Organic Competitors flips the usual research question around. Instead of "what keywords does this site rank for?", it answers "who else ranks for the same keywords as me?". You give it one target domain and ClearSERP returns a ranked list of competitor domains, sorted by how much keyword overlap and shared search-traffic they have with your target, so you can see exactly who you're really up against in the SERPs.
What is Organic Competitors?
Research Mode Overview
Organic Competitors returns competitor domains that share organic keyword rankings with your target. Every row represents a different website you compete with, quantified by how many shared keywords you have, how strong their position is on those keywords, how much traffic they capture, and how similar their overall keyword footprint is to yours.
What You Get
- • Up to 10,000 competitor domains
- • Intersecting Keywords (shared keyword count)
- • Average ranking position on shared keywords
- • Intersecting Traffic (competitor's traffic from shared keywords)
- • Total Traffic (competitor's whole-domain organic traffic)
- • Similarity (intersecting ÷ total traffic %)
- • Optional Domain Score (0–100 authority)
What You Don't Get
- • The list of shared keywords themselves (this view summarizes them per competitor)
- • Per-keyword positions or SERP data
- • SERP weakness detection
- • Page-level URLs
- • Search volume / CPC / difficulty (those are keyword metrics)
How Organic Competitors Works
Discovery Process
Target Keyword Set
ClearSERP collects every keyword your target domain ranks for within the Max Rank Position you set (default top 100). This becomes the reference set used to find competitors.
Cross-Domain Matching
Every other domain that ranks for any of those keywords is grouped, counted, and aggregated, producing one row per competitor domain with the size of the overlap and the traffic it earns from it.
Optional Domain Score Lookup
If Include Domain Score is checked, ClearSERP looks up an authority score (0–100, the same scale used by Analysis) for every returned competitor so you can see how strong each competitor's overall domain is. This doubles the credit cost of the run.
Domain Input Requirements
Required Input
Organic Competitors only needs one input: the target domain you want to find competitors for. Protocols andwww. are stripped automatically.
Target Domain:
example.com→ Analyzes the full root domainwww.example.com→ Same as above (www handled automatically)https://example.com→ Protocol automatically removed
Pre-Filter Options
Advanced Settings
Use the Advanced panel to shape the competitor list before it's fetched. These four options change which domains qualify and what data is collected.
Max Rank Position
Only count keywords where your target ranks within the top N positions. Default is 100.
Strategy: Drop it to 10 or 20 to find competitors that overlap with your strongest rankings, i.e., the keywords that actually drive traffic for you today. Keep it at 100 to see your full competitive landscape, including aspirational keywords.
Exclude Top Domains
On by default. Removes giant generic domains (Google, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Amazon, Reddit, etc.) that show up in almost every SERP and aren't really your competition. The exact list is editable below the checkbox; add or remove entries to taste.
Why on by default: Without this filter the top of every competitor list is the same handful of mega-sites and your actual niche competitors get pushed down. Uncheck only if you want to see the unfiltered landscape.
Intersecting Domains (optional)
Only return competitors that also rank for keywords shared with the domains you list here. Useful for narrowing the list to direct rivals in a specific sub-niche.
Example: Targeting your-saas.com? Add competitor-a.com andcompetitor-b.com to surface only sites that also compete with both of them, i.e., other players in the same triangle.
Include Domain Score
Adds a Domain Score column (0–100 authority, same scale as Analysis) by looking up an authority score for every returned competitor. This doubles the credit cost of the run.
When to enable: When you want to immediately spot competitors at your authority level vs. ones much stronger or weaker. Skip it if you already know who's strong and just need the keyword overlap data.
Results Data Fields
Columns Explained
Every row is one competitor domain. Numbers are whole numbers except Avg Position (one decimal).
Domain
The competitor's root domain. Click the external-link icon to open it in a new tab.
Domain Score (optional)
0–100 authority score with the same colored pill used by the difficulty column in Analysis. Only present when Include Domain Score is enabled.
Avg Position
The competitor's average SERP position across the shared keywords. Lower is stronger.
Intersecting Keywords
How many keywords this competitor and your target both rank for. The bigger the number, the more they overlap with you.
Intersecting Traffic
Estimated monthly traffic the competitor earns from just the shared keywords. Shows how valuable the overlap is to them.
Total Traffic
The competitor's estimated organic traffic across their entire domain. Useful for sizing the competitor relative to you.
Similarity
Intersecting Traffic ÷ Total Traffic, shown as 0–100%. Higher = a more similar competitor (most of their traffic comes from keywords they share with you). Low Similarity means the overlap exists but their overall business is mostly somewhere else.
Result Limits and Credit Costs
Available Result Limits
Domain Score doubles the cost. Enabling Include Domain Score doubles the credit cost of the run (e.g., 1,000 competitors with scores = 20 credits, 10,000 = 200 credits).
Credit Refunds: If fewer competitors are returned than your requested limit, you'll automatically receive a proportional refund, doubled when Domain Score was enabled.
Sorting Options
Column Sorting
Every column header is sortable; click once for ascending, click again for descending. The default sort is Intersecting Keywords (most overlap first), which puts your most relevant competitors at the top.
Sortable Columns:
- • Domain: Alphabetical A–Z or Z–A
- • Domain Score: Highest or lowest authority first (when enabled)
- • Avg Position: Strongest or weakest average rank first
- • Intersecting Keywords: Most overlap first (default)
- • Intersecting Traffic: Highest shared-keyword traffic first
- • Total Traffic: Largest competitor first
- • Similarity: Most similar competitor first
Post-Search Filtering
Refining the Results
Click Show Filters in the results toolbar to narrow the list without re-running the search. All filters are client-side and apply instantly.
Domain Filter
Contains / Doesn't Contain text matching against the domain name. Useful for narrowing to a sub-niche (e.g., contains seo) or excluding noise (doesn't contain directory).
Numeric Range Filters
From / To ranges available on every numeric column:
- • Domain Score (when enabled)
- • Avg Position
- • Intersecting Keywords
- • Intersecting Traffic
- • Total Traffic
- • Similarity (%)
Strategic Use Cases
Find Your Real Competitors
The names your team thinks are competitors and the sites Google actually serves alongside you are often different. Sort by Intersecting Keywords descending and the top of the list is your real SERP-competition set.
Action: Take the top 5–10 unfamiliar domains, plug each into Ranked Keywords or Keyword Gap to study what they're doing differently.
Size Up the Field
Enable Include Domain Score and sort by Domain Score ascending to find competitors at or below your authority level: the realistic targets you can actually beat in the SERPs in the short term.
Look for:
- • Domain Score within ±10 of yours
- • High Intersecting Keywords
- • High Similarity (you're truly playing the same game)
Why it works:
- • Beats picking giants you can't realistically catch
- • Beats picking long-tail sites you already outrank
- • Focuses content effort where wins are achievable
Discover Adjacent Niches
Sort by Similarity ascending (with Intersecting Keywords filtered to a meaningful minimum) and you'll surface large sites with only a small slice of overlap with you, i.e., adjacent industries that are already getting traffic from your keywords. Often a content-marketing goldmine.
Example: A B2B SaaS targeting "project management" finds a productivity blog and a career-coaching site both overlapping on a few hundred keywords: opportunities to guest-post, partner, or simply target the same keywords with better intent-matched content.
Best Practices
Get Better Results
Setup:
- • Keep Exclude Top Domains on unless you specifically want them
- • Add industry-specific noise (e.g., job boards, aggregators) to the exclude list
- • Start with limit 500–1,000 to scan; go higher only if needed
- • Drop Max Rank Position to 10–20 to focus on your strongest pages
Reading Results:
- • Sort by Intersecting Keywords first to find your true rivals
- • Then re-sort by Similarity to find niche-matched competitors
- • Use Domain Score (when enabled) to filter to realistic targets
- • Click the external-link icon to open each competitor
- • Treating the Total Traffic column as a "who's winning" leaderboard (giants always win there)
- • Ignoring Similarity and chasing the biggest site by total traffic
- • Enabling Domain Score on a 10,000-row run before you know if you need it (doubles the cost)
- • Removing the top-domain exclude list without adding niche-specific noise back
Research History & Data Preservation
Background Processing
Every Organic Competitors run is queued and processed in the background. You can close the tab or navigate away. The run keeps going and shows up in your Research History under the same hash-based URL as the other research modes.
What's Saved:
- • Every competitor domain returned
- • All numeric metrics per row
- • Domain Score data (when enabled)
- • Pre-filter options used for the run
- • Total available count for context
Revisit Anytime:
- • Re-sort and re-filter without re-running
- • Export filtered or full results to CSV
- • Compare snapshots over time
Ready to Map Your Competitive Landscape?
Run Organic Competitors on your domain to see exactly who you're fighting in the SERPs, then take the top competitors into Keyword Gap or Ranked Keywords to dig into what they're winning on.