Use Cases: Category & Market Intelligence

Understand the Competitive Landscape in a Category

Use this workflow when you're entering a new category, onboarding a new client, or need a foundational view of who the key players are and how they're competing — across both search and sales.

Steps:

1. Open Category Snapshot and apply your category filter — review the brand share tiles to see who holds the most search visibility and estimated sales share. The organic and sponsored keyword breakdowns show whether category leaders are winning through paid investment, organic strength, or both.
2. Open Search Visibility Tracker filtered to the same category — use this to see the overall keyword landscape: how many keywords are active in the category, how search visibility is distributed, and whether any brands have meaningfully grown or declined their presence over the selected window.
3. Open Category List if you need to confirm the right category node — incorrect category strings are the most common reason reports return incomplete data. Run Category List with an item ID or brand name to confirm the exact full path before running other reports.

What you'll know when you're done: A clear view of who dominates the category, whether leadership is paid or organic in nature, and which brands represent the biggest competitive threats or opportunities.

Track Brand Market Share Trends Over Time

Use this workflow when you need to monitor how competitive positioning is shifting within a category — for ongoing client reporting or to flag when a brand starts gaining or losing meaningful ground.

Steps:

1. Open Category Sales Share and filter to your category — set a meaningful lookback window (at least 13 weeks; longer is better for trend clarity). Review the share trend lines by brand. Focus on directional shifts rather than small fluctuations — this data is modeled and best used to identify meaningful movement, not to track minor week-to-week variance.
2. Cross-reference with Search Visibility Tracker filtered to the same category and brand set — sales share movement often follows or precedes search visibility movement. A brand gaining search visibility but not yet sales share is a leading indicator worth watching.
3. If a specific brand's trend warrants a deeper look, open Competitive Brand Comparison — this gives you a side-by-side view of search visibility, sponsorship activity, and keyword presence across the brands in question.

What you'll know when you're done: A clear, ongoing read on which brands are gaining or losing share in the category, and whether those shifts are being driven by paid, organic, or both.

Identify New Entrants or Challenger Brands Gaining Momentum

Use this workflow when you want to surface emerging competitive threats or identify fast-growing brands worth pursuing as prospects before they've become obvious targets.

Steps:

1. Open Competitive Brand Comparison for your category — sort by change in search visibility vs. prior period to surface brands that have meaningfully grown their keyword presence. Brands with a large positive delta are either ramping paid investment or making gains in organic content.
2. Open Category Sales Share for the same category and period — confirm whether search visibility gains are translating to sales share gains. A brand growing both metrics simultaneously is the clearest signal of real momentum.
3. Open Brand KPIs & Benchmarks for the rising brand — review their percentile ranking on sponsored activity and organic search. A brand in a low sponsorship percentile but rising fast in search visibility may be doing it with content alone — which makes them an interesting BD target or a threat to monitor.

What you'll know when you're done: A ranked view of which brands are genuinely accelerating in the category, with enough signal to decide whether to flag them as a competitive threat or pursue them as a new business opportunity.