Competitor comparison pages: how to write a fair one AI assistants can use

What makes competitor comparison pages fair

A comparison page is fair when a reader could check every claim in it and would reach the same verdict. That needs three things: stated criteria, sourced facts, and room for the other product to win.

Most comparison pages fail the first test. They pick criteria where the author wins, describe the rival in the author's words, and leave out the dates. A buyer has learned to discount them, and an assistant reading several pages has no way to tell which of two conflicting claims is current.

A fair page is also simply a better page. It is the one a buyer bookmarks and forwards to a colleague, because it saves them reading two sets of marketing. That is the same quality that makes a passage worth quoting in an AI answer: specific, sourced and dated.

Why AI assistants read comparison pages

Buyers ask assistants comparison questions, and a page that already compares is the obvious material for the answer. A question such as "Is Tool A or Tool B better for a small team?" needs facts about both products side by side.

An assistant that searches the web will look for pages that do that work. If the only pages comparing you are written by a rival or by a list site that has not used your product, those are what it has to go on. Your own comparison page is your chance to put the facts in one place, in your words, with the sources attached.

Google has written down what it wants from pages that compare and recommend products. Its guide to writing high quality reviews asks writers to "Explain what sets something apart from its competitors", to "Share quantitative measurements about how something measures up in various categories of performance", and to "Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research." Those are written for review sites, but they describe a good comparison page just as well.

The rules of a fair comparison

Six rules cover almost every case. Each one has a reason a reader can check.

The legal side is simpler than many teams fear. The FTC's statement of policy regarding comparative advertising, from 1979 and still on its site, says its policy "encourages the naming of, or reference to competitors, but requires clarity, and, if necessary, disclosure to avoid deception of the consumer." It also says it judges comparative advertising the same way as any other: the question is whether it "has a tendency or capacity to be false or deceptive". This is not legal advice, and a lawyer should read anything you are unsure of.

Say who wrote it, near the top

Put one plain sentence near the top saying that you make one of the products and you wrote the page. Do not leave it for the footer.

This costs nothing with a reader who already guessed, and it protects you with the reader who did not. Google's guidance on people-first content asks whether it is "self-evident to your visitors who authored your content". A comparison is the page where that question matters most, because the author has the most to gain from the verdict.

The same sentence helps an assistant. A passage lifted from a vendor's own comparison reads differently once the reader knows the source, and a page that says so up front cannot later be accused of hiding it.

Build the table first

Start with the comparison table, then write the page around it. The table forces each claim into one cell, and a claim that will not fit in a cell is usually an opinion.

1. List the questions a buyer asks when choosing between the two products. Price, limits, setup, integrations and support are common ones.
2. Turn each question into a row. Use the buyer's words, not your feature names.
3. Fill in the rival's column from the rival's own website only. Copy the page address and the date you read it.
4. Where the rival's site does not say, write "Not stated". Do not write "No" unless their own page says no.
5. Fill in your own column with the same care. Link to your pricing and documentation pages.
6. Read the finished table as the rival would. Mark every cell they could reasonably dispute, and fix it or source it.

Two habits make the table hold up. First, put the source and the date with the fact, either in the cell or in a note under the table, so a reader never has to guess where a figure came from. Second, use "Not stated" honestly. It tells the reader you looked and found nothing, which is a fact, while "No" is a claim about the rival you may not be able to support. Sourced figures may also help directly: in the GEO benchmark, adding statistics and citing sources were among the edits that most raised how much of a page appeared in generated answers.

One rival per page, or several

Write one page per rival when buyers search for the pair by name, such as "Tool A vs Tool B". A buyer typing that has already narrowed the choice to two, and wants depth on those two only.

Write one page covering several products when buyers ask for alternatives, such as "Tool B alternatives". Keep the same criteria for every product on the page, so the rows can be read across. If the criteria change from product to product, the table stops being a comparison and becomes a set of adverts.

In both cases, the page should answer a question a buyer actually asks. A comparison with a rival nobody weighs you against is a page with no reader.

Say where the other product is ahead

Give the rival's strengths as much room as your own. It is the single change that most separates a comparison page from an advert.

There are two practical reasons beyond fairness. A buyer who already knows the rival's strength stops trusting a page that hides it, and stops trusting everything else on the page with it. And an assistant answering "which is better for X" needs the case where the other product wins, so a page that gives it is more useful as a source. Writing "Tool B is the better choice if you need phone support" costs you that buyer, who was never yours, and earns the trust of every other reader.

• Write a short section titled, plainly, where the other product is ahead.
• Name the kind of buyer who should choose the rival, and why.
• Quote the rival's own description of its strength, word for word, with a link.
• Avoid backhanded praise, such as "great if you do not mind paying more". Say the fact and stop.

Mistakes that make a comparison page unfair

These are the habits that turn a comparison into an advert. Each one is easy to spot once you look for it.

• Comparing your newest plan against the rival's oldest. Compare plans a buyer would really choose between, at the same date.
• Using a rival's price without the billing period. Monthly and yearly prices are not the same figure.
• Counting features rather than describing them. Twelve ticks against eight says nothing about which features a buyer needs.
• Quoting an old review of the rival as if it were current. Date every source, and prefer the rival's own page.
• Hiding the author. A page that does not say a vendor wrote it misleads every reader who assumes it is independent.

If a comparison page never says the other product is better at anything, readers and assistants have good reason to doubt the rest of it.

Keep the page true after you publish it

A comparison page goes stale faster than almost any other page, because half of it describes a product you do not control. Plan the upkeep before you publish.

1. Keep a list of every rival page you cite, with the date you read it.
2. Re-read those pages on a schedule. Monthly suits most software categories, where prices move often.
3. When a fact changes, update the cell and the date together. Do not move the date without reading the page again.
4. If the rival tells you a fact is wrong, check it against their page and fix it quickly if they are right.
5. Add an updated date to the page only when a fact changes, not to look fresh.

An assistant may keep repeating an old figure for a while after you change it, because it has not read the page again yet. That is a reason to get it right before publishing, not a reason to skip the upkeep.

How we apply this on our own site

We make Agentcites, and we wrote our comparison pages to these rules, so you can judge whether we kept to them. Each page sets Agentcites beside one other AI visibility tool, says who wrote it, links every fact about the other product to that product's own site with the date read, and gives as much room to where the other product is ahead as to where we differ. Where the other product's site does not say something, the page says "Not stated" rather than "No". For one example, see Agentcites compared with Profound. The full list of what Agentcites does is on the features page.