On this page
- Why do these pages matter more now?
- How many new SaaS sites have these pages?
- Which pages should you build?
- Which competitors should you start with?
- What goes on a comparison page?
- How do you keep a comparison page honest and lawful?
- How should the page be written so it can be quoted?
- How do you keep these pages accurate?
- What mistakes should you avoid?
- What should you do next?
- Questions
- Sources
A comparison page answers "X or Y?" and an alternatives page answers "what else is like X?". Both meet a buyer at the point of choosing. In our check of 313 new SaaS websites, 146 (46.6%) had neither in their sitemap. Seer Interactive found that comparison searches showed a Google AI Overview 95.4% of the time.
Key facts
- 146 of 313 new SaaS websites (46.6%) had no comparison or alternatives page in their sitemap, in a check we ran on 28 September 20261.
- Of the 167 new SaaS websites that had at least one such page, the median was 7 pages, and 42 sites had 20 or more1.
- Seer Interactive found that comparison queries triggered a Google AI Overview 95.4% of the time, in 267 of 280 queries2.
- In a G2 survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers in March 2026, 69% said they chose a different vendor than planned based on AI chatbot guidance3.
- In a TrustRadius survey of 1,862 technology buyers, 83% shortlisted three or fewer products4.
- UK advertising rules require a comparison with a named competitor to be objective and verifiable8.
Why do these pages matter more now?
These pages matter more now because the comparison is often made before the buyer reaches anyone's website.
Seer Interactive tracked 30,842 informational queries and found that comparison queries produced a Google AI Overview 95.4% of the time2. That was 267 of 280 queries, which is a small sample, and it comes from agency client data.
The direction is clear enough. When somebody types "X vs Y", Google usually answers on the results page.
Assistants are doing the same job in chat.
In G2's March 2026 survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers, 51% said they start research with an AI chatbot more often than with Google3. In the same survey, 69% said they had chosen a different vendor than planned based on an AI chatbot's guidance, and 33% had bought from a vendor they were not familiar with3. G2 is a review site with an interest in those findings.
Shortlists are short. TrustRadius found that 83% of technology buyers shortlisted three or fewer products4.
6sense reported that B2B buyers choose from their first shortlist 95% of the time, in a survey of nearly 4,000 buyers5. 6sense sells buyer intent data, and its figures lean towards larger purchases.
So when a buyer asks an assistant to compare you with the product they already know, what does the assistant have to read?
How many new SaaS sites have these pages?
About half. In our check, 167 of 313 sites (53.4%) had at least one comparison or alternatives page in their sitemap, and 146 (46.6%) had none1.
| Comparison or alternatives pages in the sitemap | Sites | Share of 313 |
|---|---|---|
| None | 146 | 46.6% |
| 1 | 19 | 6.1% |
| 2 to 4 | 45 | 14.4% |
| 5 to 19 | 61 | 19.5% |
| 20 or more | 42 | 13.4% |
Among the sites that had them, the median was 7 pages.
We counted pages by their address, looking for "vs", "compare", "comparison", or "alternative" in the URL. That misses pages with unusual addresses and can catch a few that are not comparisons. We recorded whether the pages exist and did not read them, so these numbers say nothing about how good they are.
Which pages should you build?
Three kinds, and most products need only a handful of each.
| Page type | Answers | Example title |
|---|---|---|
| You against a competitor | "Should I pick this or the one I know?" | "YourProduct vs Competitor" |
| Alternatives to a competitor | "What else is like the one I know?" | "Competitor alternatives" |
| Best tools for a job | "What should I use for this task?" | "Invoice tools for freelancers" |
Start with the first kind. It is the question a buyer asks once your name is on their list, and it is the one where you know the most.
Which competitors should you start with?
Start with the competitors your buyers already mention. We don't have search volume data to offer here, so use what you can see yourself.
- Products that people name when they contact you or ask for a demo.
- Products your customers switched from.
- Products listed beside yours in the category you chose on review sites and launch directories.
- The best known product in your category, even if you are much smaller.
Three to five competitors is enough to begin. Don't aim for a page for every product in the category, built from a template.
Google's guidance for AI search asks for "unique, non-commodity content"7, and forty near-identical pages are the opposite.
What goes on a comparison page?
A comparison page carries facts a buyer can check, in the order a buyer needs them.
- The verdict, first. Two or three sentences on who should choose which product. Say it plainly, including when the other product is the better choice.
- A facts table. Price, plan limits, main features, platforms, integrations, and support. One row per fact, one column per product.
- The date you checked. Beside the table, with a link to the competitor's own pricing page as the source.
- Where the competitor is stronger. Every product has something it does better. Name it, and the rest of the page is easier to believe.
- Who each product suits. By team size, budget, or the job to be done.
- How to switch. What can be imported, how long it takes, what is lost.
- Questions. The four or five that come up in sales conversations.
Put the comparison in a real table. Tables are easy for a reader to scan and easy for an assistant to lift a row from.
An alternatives page follows the same pattern with one change. It lists several products, yours among them, with a short honest description of each and who it suits.
How do you keep a comparison page honest and lawful?
Compare like with like, state only what can be checked, and show where each fact came from.
In the UK, the advertising code covers comparisons with competitors who can be identified. The Advertising Standards Authority's guidance sets out that such comparisons must compare products "meeting the same needs or intended for the same purpose", and must "objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative feature of those products"8. The ASA's guidance on verifiability says readers need enough information to check the comparison for themselves9.
That is a description of the guidance and not legal advice. If you sell in other countries, their rules apply as well.
In practice that means five habits.
- Take each fact about a competitor from the competitor's own site, and link to it.
- Date every table.
- Compare the same plan level on both sides.
- Leave out anything you can't show, including claims about speed or quality that you haven't measured.
- Never invent a rating or a review count.
On that last point, Google's documentation for software structured data requires a rating or review for a page to be eligible for a rich result10. In our check, 19 of the 173 sites carrying software markup included an aggregate rating1. A product in its first weeks rarely has reviews to describe. Markup should only describe reviews that exist.
How should the page be written so it can be quoted?
Write a comparison page so that any passage makes sense when lifted out alone.
The one peer reviewed study on this tested changes to page content against 10,000 queries. Adding statistics, quotations, and citations gave the largest gains in how much of a generated answer came from the page6.
The study ran mainly on a simulated engine built on GPT-3.5 with 2023 data, so treat it as a rough guide and no more.
On a comparison page, do these four things.
- Name both products in the sentence. "YourProduct's free plan allows three projects" can be quoted. "Our free plan allows three" can't.
- Give the number and the date together. "Competitor's Team plan costs £40 a month per user, as listed on 28 September 2026."
- Quote customers by name, with their permission, on why they switched.
- Link every outside fact to its source.
Check that the page arrives as finished HTML too. The test is in Can Google and AI assistants read a site built with AI tools?.
How do you keep these pages accurate?
Put them on a schedule, because this is the work that tends to slip.
Prices and plan limits change more often than anything else on a SaaS site. When a competitor changes a price and your page still shows the old one, your page is wrong in public, and an assistant may repeat it.
- Re-check every comparison page once a quarter.
- Re-check straight away when you or a competitor launches a plan or changes a price.
- Show a "last updated" date on the page and change it only when you have re-checked the facts.
- If a competitor closes or is bought, update the page and keep the address.
What mistakes should you avoid?
Four come up again and again.
| Mistake | Why it costs you |
|---|---|
| A table where you win every row | Buyers fact-check. TrustRadius found 94% of buyers who used AI checked what it told them4 |
| Dozens of templated pages with the names swapped | No unique content on any of them |
| Facts with no date or source | Nobody can verify them, and they go stale unseen |
| Claims about the competitor you can't show | Falls short of the UK rule that comparisons be verifiable8 |
What should you do next?
Write one page this week. Pick the competitor your buyers mention most, open their pricing page, and build the facts table with today's date on it. Then write the verdict.
How AI assistants choose which products to recommend sets out the evidence behind this. What to fix on your SaaS website in the first week after launch shows where a first comparison page fits in the week.
Questions
What is the difference between a comparison page and an alternatives page?
A comparison page sets two named products side by side. An alternatives page lists several products a buyer could choose in place of one named product.
How many comparison pages does a new SaaS need?
Three to five is enough to start. In our check of 313 new SaaS websites, the sites that had these pages had a median of 7.
Is it legal to name a competitor on a comparison page in the UK?
UK advertising rules allow comparisons with identifiable competitors when they compare products meeting the same needs and are objective and verifiable. This is a summary of ASA guidance and not legal advice.
Should a comparison page admit where the competitor is better?
Yes. Buyers check what they read. In TrustRadius's 2026 survey, 94% of buyers who used AI for research fact-checked it.
How often should comparison pages be updated?
Once a quarter, and straight away when a price or plan changes on either side. Show the date you last checked.
Do comparison searches show AI answers in Google?
Usually. Seer Interactive found that comparison queries triggered a Google AI Overview 95.4% of the time, in 267 of 280 queries.
Sources
- SaaS GTM, site check of 313 newly launched SaaS websites, 28 September 2026. Own data. Method and totals.
- Seer Interactive, "AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update", April 2026. https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/aio-impact-on-google-ctr-2026-update
- G2, "New G2 Research: Half of B2B Software Buyers Now Start Their Research With AI Chatbots", 15 April 2026. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-g2-research-half-of-b2b-software-buyers-now-start-their-research-with-ai-chatbots-302742807.html
- TrustRadius, "2026 B2B Buying Disconnect Report" press release, 15 July 2026. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/trustradius-2026-b2b-buying-disconnect-report-reveals-ai-has-changed-how-buyers-research-but-not-what-they-trust-302825792.html
- 6sense, "The B2B Buyer Experience Report for 2025", November 2025. https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/buyer-experience-report-2025/
- Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan, and Deshpande, "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", arXiv 2311.09735, KDD 2024. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735
- Google Search Central Blog, "Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google's AI experiences on Search", 21 May 2025. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/05/succeeding-in-ai-search
- Advertising Standards Authority and CAP, "Comparisons: Identifiable competitors". https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/comparisons-identifiable-competitors.html
- Advertising Standards Authority and CAP, "Comparisons: Verifiability". https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/comparisons-verifiability.html
- Google Search Central, "Software app (SoftwareApplication) structured data", updated 8 September 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/software-app
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