Competitor Link Intersect
The usual approach exports one competitor profile, produces 40,000 rows dominated by scrapers and open directories, and gets worked at random for a reply rate near zero. Domains that link to three or more of your competitors have already made the editorial decision to link in your space, which is the only pre-qualification available before you spend on outreach. This falls apart when the competitor set is wrong: pick national brands rather than the sites that actually outrank you and the list fills with press coverage you have no route to.
CATEGORY
Links & authority
FORMAT
competitor-link-intersect.md
WHEN TO REACH FOR THIS
Use when you need a prospect list for outreach and have no evidence about which sites would plausibly link to a business like yours.
The skill file
competitor-link-intersect.md
---
name: competitor-link-intersect
description: Use when you need a prospect list for outreach and have no evidence about which sites would plausibly link to a business like yours.
---
# Competitor Link Intersect
The usual approach exports one competitor profile, produces 40,000 rows dominated by scrapers and open directories, and gets worked at random for a reply rate near zero. Domains that link to three or more of your competitors have already made the editorial decision to link in your space, which is the only pre-qualification available before you spend on outreach. This falls apart when the competitor set is wrong: pick national brands rather than the sites that actually outrank you and the list fills with press coverage you have no route to.
## What you need first
- four to eight true search competitors taken from the SERPs for your commercial queries, not from the sales team's rival list
- backlink exports for each competitor pulled from the same index on the same day so the comparison is like for like
- your own deduped linking domain list to subtract
- the specific pages you could realistically offer as a destination
## Method
1. Choose the competitor set from who ranks for your target queries. A national brand is not a search competitor and its links come from brand PR and news desks that will never cover you.
2. Pull every export from one index on one day. Indexes differ in crawl coverage, so mixing sources manufactures gaps that do not exist and hides real ones.
3. Subtract your own linking domains and any properties you control, then count how many competitors each remaining domain links to. Three or more is a pattern; one is coincidence and belongs at the bottom.
4. Strip the categories where no decision was made: open directories, scrapers, syndication mirrors and sites that link to every vendor in the market. What survives is where a human chose to link.
5. Open the linking page for each survivor and record why the link is there - a review, a roundup, a supplier list, a data citation, a staff quote. A prospect list with no reasons produces generic outreach, which is the main cause of a dead campaign.
6. Group by reason rather than by authority score and work the largest group first, because one pitch and one asset serve the whole group and the economics only work at that scale.
7. Flag prospects where the competitor link is already broken or the roundup is visibly out of date. Those are the warmest asks in the set because you are offering a fix rather than a favour.
## What this produces
A prospect list of roughly 50 to 200 multi-competitor domains, each tagged with linking page, reason for the link and pitch group.
## Where this goes wrong
- picking brand competitors instead of search competitors, which fills the list with coverage no outreach can reach
- keeping domains that link to everyone in the market, since those are paid listings or directories wearing editorial clothes
- treating the intersect output as a target list rather than a prospect list, so nobody checks whether the site has any reason to link to you
- comparing exports pulled weeks apart, where index refresh differences read as competitor advantage
---
From the QuQi skill library - https://www.quqi.io/skills/competitor-link-intersect
Free to download · no account, no email
What you need first
-
four to eight true search competitors taken from the SERPs for your commercial queries, not from the sales team's rival list
-
backlink exports for each competitor pulled from the same index on the same day so the comparison is like for like
-
your own deduped linking domain list to subtract
-
the specific pages you could realistically offer as a destination
Method
-
01
Choose the competitor set from who ranks for your target queries. A national brand is not a search competitor and its links come from brand PR and news desks that will never cover you.
-
02
Pull every export from one index on one day. Indexes differ in crawl coverage, so mixing sources manufactures gaps that do not exist and hides real ones.
-
03
Subtract your own linking domains and any properties you control, then count how many competitors each remaining domain links to. Three or more is a pattern; one is coincidence and belongs at the bottom.
-
04
Strip the categories where no decision was made: open directories, scrapers, syndication mirrors and sites that link to every vendor in the market. What survives is where a human chose to link.
-
05
Open the linking page for each survivor and record why the link is there - a review, a roundup, a supplier list, a data citation, a staff quote. A prospect list with no reasons produces generic outreach, which is the main cause of a dead campaign.
-
06
Group by reason rather than by authority score and work the largest group first, because one pitch and one asset serve the whole group and the economics only work at that scale.
-
07
Flag prospects where the competitor link is already broken or the roundup is visibly out of date. Those are the warmest asks in the set because you are offering a fix rather than a favour.
What this produces
A prospect list of roughly 50 to 200 multi-competitor domains, each tagged with linking page, reason for the link and pitch group.
Where this goes wrong
-
picking brand competitors instead of search competitors, which fills the list with coverage no outreach can reach
-
keeping domains that link to everyone in the market, since those are paid listings or directories wearing editorial clothes
-
treating the intersect output as a target list rather than a prospect list, so nobody checks whether the site has any reason to link to you
-
comparing exports pulled weeks apart, where index refresh differences read as competitor advantage
Use this skill in your own AI
The download is a plain markdown file with the name and trigger in its frontmatter. Where an assistant supports skills it can load itself, that frontmatter is what it reads to decide this one applies.
Claude Code
Save it as ~/.claude/skills/competitor-link-intersect/SKILL.md and Claude loads it on its own when what you are doing matches the trigger line. Put it in .claude/skills inside a project instead if the whole team should have it.
Claude
Upload the file in the skills section of your settings. Once it is there it applies itself in any conversation where the trigger fits, so you do not have to remember it exists.
ChatGPT
There is no skills format to install into, so paste the file contents into a Project instruction or a Custom GPT instead. It then applies to every chat in that project rather than only the one you paste it into.
Anything else
Paste the markdown into the chat before your question. It works in any assistant, it just has to be pasted again each time.
Questions about this skill
When is intersect the right way to build a prospect list rather than exporting one competitor?
When you have no evidence about which sites would link to a business like yours. One export gives you 40,000 rows dominated by scrapers and open directories. Domains linking to three or more competitors have already decided to link in your space, which is the only pre-qualification available before you spend on outreach. It needs four to eight real competitors.
What do I need in hand before starting?
Four to eight true search competitors taken from the SERPs for your commercial queries, exports for each pulled from the same index on the same day, your own deduped linking domains to subtract, and the pages you could realistically offer as a destination. Exports pulled weeks apart manufacture gaps, and index refresh differences then read as competitor advantage.
What do I end up with, and which part gets used?
Roughly 50 to 200 multi-competitor domains, each tagged with the linking page, the reason the link exists and a pitch group. The reason column is what gets used. Group by reason rather than by authority score and work the largest group first, because one pitch and one asset then serve the whole group, and the economics only work at that scale.
What most often ruins this, and what does it cost?
Picking brand competitors instead of search competitors. National brands earn their links from news desks and brand PR that will never cover you, so the list fills with prospects you have no route to and the campaign stalls at outreach. The other is treating the output as a target list: nobody has yet checked whether each site has a reason to link to you.
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