Find who you compete with (Analyze)
Use the guided Analyze wizard to pick a community and a project type, see your ten closest competitors, run a head-to-head against any of them, and save the result as a compete report.
Before you start
- Analyze is a sidebar area inside Insights, separate from Explore. Where Explore's Compare lets you line up locations you already picked, Analyze works the other way around: tell it your community and the kind of project you chase, and it finds your competitors for you. See Compare locations if you already know who you want to line up.
- Analyze works at three geography levels: States, Metros, and Counties. Cities are not available here.
- Counties load a larger dataset than states or metros, so switching to Counties can take a moment the first time.
Steps
Choose your community
- Under Your community, click States, Metros, or Counties to pick a level.
- Type into the search box (Search for your state…, …metro area…, or …county…) and click a result to select it. Your choice appears in a highlighted card with its population and overall score. Click Change to pick a different community.
Pick what you're competing for
- Under What are you competing for?, click one of five persona cards.
Each weighs the same five layers — Cost, Workforce, Risk, Quality of Life,
and Regulatory — differently, depending on the kind of project:
- Manufacturing — Plants and production lines where operating costs decide the deal.
- Tech & innovation — Software, R&D, and digital teams that follow the talent.
- Distribution & logistics — Warehouses and freight operations that need cheap, connected ground.
- A bit of everything — A general read across costs, people, and quality of life. Selected by default.
- Headquarters & offices — Corporate offices weighing livability and professional talent.
Read your competitive set
Once you've picked a community and a persona, Your competitive set lists up to ten competitors: the locations most like yours for that kind of project. How similar compares your location with each candidate across the same five layers, giving the most weight to the layers the persona cares about most; the candidates that land closest to you rank highest. Each row also shows a population, an overall score, and an At a glance tag such as "You lead 4 of 6 key measures" for that project type.
- Leave Only show similar-sized places checked to keep the set to competitors roughly a third to three-and-a-half times your population (in either direction); uncheck it to see the closest matches regardless of size.
- Click any row to run the head-to-head against that competitor below. The closest match is selected by default.
Read the head-to-head
Clicking a competitor opens a head-to-head section with:
- Where you win and Where they beat you — plain-language call-outs for every key measure that isn't a tie, worst or best gap first.
- Incentive firepower (states only) — compares the two states' tracked incentive activity, with an Incentive Competitiveness Score (ICS) badge and total tracked award value for each side. This card only appears when you're comparing states and both sides have enough tracked award data to score.
- A full measure-by-measure table showing your value, the competitor's value, and who leads each row.
Generate a report
- Once your competitive set is showing, click Generate Report to open a printable Competitive Position Report: your rank in the set, a radar chart of your five layers against the peer-set median, a composite-score bar chart across the whole set, up to two head-to-head tables, and a bottom-line summary of what to lead with and what to prepare an answer for.
- From the report, click Download Report to generate and save a PDF.
What happens next
- Opening the report also records it in your account's report history in the background — you don't need to click Save first. It shows up as a Compete Report in Reports → recent history, tagged with the Analyze surface.
- A compete report's history row has no in-place "Open" the way other saved reports do; instead it shows Open in Analyze, which sends you back to the wizard to rebuild the view. Rebuild your community, persona, and competitor selection the same way to get back to where you left off.
- Switching levels, changing your community, or picking a different persona clears your current competitor selection and head-to-head, so you start the read-through again from your competitive set.
Economic development organizations typically pick their own state, metro, or county, then choose the persona that matches the kind of prospects they're chasing (Manufacturing for a plant relocation, Tech & innovation for an R&D project) to see who they're really up against for that project type before a pitch.
Site selectors typically run Analyze from a client's leading candidate location rather than their own community — enter the client's top pick as "your community" and match the persona to the client's project type to surface look-alike alternatives worth adding to the shortlist.
Common questions
Q: Why is a neighboring county not showing up in my competitive set? A: The set ranks every county at the level by how close its Cost, Workforce, Risk, Quality of Life, and Regulatory scores are to yours for the persona you picked, not by geographic distance. A nearby county can still be a poor match if its scores diverge, while a county across the country with a similar economic profile can outrank it. Try a different persona if you expected a specific project type to change the ranking.
Q: Why does the incentive firepower card only show up sometimes? A: It's states-only, so it never appears at Metro or County level. Even at State level, it's hidden if either your state or the competitor you selected doesn't have enough tracked incentive-award data to produce a usable score.
Q: Can I choose my own competitors instead of the ones Analyze picks? A: Not inside Analyze — it's built to find your competitive set for you. If you already know who you want to compare, use Compare inside Explore instead, where you pick every location yourself. See Compare locations.
Q: I generated a report, but now I can't find it. Where did it go? A: Check Reports → recent history for a row labeled Compete Report; it's tagged with the Analyze surface and named after your community. Click Open in Analyze to return to the wizard — this reopens the wizard rather than the exact report, so pick the same community and persona to rebuild the view.
Q: Why did my competitive set change when I unchecked "Only show similar-sized places"? A: That checkbox filters candidates by population before ranking them. Turning it off widens the pool to every location at the level, so closer-matching but very differently sized places can now outrank similar-sized ones that showed up before.
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