Compare their listing against yours, read their service pages, count their reviews and their newest date, and search your own target terms from a signed-out browser. That covers most of what a paid tool would tell you.

What you are actually trying to find out

Competitor research goes wrong when it has no question attached, producing a folder of screenshots nobody acts on.

For a local business the useful questions are short.

Who is appearing for the searches I want, and why plausibly them.

What do they have that I do not.

And what are they doing that I could do this month.

Everything below is aimed at those three, and anything that does not answer one of them is interesting rather than useful.

Start with the searches, not the businesses

The right order, and it is frequently reversed.

Write down the five or six searches you most want to appear for, in the words a customer would use rather than industry terms.

Run each one in a private window, signed out, ideally from a device in the area you care about rather than sitting at your own premises.

Record which businesses appear in the map results and which in the ordinary results, since they are often different sets and the difference is informative.

That list is your actual competition for those searches, which is frequently not the list you would have written from memory.

Compare the listings first

The highest-return comparison and it takes ten minutes.

Put yours in the same table. The gaps are usually obvious and usually free to close, which is the point of doing this first.

Then read their pages properly

Not skimming, and not for design.

What services do they have a dedicated page for, and do you.

Do they publish prices or price ranges, which tells you what the market expects.

What do they say about areas covered, and how specifically.

What evidence do they show: photographs of their own work, named projects, staff, accreditations.

And what questions does their site answer that yours does not, which is frequently the most actionable finding of the whole exercise.

Read three competitors this way and the pattern in what they all cover, and you do not, is your content plan for the next quarter.

The free tools worth using

A few things cost nothing and produce real information.

Your own search console shows which terms already bring people to you and where you sit, which is better data about your position than any external estimate.

Viewing a competitor's page source, or using a browser extension, shows their page titles and descriptions, which tell you what they are targeting.

Their sitemap, usually reachable at a standard address, lists every page they have, which is the fastest way to see the shape of their site.

And a site-restricted search shows roughly how many pages they have indexed, which distinguishes a five-page brochure from a two-hundred-page site.

A worked example

A landscaping business assumed its main competitor was the largest firm in town.

Running six target searches from a signed-out browser showed that firm appearing twice, and a smaller business they had barely noticed appearing in five.

The listing comparison explained it in about ten minutes: the smaller firm had a more specific primary category, a hundred and forty reviews to their thirty-one, photographs added within the last week, and every service listed individually.

Reading their site added one more thing. They had a page on a specific type of work that generated most of the enquiries, and the larger business covered it in a sentence.

The response was a proper page for that service, a photograph routine, and asking every customer for a review.

Nothing about it required a tool, and the whole exercise took an afternoon.

Where paid tools genuinely help

Worth being fair about, because the free approach has limits.

Estimating which terms a competitor ranks for across hundreds of keywords, which you cannot do by hand.

Seeing which sites link to them, which is otherwise close to invisible.

Tracking positions over time rather than at one moment.

Those are real capabilities and they matter more the more competitive the market.

For a local business with three genuine competitors and six target searches, they mostly confirm what an afternoon of looking already told you, and a trial period is usually enough to check.

Watch what they do, not what they say

A discipline that keeps this honest.

A competitor's marketing describes what they want to be known for. Their listing category, their review flow, and which pages they have actually built describe what they are doing.

Where those disagree, the second is the useful information.

Similarly, a competitor doing something is not evidence it works. Plenty of businesses maintain tactics that produce nothing, and copying them reproduces the waste.

The things worth copying are the ones with visible evidence attached: a review count you can see, a page ranking for a term you checked, a photograph routine you can date.

The counter-case

Competitor research is easy to overdo and can become a substitute for the work.

A business that spends a week analysing competitors and no time asking customers for reviews has learned something and improved nothing.

There is also a risk in convergence: copying whatever three competitors do produces a fourth version of the same business, which is a poor position when the customer is choosing between four similar options.

The most useful findings are usually gaps rather than matches, which is a question nobody in your market is answering, or a service everybody mentions and nobody explains.

Do this once or twice a year, act on it, and do not turn it into a monthly report.

The afternoon

  1. Write your six target searches in customer words.
  2. Run them signed out, from the right area.
  3. List who appears, in maps and in ordinary results.
  4. Compare listings in a table, including yours.
  5. Read three competitors' pages properly.
  6. Note what they answer that you do not.
  7. Pick two things and do them this month.

Step seven is the only step that changes anything, and it is the one most competitor research never reaches.

How the pack is decided is covered in the map pack and what gets you into it.

Frequently asked questions

Where should competitor research start?

With the searches, not the businesses. Write your six target searches in customer words, run them signed out from the right area, and see who actually appears.

What is the most useful comparison?

Their listing against yours: primary category, review count and newest date, photograph count and recency, services listed individually, description, and answered questions.

What free tools are worth using?

Your own search console, a competitor's page titles and descriptions, their sitemap for the shape of their site, and a site-restricted search for rough page count.

Do I need a paid tool?

For a local business with three competitors and six target searches, usually not. Paid tools help with keyword estimates at scale, link data, and tracking over time.

Should I copy what competitors do?

Only where there is visible evidence it works, such as a review count or a page ranking for a term you checked. Plenty of businesses maintain tactics producing nothing.

How often should I do this?

Once or twice a year. A business that spends a week analysing competitors and no time asking for reviews has learned something and improved nothing.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Guessing who your competition is?

Run your six target searches signed out from the right area. The list is usually not the one you would have written.

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