Similar sites: how to find websites like a competitor

To find similar sites to a competitor, decide first what "similar" means to you. Sites that rank for the same Google keywords come from keyword overlap data, sites that serve the same buyers come from "alternatives to X" searches, review sites and AI assistants, and sites that share links come from the roundups that mention them together. Each method returns a different list, and the right one depends on what you plan to do with it.

What "similar sites" can mean

"Sites like X" has at least three meanings, and most tools pick one without saying which.

Take a project management app as an illustrative example. By keywords, its closest match may be a productivity blog that ranks for "how to run a sprint". By audience, it is the three other apps on every shortlist. By links, it is whoever appears next to it in "best tools for remote teams" posts. Three lists, none of them wrong.

The old shortcut for this was Google's related: operator, which is gone. Our guide to finding competitors covers that and the business, search and AI competitor split for your own site. This post is about the narrower job of starting from one competitor and finding the sites like it.

Find sites like a competitor by shared keywords

Keyword overlap tools compare the Google keywords one domain ranks for with every other domain and list the sites that share the most. Put the competitor's domain in, not yours, and you get the sites fighting for the same searches it is.

Watch the raw shared count. A large general site shares keywords with everyone because it ranks for millions of them. The better measure is overlap as a share of the other site's keywords. A niche blog where a tenth of its keywords match your competitor's is far more similar than an encyclopedia that matches a few hundred out of millions.

Once you have the list, see which keywords bring each site its traffic and pull the ones you are missing.

Search "alternatives to X" and "X vs"

Buyers tell you who is similar every time they search for a replacement. Type these into Google for your competitor's brand.

alternatives to [competitor]
[competitor] alternatives
[competitor] vs
sites like [competitor]
[competitor] competitors

Google's autocomplete on "[competitor] vs" is the fastest list you will get. Each suggestion is a brand people compare directly. Then open the top "alternatives" articles and note which names repeat across three or more.

Discount the vendor-written pages. A company's own "alternatives to X" page lists the rivals it wants to be compared with, and usually puts itself first.

Ask AI assistants for sites like X

AI assistants are good at audience similarity because they learned it from the same comparison articles and forum threads buyers read. Ask in plain language.

What are the main alternatives to [competitor]?
Which sites are similar to [competitor] for small teams?
If I like [competitor], what else should I look at?

Run each prompt in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, and run each more than once. Answers change between sessions, so a brand named in one run and missing in the next is a weak signal. Brands named in every run, across every assistant, are the ones the models treat as true peers.

The sources an answer cites matter as much as the brands. When Perplexity or ChatGPT search links a roundup to justify its list, that roundup is where the similarity comes from. Find the pages AI answers cite for a topic to see those sources across many questions.

Use review sites and co-citation

Review and category sites group businesses the way buyers shop. G2 and Capterra list software by category, Yelp and Google Maps list local businesses by type. The "compare" and "alternatives" sections on a competitor's profile are a ready-made similar sites list.

Co-citation goes one step further. Two sites are co-cited when the same article mentions both. Search for roundups that name your competitor, then list every other brand in them.

"[competitor]" best tools
"[competitor]" "[second competitor]"

The second query is the useful one. Pick two brands you already know are similar and search for pages that mention both. Every third name that keeps appearing is part of the same cluster, and every page that lists them is a place you want to be mentioned. Backlink data shows the same pattern at scale, see how to find a competitor's backlinks.

Find sites similar to a competitor by keyword overlap

Competitor Finder runs the keyword method. Enter a domain, yours or a competitor's, and choose a country. It returns up to 29 other sites that share the most Google keywords with that domain, and for each one the number of shared keywords, its total keyword count, estimated monthly visits and average rank.

It sorts sites by the share of their own keywords that overlap. At 5% or more a site is a close competitor, between 0.5% and 5% it is related, and below that it is a large general site that ranks for everything. Visits and keyword counts are estimates from our keyword data.

It measures shared keywords only. It will not find sites that share an audience or links but not searches, rivals that compete offline or through ads alone, or matches outside the country you pick. A small domain may return no close matches, and the report says so. A run costs 38 credits.