Why does ChatGPT recommend my competitor instead of me?
AI engines build answers from the pages they retrieve, so a rival wins when more of those pages name them and not you. No engine publishes how it ranks brands, but you can see which sources it cites. Find the cited pages that mention your competitor and skip you, then earn a place on them or publish a clearer page of your own.
Free to read, no signup. Nova lists the cited sources that skip you and drafts a brief for each.
How engines choose what to show
Straight from the companies' documentation. None of them publishes a brand-ranking method, so the evidence is in the sources.
AI answers link to supporting pages
Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode show links to supporting pages, and may run several related searches to find them. A page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to be linked.
AI features and your websitePerplexity links to the pages it uses
Perplexity says PerplexityBot indexes sites so they can be surfaced and linked in its search results.
Perplexity crawlersClaude can fetch pages when asked
Anthropic says Claude-User fetches pages when someone asks a question that needs the web, and Claude-SearchBot supports search results. Blocking them can reduce your visibility there.
Does Anthropic crawl data from the web?Five steps to close a source gap
Do it by hand with these steps, or hand the whole thing to Nova.
Run the prompts where they win
Ask each engine the prompts where a competitor is recommended, such as "best [category] for [use case]". Save the answers and every cited link.
Nova: runs your tracked prompts across engines and saves the citations.
List the sources they cite
Group the cited pages by domain: review sites, directories, news, blogs, forums. Count how often each appears.
Nova: ranks cited domains by how often engines rely on them.
Find the ones that skip you
Open each source. Mark whether it names your competitor, you, both or neither. The pages that name them and not you are your gaps.
Nova: marks each source as rival-only, you-only, both or neither.
Choose the right move per source
Owned page: improve it. Review or directory: request a listing or update. Article: pitch a factual angle. Forum: reply with a disclosed, helpful answer.
Nova: suggests a move per source and drafts the brief.
Act, then check again
Make the changes, then re-run the same prompts in 30 days and note whether you now appear.
Nova: drafts each action for your approval and re-checks at 30 days.
Short on time? Nova, your AI brand visibility expert, runs this Maneuver on your brand and tracks the result.
Take it to NovaEvery source that skips you, and the move
| Cited source | Type | Names rival | Names you | Move |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [review-site].com/best-[category] | Review site | Yes | No | Request a listing |
| [blog].com/[category]-guide | Article | Yes | No | Pitch a factual angle |
| [forum].com/thread/[id] | Community | Yes | No | Disclosed helpful reply |
Nova then re-runs the prompts at 30 days, so you see which gaps closed and which need another push.
Take this Maneuver into your own AI agent
Get source-gap-recovery.md, a ready-to-use skill file with the prompt run, a source table and a move per source type. Drop it into Claude, Cursor or any agent that reads SKILL.md files.
Skill file for Claude, Cursor and other agents
- A prompt run and citation log
- A rival-only source table
- A move and brief template per source type
Questions, answered.
Relevant reads
All articlesLet Nova find and close your source gaps
Nova opens with this Maneuver loaded. You approve every brief before it ships.