6 Essential sources for competitor analysis

1. Google

It is an obvious place to start. Many competitive intelligence questions can be answered directly from Google. Search for pricing, product roadmap, announcements, reviews, resellers, job titles; look for web pages but also PDFs and images.

2. Competitor’s website

The competitor’s website is a source of basic information, such as product portfolio, key executives, case studies and partner details, but you should also trawl through the past year of blog entries and check the investor relations page.

3. AI

Ask all the AIs. Grok, Chat, Perplexity. A large part of competitive intelligence is the you-never-knowness of a source. Sure, AI may just summarize what you found on Google, but it usually also delivers new insights.

4. LinkedIn

A premium LinkedIn subscription is worth paying for; trawl through employee profiles, as well as other profiles that mention the competitor (they may be clients, resellers or other relationships). Use LinkedIn to count how many employees work in each division.

5. SEC

For public companies, SEC filings have authoritative information about revenues, investments, acquisitions, customers and partnerships. The company’s international operations may file locally, so also check country registries.

6. Wayback Machine

Looking at past versions of the competitor’s website on archive.org can shed light on changes of direction in strategy, marketing and product development. Previous versions may have since-removed pages with key data on pricing.

Using only the above sources will give you an excellent base for building a competitor profile.