What a competitor is
One sentence is enough: a competitor sells the same thing to the same customer in the same place. A dental clinic in Kadıköy competes with the clinic two streets away, not with a booking app or a hospital chain's national brand. An online sports shop competes with other online sports shops, not with the marketplace it also sells on.
Four boxes for every name in the answer
Only the first box goes into SOV. The other three are still useful, they just answer different questions. A channel asks "is my profile there complete?". A major player asks "which of its branches do I actually meet?". An information source asks "what is the answer built on?".
The same name can sit in two boxes
- A chain is a major player for "best estate agents in Istanbul", but its Kadıköy branch is a direct competitor for "best estate agent in Kadıköy". The question decides.
- Some platforms are both a channel and a rival: a flower marketplace sends you orders and also sells flowers itself. Treat it as a channel unless it wins the same customer on the same question.
- Your own page on a channel is yours. If the answer names your listing on a booking site, the mention is yours, not the platform's.
Why it matters for the number
SOV is your share of mentions within the competitor set. Put two listing sites into that set and your share drops for a reason that has nothing to do with your rivals. Change the set halfway through the month and the trend moves although nothing in the answers did. That is why SOV Tracker hides the week-to-week change after the set changes and shows the reason instead. A stable, confirmed competitor set is what makes week-to-week numbers comparable.
Where you ask matters too
For a local business the competitor set changes with the place in the question. The neighbourhood, the district and the city each bring a different shortlist, so it is worth asking at all three levels. Write the city with the neighbourhood: Göztepe is in Istanbul and also in Izmir, and the engine cannot guess which one you mean. And skip "near me": an engine queried for measurement does not know where your customer is standing.
How SOV Tracker handles it
On the Competitors page, suggestions come from the firms AI actually named in your answers, not from a guess. Chains and large retailers are shown separately, channels have their own list, and nothing enters SOV until you add it. The full definition is in our methodology.
The sorting is a suggestion. You know your market better than any classifier: if a chain branch really takes your customers, add it; if a "competitor" never meets you, leave it out.