---
title: 'The Companies screen: who competes with you for search'
description: 'The Companies list and company detail: competition type, relevance, importance and what it changes, adding a competitor by domain, and the matching MCP tools.'
slug: companies
group: app
order: 32
keywords:
  [
    companies screen,
    competitors,
    competitor importance,
    add competitor by domain,
    list_competitors,
    get_competitor_detail,
    set_competitor_importance,
  ]
related: [data-backed-path, pages, queries, your-first-project]
updated: '2026-10-26'
---

The Companies screen sits under Companies in the Data Explorer part of each project's sidebar. It lists the companies whose pages rank for the project's keywords: your direct rivals, indirect ones and substitutes. It is also where you mark which of them matter.

## What the list shows

A table with one row per company:

- **Company**: name and domain, linked to the company detail. A star marks an important company and a crossed-out eye an ignored one. Your own company is marked Yours.
- **Type**: direct, indirect or substitute.
- **Pages** and **Keywords**: how many of its pages rank for the project's keywords, and for how many keywords.
- **Relevance**: how close the company is to your niche, as a percentage.
- **Updated**: how long ago the project's latest research run completed.

The list sorts by Pages, most first, and loads 20 at a time. Ignored companies are hidden unless you filter for them.

## Where the data comes from

Companies, pages and keyword counts come from the search results a research run reads. Competition type, relevance and the analysis on the detail page come from the run's competitor evaluation. Importance is yours: it is the one value on this screen you set. A note under the title says how old the run data is. After 30 days it adds a Stale badge, after 90 an Antique badge, each with a Re-run link to the project overview.

## Importance and what it changes

Every competitor is **important**, **default** or **ignored**.

- **Important** boosts opportunity scores by 1.25x for clusters where that competitor ranks in the top 10. Scores are then rescaled 0 to 100 against the strongest cluster, so other clusters can move down the list while their own score stays the same.
- **Ignored** removes the competitor from the competitor surfaces and from scoring.
- **Default** is neither.

The opportunity list reflects a change at once, with no new run; see [the data-backed path](/docs/data-backed-path).

## What you can do here

- **Type** buttons filter to direct, indirect or substitute.
- **Importance** buttons filter to Important, Default or Ignored. **Clear filter** removes either filter.
- Click **Company**, **Pages**, **Keywords** or **Relevance** to sort.
- The actions menu on each row has **Mark as important** or **Remove as important**, and **Ignore** or **Remove from ignored**. Your own company has no menu.

To add a competitor that is not on the list, go to the project's Competitors settings at `/settings/project/competitors`. It has an Important card and an Ignored card, each with an **Add** button. The dialog takes a company or a domain, such as `example.com`, and marks it with that card's importance. **Remove** on a row clears the mark.

## The company detail

Open a company and its page, at `/companies/<companyId>`, shows the name, domain and the same actions menu. Tiles show Pages ranked, Keywords ranked, Relevance score and Competition type. A Competitive Analysis section, when the run produced one, holds Why they compete, Overlap areas, Where they win, Where you can win and Evidence. Then come Ranked Pages, with query counts, and Keywords Ranked For, with `KD`, intent and best position. Each table shows up to 20 rows, and the tiles count those rows.

## The same thing over MCP

| On the screen                 | MCP tool                    |
| ----------------------------- | --------------------------- |
| Company detail                | `get_competitor_detail`     |
| Mark as important, Ignore     | `set_competitor_importance` |
| Add, in Competitors settings  | `add_competitor_by_domain`  |
| Competitor list by importance | `list_competitors`          |

`get_competitor_detail` makes the same call as the detail page. `set_competitor_importance` takes `important`, `default` or `ignored`. `add_competitor_by_domain` takes a `domain` and an `importance` of `important` or `ignored`, the same two choices as the settings cards.

`list_competitors` is not the same list as the screen. It returns marked competitors and companies found in search results, sorted important, default, unmarked, then ignored, capped at 100. Pass `importance` to get one bucket. Each item carries `companyId`, `domain`, `name` and `importance`, no counts; for those, use `get_competitor_detail` or `list_pages` with `filters.companyDomain`.