A competitor record can be accurate when you create it and misleading a month later. A support page changes, a new onboarding option appears, or a gap you noted turns out to have been answered in documentation you had not read.
Use Shane’s Competitor Finder for a focused evidence review before your next planning meeting. The aim is to leave with a small set of current observations, a clear record of what changed and one decision you can explain.
The tool keeps the records you enter in your browser. It does not revisit websites, identify changed claims or send review reminders. The process below gives you a repeatable way to do that work yourself.
Choose the decision and the review window
Start with a question narrow enough to finish: “Which onboarding expectations should our next product page explain?” is more useful than “What are all our competitors doing?” Choose the companies relevant to that customer and workflow.
Set a review window appropriate to the decision. A monthly check may suit a working research list; a customer-facing comparison deserves another check immediately before publication. These are review habits you choose, not schedules the tool runs.
Keep a short checklist outside the tool with the companies to review, the claims that matter and the date of this pass. The Last reviewed field records the date you enter. It does not mark a record overdue, verify freshness or sort the table into review order.
Save the starting evidence before changing records
Click Export CSV before you start. The download is named competitor-list.csv. Keep an unchanged copy with a dated filename so you can compare your starting research with the finished review.
The export contains every saved competitor, even when a search or category filter shows only a few rows. It includes company name, category, positioning, price, strength, gap, source, reviewed date and notes. Check that scope before sending the file to anyone.
CSV is useful for reviewing and handing over the research, but the current interface has no CSV import control. Do not rely on the export as a one-click way to restore the workspace. Keep the evidence file somewhere you can find again rather than relying only on this browser’s saved data.
Find the records that need attention
Use one consistent Category label for the comparison set. Labels such as “Onboarding tools” and “onboarding tools” become separate category choices; extra spaces can also split a category. Select the intended category, then narrow the visible rows with text search.
Search checks company/domain, category, positioning and Notes without distinguishing uppercase from lowercase. It does not search the Price, Strength, Gap, Source URL or Reviewed date fields. To find an old date, review the exported file or scan the Reviewed column rather than expecting the search box to find it.
A distinctive phrase in Notes can help organize future reviews. For example, “review-onboarding” can identify records relevant to this question. This is text you maintain, not a built-in tag or task status. Avoid stray spaces at the beginning or end of a search, because they become part of the search text.
Notes are searchable but do not appear as a table column. A row can match your phrase without showing you the matching note. Open your exported CSV to read the full context. Notes remain part of the export, so their absence from the table does not make them private.
Check the claim, then record the change
Open each record’s Source link, if present, and check the specific claim behind your decision. If no source was supplied or the link points only to a homepage, locate the relevant product, help or service page. Use the dedicated Source URL field for the main evidence and put additional source links and their purpose in Notes.
Suppose a fictional record says “Guided setup not found” in Gap / opportunity. During this review, you find a help page describing an optional setup session. A useful update would say what the page actually establishes, what remains uncertain and how that changes your next action:
- Observation: the help page describes an optional setup session.
- Unresolved question: the page does not make eligibility clear.
- Change from the prior review: guided setup is now documented in the source you checked.
- Decision: explain your own setup process and eligibility clearly rather than claiming the competitor lacks it.
Keep observation and interpretation separate. A newly found page is evidence that you found information today; it does not prove the feature launched today. Likewise, an absent statement on one page does not establish that a competitor cannot provide the service.
Set Last reviewed to the date you checked the evidence. If you only rechecked onboarding, say that in Notes. A fresh date should not silently imply that you verified every detail in the record.
Replace an outdated entry carefully
The current workspace offers Add and Remove, without an edit button. Prepare a complete replacement record using your saved export, carrying forward the still-relevant fields and updating the evidence you have checked. Include a concise change note so the new entry makes sense on its own.
- Add the replacement record before removing the old one.
- Clear the search and select All categories before checking the replacement and identifying the old row. Check its visible fields and Source link. New entries appear at the top; the table is ordered by addition, not by Last reviewed.
- Export again and check the replacement’s Notes as well as the other fields.
- Identify the old row carefully, then remove it only when the replacement is complete.
Remove takes effect immediately and has no confirmation step or undo control. Keep the earlier dated export. If old and new entries are difficult to distinguish, a clearly labelled review-version suffix you are comfortable retaining in the replacement’s Company / domain field can make the check easier.
End with a decision-ready handoff
Download a final CSV after the review. Keep that complete file as your record, then make a separate spreadsheet copy containing only the companies and details needed for the meeting. Filtering the website before exporting will not create that shortlist for you.
Add a brief summary alongside the selected records: what changed, what is still uncertain, the sources checked and the action you recommend. For the onboarding example, the action might be to clarify your own setup page, with a separate question to resolve before making a comparison.
A successful review ends with fewer unsupported assumptions and a better next step. Shane’s Competitor Finder holds the research; your dated evidence and clear change notes make that research useful the next time someone asks, “What has changed?”