How do I find out where my competitors get their users?
How do I find out where my competitors get their users?
TL;DR
- Your competitors have already tested channels and you can read most of their working ones from the outside without any special tools.
- Backlinks, community mentions, social activity, and review sites reveal where a competitor shows up and where their users come from.
- The goal is not to copy blindly but to find the channels that are proven in your market, then show up there with your own angle.
- A few hours of competitor research can save you months of guessing which channels are worth your time.
---
Why competitor research beats guessing
Picking distribution channels by guessing is expensive. Competitor research replaces the guess with evidence.
A competitor who has been around for a year has already spent time and money testing channels. The ones still bringing them users are proven, and the ones that failed have quietly disappeared from their activity.
You can read a lot of this from the outside. Where they post, who links to them, and where they are reviewed are all visible, and together they map the channels that work in your specific market.
This does not mean copying everything they do. It means starting from what is already proven instead of from zero, then bringing your own angle. Proven channel, different approach, is a strong position.
The point is to compress months of trial and error into an afternoon of reading what the market has already revealed.
Read their backlinks and mentions
Where the web links to a competitor tells you where their attention and traffic come from.
Look at who writes about them. Search their brand name and see which blogs, roundups, newsletters, and news sites mention them. Each of those is a place that covers your category and might cover you.
Backlink tools, including free tiers of common SEO tools, show which sites link to a competitor. The recurring sources are channels: a directory that lists them, a publication that reviews tools like theirs, a partner that references them.
Pay attention to guest posts and interviews. If a competitor's founder keeps appearing on the same podcasts or blogs, that is a channel they have decided is worth their time, which is a strong hint it works.
You are building a list of the specific sites and people that pay attention to your category. That list is a distribution map you did not have to create from scratch.
Trace their community presence
Communities are where a lot of early stage distribution actually happens, and competitor activity there is often visible.
Search the competitor's name inside Reddit, Hacker News, and relevant forums. See where their product gets mentioned, by them and by users. The subreddits and threads where they come up are where your audience discusses the category.
Look at how they are talked about. Are users recommending them, complaining about a gap, asking for alternatives? Complaints and requests for alternatives are openings for you, and threads asking "is there something better than X" are direct leads.
Check whether the founder participates in communities. If they are active in a particular Slack group or subreddit, that community has proven valuable to a company like yours.
This is often the highest signal research you can do, because community mentions reveal not just where users are but what they wish the existing options did differently.
Study their social and review footprint
Two more public sources round out the picture: social platforms and review sites.
On social, see which platform a competitor actually invests in. A company posting daily on LinkedIn but absent from X has told you where their audience responds. Look at which of their posts get engagement, because that reveals what resonates in your market.
Review sites and marketplaces show where buyers go to compare. If your competitors collect reviews on a specific platform or appear in particular "best tools" lists, those are channels where purchase intent is high and you should be present.
Read the reviews themselves, not just the ratings. Customers explain in reviews what made them choose the product and what frustrates them. That is direct insight into the buying decision and the gaps you can position against.
Together, backlinks, communities, social, and reviews give you a full map of where users in your market are found and how they decide.
Turn the research into your own plan
Research is only useful if it changes what you do, so convert it into a focused plan.
List the channels that show up repeatedly across your competitors. A channel that appears for several competitors is proven in your market, and that overlap is your priority list.
Pick the few where you can realistically compete and show up there with a different angle. You do not win by being a worse copy on the same channel, you win by being clearly better or different for a specific segment.
Note the gaps too. A complaint that recurs across competitor reviews and community threads is a positioning opportunity, a reason a slice of their users would switch.
Then commit. The research tells you where to invest, and the returns come from showing up consistently in those proven channels, not from the research itself.
---
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I find out where my competitors get their traffic? Read their backlinks with a free SEO tool to see which sites link to them, search their brand inside communities to find where they are mentioned, and check which social platform and review sites they invest in. The channels that appear repeatedly are the proven sources of users in your market.
Is it legal and ethical to research competitor channels? Yes, this research uses entirely public information like backlinks, community mentions, social posts, and reviews, which anyone can read. You are studying what is openly visible to understand the market, not accessing anything private.
What should I do with competitor channel research? List the channels that show up across several competitors, since overlap means they are proven, then pick the few where you can compete and show up with your own angle. Also note recurring complaints in reviews and threads, because those gaps are positioning opportunities to win over their users.
Why is competitor research better than testing channels myself? Competitors have already spent time and money testing channels, so the ones still bringing them users are proven and the failures have disappeared from their activity. Reading that from the outside compresses months of your own trial and error into a few hours of research.
---
Disvia.ai maps the communities and channels where your market already gathers, so you start from what is proven instead of guessing: see how at disvia.ai.