Competitors in Radar: How to Read Comparison
On the query card in Radar, there is a button for comparison with competitors. It shows who is in the top for this query and how their pages differ from yours. Let's break down how to read the result and what conclusions can actually be drawn from it.
What the Comparison Shows
- Who is actually in the top for this query — in the specified region, not "overall".
- What their pages are like: type, volume, structure.
- How they relate to your page by visible signs.
This is a snapshot for one query, not a general list of the company's competitors. Your business competitors and competitors in the search results are often different sets of sites, and the latter is more useful.
How to Read the Result
- First, the type of pages. If articles are in the top and you have a service card, the problem is not with the links — see search intent.
- Then completeness. Compare what subtopics are covered by them and are missing from you.
- Then authority. If the gap by domain is huge, a realistic goal is not the first place, but entry into the top 10.
- And only then links. They accelerate, but do not replace the relevance to the query.
Typical Conclusion That Is Drawn Incorrectly
"The competitor has 500 links, so we need 500 links." The number of links is a consequence of the age and activity of the site, not a recipe. It is much more useful to look at the number of referring domains and whether it is growing — and to compare the rate, not the absolute number.
What to Do Next
The comparison is an entry into the solution, not the solution itself. After it, it makes sense to gather a strategy under the budget, where pages are ordered by the ratio of "close to the top / many impressions": budget strategy.
What the Comparison Will Not Show
It will not show how much the competitor invested, how long they have been operating, and what is happening beyond this page. This is a snapshot of the results, not reconnaissance. Therefore, the conclusion "they succeeded — so we can succeed too" does not follow from it: identical actions on sites of different ages yield different results.
How to Use This Regularly
Once a month, open the comparison for two or three main queries and look not at absolute values, but at changes in composition: if new sites have appeared in the top, the intent or format has changed — this is a signal to reconsider the page, not to buy more links.