Find out why AI recommends your competitors, and what to do about it
When an AI assistant answers a buying question in your category, it names a few brands and leaves the rest out. PuffinScout reads those answers, shows which source put your competitor there, and points at the one page or thread you can act on.
The answer is built from sources, not from who is biggest
An AI assistant does not rank brands the way a results page does. It retrieves a few pages, reads them, and writes back a short answer that names some of what it read. So a competitor gets recommended for one reason more than any other: a page the assistant happened to read named them, and did not name you. That is good news, because a source is a concrete thing you can find and act on, in a way that "be a bigger brand" never is.
Find the source that put your competitor in the answer
For every question where a rival is named and you are not, PuffinScout lists the sources that answer drew from, so the reason stops being a mystery and becomes a short list of pages. Often the same two or three sources carry most of the answers in a category. Once you can see them, the question shifts from "why not me" to "which of these can I earn a place in", which is a question with an answer.
Turn the reason into the next thing you do
Knowing why is only useful if it tells you what to do. PuffinScout pairs each gap with one specific move: a page on your own site to strengthen, or a live Reddit thread where a helpful reply genuinely fits and you post it from your own account. Then it re-reads the same question on your schedule, so you see whether the answer changed after you acted. That before-and-after is the whole point, and it is reported straight, misses included.
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See the gap
The questions where AI names a competitor and leaves you out, listed plainly.
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Find the source
The exact pages and threads that carried the rival into the answer.
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Act, then re-check
Improve the page or post a genuine reply, then read the same answer again to see if it moved.
Common questions
Why does AI name my competitor and not me?
Because the answer is built from a handful of pages the assistant read, and on the questions we checked those pages named the competitor. It is rarely about which brand is bigger. It is about which source the answer leaned on, and whether that source mentioned you at all.
Can you tell me the reason for a specific answer?
We show the evidence, not a motive. For each answer we list the sources it drew from and which brands each one names, so you can see the page that carried your competitor in. We report what we observed and never claim to read a model’s mind.
What do I actually do once I know why?
Each gap is paired with a place to act: a page to improve, or a Reddit thread where a genuine reply fits. You make the change or post the reply yourself, then we re-read the same question so you can see whether the answer moved.
Will fixing the source guarantee AI recommends me?
No. A source changing and an answer changing afterward is an association worth acting on, never a promise. What an answer names is decided by the engine, so we track the before and after honestly rather than guarantee a result.
Find the sources shaping your category
Run one free report and read the Reddit threads shaping your category, each with a suggested reply. No card, no Reddit login.
No sign-in to Reddit. Nothing is published without you. You post every reply yourself.