Why Most Competitor Research Tools Don't Work

Most competitor research tools don't work.

Not because they're bad. Some of them are very good.

They don't work because of how they get used. You open one, look up a rival, see a number, close the tab.

That number is a snapshot. And a snapshot can lie to you with a straight face.

I know, because one of mine did.

The 10% drop that wasn't

On 12 October, my own Changes page for monday.com said Google searches for "monday.com" in the US fell 10% on the week before.

If you worked at monday.com, that's a meeting. Somebody gets asked what happened.

The row under it even drew the conclusion for you: "Demand is moving to someone, and it is not them."

Now here's the thing. The same page measures Asana and ClickUp the same way.

Asana fell 13%. ClickUp fell 12%. Same seven days.

When three rivals drop together, it's rarely about one of them. So I pulled the daily numbers behind it.

And that's when it got embarrassing.

The last day in the window was Monday 12 October. We read it at about nine in the morning, New York time. Most of that Monday hadn't happened yet.

The four Mondays before it scored between 44 and 50 for monday.com. This one scored 18.

Half a day, counted as a whole one.

Compare whole weeks instead, 5 to 11 October against the week before, and the drop is gone. monday.com up 3%. Asana down 1%. ClickUp up 2%.

Nothing happened. The page still showed the 10% when I read it on 16 October.

What caught it

Two things. Neither of them was me being clever.

One: history. The daily numbers go back to July. Next to them, an 18 on a Monday sticks out a mile. In a two-number "before and after", it looks like news.

Two: the same yardstick on everyone. My mistake hit all three brands the same way. That's exactly why it looked odd. And it's why the ranking still held: monday.com didn't lose ground to anyone.

A yardstick can be wrong. If it's wrong the same way for you and for them, it still tells you who's ahead.

The other way it goes wrong

Quick question. How many ads does Hears run?

744. That's Meta's own count of their live ads on 11 October.

384. That's how many reached the EU, the only place Meta shows the text and the reach.

90. That's how many different ad texts sit behind those 384.

Three true answers. The biggest is eight times the smallest. All three were on the Hears benchmark as measured on 11 October.

Now take your rival's number from one place and your own from somewhere else. You might be holding 744 next to 90 and calling it a gap.

So what's broken? Not the data. Two things are missing: last time, and you.

To be fair to the tools

Plenty of them keep history. Similarweb's Competitive Intelligence plan for one person comes with three months of it. Their pricing page says so.

And I'll be straight with you about mine. The free benchmark is a snapshot too. One reading, not measured again. History only starts if you keep it running, every 14 days, and that part costs money.

What you do get, even from one reading, is yourself on the same page, counted the same way as them.

That's the half most research skips. It's also the half that caught my own mistake.

Here's what I'd do

Pick one competitor. Get the free benchmark.

One competitor, measured against you, on the same sources. It costs nothing. No card. No call.

If it's useful, keep it running and the history builds itself. If it isn't, you've lost nothing. Start here.

P.S. Before you act on a competitor's number, ask two questions. What was it last time? And what is mine, counted the same way? If nobody can answer both, don't call the meeting yet. The free benchmark answers the second one today: kvasano.com/start.html.