We publish comparison pages. The site has a “vs SEO agency” page, a comparison post on Otterly, and several others. Comparing to alternatives is part of B2B marketing in 2026, and the prospects who are researching us are also researching alternatives. The honest move is to write the comparison ourselves rather than hope they form it on their own.
There’s one competitor I won’t name publicly and won’t compare against on the website or in cold outreach. I want to write about why we made that decision, what principle drives it, and how the same principle applies to other comparison content decisions.
I’m not going to name the competitor. That’s part of the point of the post.
They’re a real player in the AI search optimization space, a company we sometimes compete with in fit calls, and a brand whose name we deliberately keep out of our public marketing.
I’ll describe them in shape only. They’re a small agency, founder-led, based in the US. They sell roughly the same productized AI search optimization service we do at roughly the same price point. They’ve been operating for about a year longer than we have. Their work product is good. Their voice is distinct. Their brand has earned its position.
The reason I won’t name them is that naming them publicly would benefit us in a small way and cost them more than it would cost us if we got the comparison wrong. The asymmetric harm is the principle that drives the decision.
Comparison content has different impact on different parties. When we compare ourselves to a large established player (a Fortune 500 SEO agency, a $50M ARR competitive tool, a well-funded category leader), the comparison hurts us if it’s sloppy and barely affects them. Their brand absorbs our criticism.
When we compare ourselves to a small founder-led competitor at roughly our scale, the comparison can materially harm their business. A negative or misleading comparison from us, with our growing audience, can dent their inbound pipeline for months. The harm is asymmetric. We absorb less risk than they do from the same comparison.
The asymmetric harm principle says: don’t publish comparisons where the cost of being wrong falls disproportionately on the smaller, less-established party. Even if the comparison is accurate.
This rules out a category of comparison content that would otherwise be useful for our SEO and AI citation. Naming a small competitor in a comparison post would get cited by AI engines when prospects ask “[their name] vs [our name].” The traffic would be real. The visibility lift would be measurable.
The cost is borne by a small company that didn’t consent to being part of our content strategy.
We choose not to do it.
Most agencies that publish comparison content don’t apply this principle. The standard position is: compare against anyone who comes up in prospect research, regardless of size, as long as the comparison is factually accurate.
The standard position has logic. If the comparison is true, the reader gets useful information. If the smaller competitor is hurt, the harm is a side effect of accurate information being in the world. The reader’s value outweighs the competitor’s discomfort.
The standard position misses two things.
The comparison is usually not as objective as the publisher thinks. Comparisons written by one of the parties are biased toward that party. The publisher’s “objective” comparison includes the criteria that favor them and downweights the criteria where the competitor is stronger. The reader thinks they’re getting balanced information but they’re getting a structured argument with the publisher’s side already weighted.
The same prospect can decide based on a fit call. Most B2B buyers booking fit calls will form their own opinion in the call. They don’t need our comparison content to evaluate the competitor. The content’s role in the decision is smaller than the publisher assumes.
If the reader can form a good decision without the comparison, and the comparison disproportionately harms the smaller party, the case for publishing is weaker than the standard position suggests.
We’re not abstaining from all comparison content. The principle has a specific scope.
We compare against three types of competitors publicly.
Large established agencies and tools. A $5M+ revenue SEO agency, a $20M+ ARR SaaS competitor, a category leader with significant brand presence. The asymmetric harm risk is low because their brand absorbs our criticism without material business impact.
Competitive categories rather than specific competitors. “NetPageTwo vs traditional SEO agencies” is fair because it describes a category and the criticism applies generally rather than to any specific small operator. Categories can’t be harmed in the way individuals can.
Smaller competitors who have themselves named us publicly. If a competitor includes us in their comparison content, the precedent is set for symmetric comparison. We respond in kind. Naming us in their content makes naming them in ours a mutual conversation rather than asymmetric harm.
For everyone else, we describe the category they belong to without naming them. The reader who is researching that competitor can map our category description to the specific competitor on their own. The comparison is implicit rather than explicit.
The asymmetric harm principle applies to several adjacent decisions.
Naming clients in case studies. Case studies that name the client benefit us. They can harm the client if the case study describes a situation the client wouldn’t have chosen to describe publicly. The decision to name should consider who absorbs the cost of the public disclosure. Often the answer is to ship the case study with the client’s review and consent. Sometimes the answer is to anonymize.
Calling out specific failure patterns in posts. When we describe a failure mode (poor pricing strategy, misleading “cancel anytime” claims, fake productized models), we’re sometimes describing patterns that map to a specific competitor’s behavior. The same asymmetric harm calculation applies. The pattern can be described without naming the operator who exemplifies it. The reader who recognizes the pattern in a specific vendor can apply the analysis themselves.
Public commentary on individual operators. When we observe another operator doing work we think is good or work we think is poor, the asymmetric harm consideration affects whether to comment publicly. The standard for public negative comment is high. The standard for public positive comment is lower because the harm direction is reversed.
Some prospects will go to a small competitor we deliberately don’t name in our content. Some of those prospects will become that competitor’s customers. We’re deliberately reducing our visibility in those head-to-head decisions by refusing to publish the comparison content.
This is a cost we’re willing to absorb because the alternative (asymmetric harm to a smaller competitor) is a worse outcome for the category.
The hope is that the work we publish, the voice we maintain, and the substance of our fit calls are enough to win the prospects who’d actually be a good fit for us. The prospects who’d be better served by the competitor we won’t name are better off going to that competitor. Not winning every available prospect isn’t the same as losing.
If you’re researching AI search optimization vendors and you find one agency publishing comparison content against every named competitor, including small founder-led shops, the absence of a “don’t punch down” principle is something to notice. The agency is willing to publish content that materially harms smaller competitors for the sake of their own SEO and AI citation. That choice tells you something about how the agency thinks about ethics and competitive interaction.
The principle doesn’t have to be ours specifically. Different agencies will draw the line in different places. The question to ask is whether they’ve drawn the line anywhere, or whether their comparison strategy is unconstrained.
The agencies that have a principle and can articulate it are usually the ones whose other operational decisions are also principled. The principle for comparison content is a proxy for the principles in everything else.
If you want to talk through how to handle competitive comparisons for your brand without crossing lines you wouldn’t want crossed if the situation were reversed, the fit call can be that conversation.
Related reading:
– The first time someone asked ‘are you the same as Otterly’ and what I should have said
– What we tell prospects to buy instead
– Why we say no to 3 in 10 prospects
– NetPageTwo vs a traditional SEO agency
– About the operator
