See where AI chooses your competitors instead of you.
Compare how your brand and your competitors appear across buyer questions and AI systems. Find where the gap occurs, inspect the responses behind it, and see what deserves investigation next.
You name the competitors, Herm observes the same question set for all of them. Every comparison resolves to captured responses: read the methodology.
No competitor wins everywhere.
See who owns the category, and where.
No competitor wins everywhere. Share of answer across the whole tracked question set tells you the shape of the category: who is named most often, who is named first, and how far apart the field actually is.
The category is not one competition. It is dozens of buyer questions.
An aggregate share hides the structure. Broken out by topic, the same field resolves into a set of separate contests, most of which have a different winner.
| Topic | Velora | Glowrise | Bloomlab | Peau & Co | 30d |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sensitive skin | — | #1 | #2 | #3 | ▼ −2 |
| Fragrance-free | #1 | #3 | — | #2 | ▲ +14 |
| Vitamin C serums | #3 | #1 | #2 | — | ▲ +4 |
| Rosacea | — | #1 | #3 | #2 | ▼ −6 |
| Sustainability | #1 | #4 | #3 | #2 | ▲ +5 |
| Price / value | #4 | #2 | #1 | #3 | ▼ −3 |
— means the brand is absent from that topic entirely.
A competitive gap is a question about what to change.
Once you can see where a competitor is taking answers you are not in, the next move depends on what the gap resolves to.
When you need to see which sources were cited alongside the answers a competitor appears in.
Open Sources & citations →When the gap resolves to information you have not published, or published badly.
Open Content Suite →When the issue is your own site: what AI systems can reach, render and extract.
Open Site Intelligence →ChatGPT may favour one competitor. Gemini may favour another.
A single aggregate score averages five different competitive environments. Switch the competitor and the shape of the comparison changes with it, which is why the panel compares two brands at a time rather than shading a grid.
Find the questions where you disappear.
Presence is recorded per question, per system, per run. The questions where a competitor is consistently named and you are not are the ones worth reading first.
| Question | Topic | Status | Leader | 30d |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| best vitamin C serum for sensitive skin under £40 | Vitamin C | Named · 3rd | Glowrise | ▲ +4 |
| gentle vitamin C serum for rosacea | Rosacea | Absent | Glowrise | ▼ −6 |
| is Velora Bright Boost C any good? | Brand | Named · 1st | Velora | ▲ +2 |
| fragrance-free skincare brands UK | Fragrance-free | Named · 1st | Velora | ▲ +14 |
| Velora vs Glowrise vitamin C | Comparison | Named · 2nd | Glowrise | ▲ +3 |
| affordable dermatologist-tested serums | Price / value | Absent | Bloomlab | ▼ −3 |
| what to use after retinol irritation | Retinol alt. | Absent | Peau & Co | 0 |
| most sustainable skincare packaging | Sustainability | Named · 1st | Velora | ▲ +5 |
| vitamin C serum that won’t sting | Sensitive skin | Absent | Glowrise | ▼ −2 |
Trace the competitive metric back to the answer.
Every number on this page opens into the captured responses it was counted from: the text as returned, the brands named and the order they appeared in.
“best vitamin C serum for sensitive skin under £40”
See which sources keep appearing around the brands that win.
Where a competitor leads a topic, the same handful of domains usually sits behind the answers. Herm reports which sources were cited, and the patterns associated with visibility. It does not claim a source caused a recommendation.
| Domain | Type | Citations | Brands cited alongside |
|---|---|---|---|
| skincarelab.co.uk never cites Velora | Editorial | 214 | Glowrise, Bloomlab |
| dermreview.com | Review | 168 | Bloomlab, Velora |
| glowrise.com never cites Velora | Competitor owned | 141 | Glowrise |
| r/SkincareAddiction never cites Velora | Community | 126 | Glowrise, Peau & Co |
| boots.com | Retailer | 98 | All six brands |
| which-beauty.co.uk never cites Velora | Editorial | 87 | Glowrise, Nuvéa |
Compare the narratives, not just the mentions.
Being named is not the same as being described well. The recurring claims attached to each brand are what the models actually said about them, read from the observed answers.
“Velora sits at the premium end for the concentration you get.”
“One of the few fragrance-free options that rarely stings.”
“Refill system and recycled glass are ahead of most of the category.”
“Less clinical data behind it than Glowrise or Bloomlab.”
Know where to look next.
A competitive gap is typed by what would actually have to change, and carries the scope, evidence, priority and effort it was ranked on.
Publish a sensitivity and patch-testing guide, then get the tolerance data in front of the two domains that decide this topic.
Add fragrance-free and sensitivity attributes to the retailer feed so retailer pages can state them.
Submit the 2025 tolerance study to skincarelab.co.uk and dermreview.com, both already cited on these answers.
The ingredient tables render client-side, so the pages return no readable content to a crawler.
Competition measured under the same question set.
A comparison only holds if every brand is observed under identical conditions. Change the questions, the market or the period and the ranking changes with them.
All six brands scored on the same 60 buyer questions.
Five systems, same model versions, recorded per run.
UK / EN, no personalisation, no logged-in history.
One run, repeated askings, fixed schedule.
A brand is “named” when the answer names it, not the domain.
Order of mention, recorded only where the answer is ordered.
Three different decisions.
The same comparison answers three questions, for three teams, and each of them reads a different part of it.
The topic matrix tells you where your positioning is landing in answers and where a rival has taken the concern you thought was yours. Narratives show whether being named came with the claim you wanted.
The lost column, ordered by asking volume and filtered to gaps that hold across runs. The opportunity category tells you whether the fix is a page at all, or a feed, a claim or a citation.
One question set per category means the comparison is repeatable across brands and across months, and every number in a client deck opens onto the response it came from.
Common questions
Who chooses the competitors?
You do. Herm then observes the same question set for every named brand, because a comparison only holds if the conditions are identical.
Is this the same as the public Herm Index ranking?
No. The Index puts one shared question set to every brand in a sector, which is what makes its cross-brand ranking legitimate. This compares brands on a question set designed around yours. The two are separate measurements and are not comparable.
Which AI systems are compared?
The fixed five-system panel: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok, at the same model versions, recorded per run.
What counts as being “named”?
A brand is named when the answer names it, not when its domain is cited. Position is recorded only where the answer is actually ordered.
Can a competitive review be repeated month to month?
Yes. One question set per category means the comparison is repeatable across brands and across months, and every number opens onto the response it came from.
See who AI recommends when it doesn’t recommend you.
Name your competitors and Herm observes the same question set for all of them, on the same five-system panel.
Sample figures throughout.