Type a commercial question into Perplexity “best project management tool for remote teams,” “top GEO company in Italy,” “which CRM should a startup use” and you’ll notice something search engines never used to do: it gives you a confident, synthesized answer, usually naming two or three brands, sometimes just one.
If your competitors are the ones consistently showing up in that answer and you’re not you’re not just losing a search result. You’re losing the actual recommendation at the exact moment someone is deciding who to trust.
The good news: this isn’t random, and it isn’t permanent. Perplexity builds its answers from real, retrievable sources, which means brand dominance in its results is earnable and just as importantly, contestable. Here’s how to start taking that space back.
Why competitors dominate perplexity in the first place
Before fixing the problem, it helps to understand why it’s happening. Perplexity (like other AI answer engines) doesn’t rank pages the way Google does. It retrieves and synthesizes information from sources it considers relevant, current, and citable. Competitors usually dominate for a few concrete reasons:
- They’re cited more often = their content appears across more of the sources Perplexity pulls from (review sites, comparison articles, their own well-structured pages).
- Their content is easier to extract facts from = clear, direct statements get quoted and summarized more reliably than vague marketing copy.
- They’re mentioned more consistently across the web = third-party sites, forums, and review platforms repeat the same facts about them, reinforcing their presence.
- They’re simply better represented in the specific niche being asked about = a competitor might dominate “best GEO company for startups” while barely appearing for “top GEO company in Italy,” because their content strategy targets one segment more directly.
None of these are permanent advantages. They’re the result of deliberate (or accidental) content and citation patterns which means they can be matched, and in some cases, outpaced.
Step 1: Find out exactly where you’re losing
You can’t fix a gap you haven’t measured. Start by testing the actual prompts your potential customers are likely to ask Perplexity not generic brand-name searches, but real buying-intent questions like “best GEO company for startups“ or “top GEO company in Italy.”
For each prompt, note:
- Which competitors are mentioned
- In what order or level of detail
- Whether you’re mentioned at all and if so, how prominently
This is exactly the kind of structured tracking that Answer Engine Insights and Prompt Management are built for inside Lunocode turning “I think competitors are beating us on AI” into an actual, measurable dataset instead of a hunch.
Step 2: Identify what they’re being cited for
Once you know which competitors are dominating, dig into why. Look at:
- What pages of theirs tend to get referenced (comparison articles, review roundups, their own product pages)
- What specific claims or facts about them keep showing up in AI answers
- Whether they’re winning through their own website, or through third-party sources talking about them
This step matters because the fix is different depending on the cause. If a competitor dominates because of strong third-party reviews, your strategy needs to focus on earning similar reviews and mentions. If they dominate because their own website states facts clearly and yours doesn’t, the fix is much more direct rewrite your content.
Step 3: Make your own content more citable
This is usually the highest-leverage fix, and it’s also the one most brands skip. AI models favor content that’s easy to extract clean facts from. If your pricing, features, and differentiators are buried in persuasive marketing language instead of stated plainly, you’re making it harder for Perplexity to cite you even if your product is genuinely competitive.
Practical fixes:
- State facts directly: “[Product] costs $X/month and includes Y.” instead of vague value language
- Build a clear, well-structured FAQ section answering the exact questions people are likely to ask AI
- Use schema markup so structured facts about your business are machine-readable
- Keep pricing, features, and positioning consistent across your website and any third-party listings
This is the same discipline covered under AEO Readiness and it’s often the single fastest way to close a citation gap with a dominant competitor.
Step 4: Build presence in the sources AI actually trusts
Perplexity doesn’t just cite your website it frequently pulls from comparison articles, review platforms, industry blogs, and forums. If a competitor is dominating because they’re mentioned across a dozen third-party sources and you’re mentioned on none, your own website improvements will only go so far.
Practical fixes:
- Identify the specific third-party sites showing up as sources in your competitor’s answers
- Pursue inclusion in relevant comparison articles, “best of” roundups, and industry directories
- Encourage genuine customer reviews on platforms AI models frequently cite
- Contribute to or get featured in industry publications that already have strong AI citation patterns
This is where checking a panel like “Sources AI Trusts” becomes genuinely useful it shows you, explicitly, which domains are being cited instead of yours for a given topic, giving you a concrete outreach and content target list rather than a guess.
Step 5: Target the specific prompts you’re losing not just broad ones
One mistake brands make is optimizing for one broad, generic query (“best [category]”) while ignoring the dozens of specific variations real users actually type. A competitor might dominate the broad query while leaving plenty of room open on more specific ones segment-based, geography–based, or comparison-based prompts.
Rather than trying to out-compete a rival head-on for every query, look for where the competitive field is thinner: geography-specific prompts, niche use cases, or comparison prompts where you have a genuine advantage worth highlighting.
Step 6: Track, don’t guess
Perplexity’s answers shift as new content gets published, cited, and indexed. A competitor’s dominance today isn’t guaranteed to hold but you’ll only know if your changes are working by re-testing the same prompts over time and watching your share of voice and rank distribution move.
This is the difference between a one-time fix and an actual ongoing strategy: consistent prompt testing, tracked over weeks and months, so you can see whether your content and citation efforts are actually closing the gap not just hoping they are.
Final thought
Competitor dominance on Perplexity isn’t a fixed state it’s usually the result of better citations, clearer content, and stronger third-party presence, all of which are learnable and repeatable advantages, not secrets. The brands that reclaim their share of voice are the ones that stop guessing, start measuring exactly where they’re losing, and systematically close the gap: clearer content, stronger citations, and consistent tracking over time.
Want to see exactly which competitors are dominating your Perplexity and ChatGPT answers and why? Track your share of voice and competitive gaps with Lunocode and start closing them.
SEO & GEO specialist.
