1. Recent coverage: articles about your competitor from the last 90 days, with the outlet, journalist, and date, so you can see which stories and publications are covering your space right now

2. AI citations: the exact sources Google's AI Overview pulls into its answer for your topic, with your competitor flagged if they appear, so you can see whose content is winning AI search visibility

3. Keyword gap: add your own domain and it also shows the topics your competitor ranks for that you don't, scoped to your topic area and ordered by search volume

Everything is pulled live when you run it. If no coverage exists in the last 90 days, the tool automatically widens the search and shows the most recent coverage it can find, clearly labelled.

Use Cases

Story Ideation

See which competitor stories earned coverage recently and use them as jumping-off points for stronger angles of your own.

AI Search Positioning

Find out whose content Google's AI already cites for your target topic, and what it would take to become one of those sources.

Media List Building

The coverage table doubles as a starting media list: outlets and journalists already writing about your space.

Digital PR Planning

Spot the campaigns and announcements winning your competitors links and mentions, and plan activity that can compete.

Content Gap Analysis

Use the keyword gap to find topic areas where a competitor has coverage and rankings that you're missing entirely.

Pitch and Proposal Support

Show a prospect exactly how visible their competitors are in press and AI search as part of a PR or SEO proposal.

How to Check for Competitor Coverage & AI Visibility Gaps

Step 1: Enter a Competitor Domain

Type the competitor's domain into the first field. Just the domain is fine, with no https:// or www.

Step 2: Add Their Brand Name (Recommended)

If the brand is written differently from its domain, add the brand name too. For example, riseatseven.com is written as "Rise at Seven" in the press, and searching the written name catches far more coverage. This step makes the biggest difference for multi-word brand names.

Step 3: Enter Your Topic

Add the topic or keyword area you want ideas in, such as "digital PR" or "email marketing automation". This drives the AI citations section and scopes the keyword gap.

Step 4: Add Your Own Domain (Optional)

Enter your domain to unlock the keyword gap: the topics your competitor ranks for that you don't. Leave it blank to run the tool as a pure coverage and AI visibility check.

Step 5: Review and Act

Click Find opportunities. Work through the three sections: note the outlets and journalists covering your space, check who AI cites for your topic, and pull gap keywords into your content plan.

Additional Notes

• Coverage comes from Google News. It captures press, trade media, and news-style blog coverage, but not every mention on the web (social posts and forums aren't included).

• AI citations depend on Google actually showing an AI Overview for your topic. If it doesn't, the tool says so — and that's useful too, as it means the AI answer for that topic is still up for grabs.

• Results are cached for up to 24 hours, so re-running the same inputs within a day returns the same snapshot instantly.

Tool FAQs

For additional questions or support, please contact [email protected]

How does media coverage help AI search visibility?

AI search engines build their answers from content on authoritative sites. When a brand earns coverage on trusted publications, those articles become potential source material for AI answers, which is why brands with strong digital PR tend to appear more often in AI results.

What does it mean if my competitor is cited in the AI Overview?

It means Google's AI is actively using their content as a source when answering searches on your topic. That's a strong signal their content strategy is working, and a clear target for yours: match or better that content, and earn the authority signals behind it.

Why is the brand name field important?

The tool derives a search term from the domain, so seerinteractive.com becomes "seerinteractive". But journalists write "Seer Interactive" with a space, so the derived term can miss coverage. Adding the written brand name searches for the name as it actually appears in the press.

Why can't I see search volumes for every gap keyword?

The keyword gap only appears when you add your own domain, and it's filtered to keywords related to your topic. Volume data comes from a live keyword index and is shown wherever available.

Is my data saved?

No personal data is stored. The domains and topic you enter are used to fetch live results, and that result may be cached briefly (up to 24 hours) to speed up repeat lookups, but nothing personally identifying is stored or transmitted.