Size up a competitor's traffic, see which countries it draws from, find the podcasts it pays to advertise on and hear how customers describe the category, all inside ChatGPT. The Firecrawl plugin gets those answers from Firecrawl Alexandria, where Similarweb, Trends, Particle and PeerSpot provide the data.
Best for
- Product marketers using ChatGPT for competitor analysis before a launch.
- Growth teams using ChatGPT for market research to pick channels and countries based on where competitors find their audience.
- Content teams using ChatGPT for content creation who want customer language from real reviews.
Plugins and data providers
Plugin: the Firecrawl plugin. Traffic, search interest and podcast ad data in Firecrawl Alexandria become available in ChatGPT, along with web search and scraping for competitors' sites. Similarweb and Particle calls are paid in Firecrawl credits.
Data providers in Firecrawl Alexandria
| Provider | Tool | Marketing question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Similarweb | Traffic and engagement | A site's visit count for a month, plus engagement such as bounce rate. Each metric that comes back is billed. |
| Similarweb | Traffic geography | Which countries a domain's visits come from, for one month. |
| Similarweb | Marketing channel shares | Which marketing channels sent a site its visits that month, billed per channel row. |
| Trends | Interest over time | Whether interest in a brand, product or category is growing, compared on one scale. |
| Particle | Shows carrying a company's ads | The podcasts a company advertises on, ranked by ad count. |
| Particle | Sponsor leaderboard, top ten | The brands placing the most podcast ads right now and who is climbing. |
| PeerSpot | Reviews | Full-text software reviews with pros, cons, reviewer role and company size. |
Explore Firecrawl Alexandria data providers across categories
Starter prompt
Put in your competitor's domain and your market:
@firecrawl I'm writing a competitive brief on notion.so. Use Similarweb,
Trends and Particle in Firecrawl Alexandria, and show me the price of each
tool before you run it.
Cover:
- Worldwide monthly visits for August 2026.
- The top five countries by share of traffic for the same month.
- US search interest in "notion" versus "obsidian" over the past 12
months.
- Any podcasts where notion.so advertises, with ad counts.
Label each number with its source and month. Don't estimate anything the
tools didn't return.Before you start
- Install Firecrawl. The button following these steps adds it to ChatGPT.
- Connect Firecrawl. Trends calls are 5 credits and Particle calls 25. Create an account if you need one.
- Budget for Similarweb. Expect 110 to 550 credits per unit on Similarweb tools, which also draw down a Similarweb cap set for your team each month.
Limitations of using ChatGPT for marketing without Firecrawl
Marketing decisions rest on audience and competitor data, and ChatGPT on its own has none of it. That shows up in five ways.
- Made-up statistics. OpenAI lists fabricated studies, quotes and citations among the errors ChatGPT can make, often delivered with confidence (OpenAI). A market-size figure or "73% of buyers" claim can be pure invention.
- Last year's market. Without a tool, OpenAI's page explains, ChatGPT knows nothing newer than its training data, so this quarter's campaigns and breakout categories are missing.
- Search answers aren't measurements. Pages found through web search, and the citations to them, may be partial, stale or mistaken, according to OpenAI (OpenAI), and a press article quoting a traffic number is no substitute for the number itself.
- No AI exemption for claims. Announcing a sweep of deceptive AI schemes, the FTC said there is "no AI exemption from the laws on the books" (FTC). Claims in AI-drafted copy need the same substantiation as any other.
- AI-written reviews are banned. The FTC's 2024 rule prohibits fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones attributed to people who don't exist, and lets the agency seek civil penalties (FTC).
How ChatGPT gets traffic, demand and podcast ad data with Firecrawl
Using ChatGPT for digital marketing research with Firecrawl draws on several sources at once:
- Firecrawl Alexandria: the marketplace of data behind the plugin. Similarweb and Particle are among its 100+ licensed providers, and Firecrawl adds indexes it builds itself, from the open web to the Firecrawl Research Index. Swapping in Firecrawl Alexandria for default web tools, with nothing else changed, lifted answer quality 21% across Firecrawl's 845-task test.
- Similarweb for scale and audience: in August 2026, roughly 8.3 million visits reached ahrefs.com worldwide, and notion.so drew 22.2% of its desktop visits from the US, then 8.2% from Japan and 6.9% from South Korea.
- Particle for podcast advertising: the sponsor leaderboard put SpinQuest first with 15,117 ads across 845 podcasts, while Vrbo climbed five places to third. For grainger.com, Particle counted 158,891 ads, led by The John Batchelor Show.
- Trends and PeerSpot for demand and language: Trends shows whether a brand or category is gaining attention, and PeerSpot reviews give you the phrases customers use when they praise or criticize a product.
Marketing research in ChatGPT with and without Firecrawl Alexandria
| ChatGPT alone | ChatGPT with Firecrawl Alexandria | |
|---|---|---|
| Competitor traffic | Unknown or estimated | Similarweb monthly visits and engagement |
| Audience location | Assumed | Similarweb share of traffic by country |
| Channel mix | Generic advice | Similarweb traffic split by marketing channel |
| Podcast advertising | Not available | Particle shows and ad counts per sponsor |
| Category demand | Described from memory | Trends interest over time, by country or region |
| Source | Hard to verify | Similarweb, Trends, Particle and PeerSpot, all in Firecrawl Alexandria, which spans 100+ providers. Explore the catalog |
| Customer language | Brainstormed | PeerSpot review text with reviewer role and company size |
Build your own marketing workflow
Choose the angle you need. For a product marketer before a launch:
@firecrawl Pull PeerSpot reviews for Asana and list the five complaints
that come up most, with quotes and reviewer roles. Then compare US Trends
interest in "asana" and "monday.com" over the past year.For a growth lead picking channels:
@firecrawl For grainger.com, list the podcasts Particle shows it advertises
on, with ad counts, then show the current top-ten podcast sponsor
leaderboard and who moved up.Each prompt names the companies, the sources and what to return, which keeps ChatGPT reporting data rather than opinions.
Take it further
Map a competitor's markets
@firecrawl Get Similarweb traffic geography for hubspot.com for August 2026
and list the top ten countries by share. Show the price first.Spot a rising category
@firecrawl Compare US search interest in "ai note taker", "meeting notes
app" and "transcription app" over the past 12 months and name the
fastest grower.Plan a podcast buy
@firecrawl Who are the top podcast sponsors this week on Particle, and
which of them sell software to businesses?Read a competitor's pricing page
@firecrawl Scrape https://www.notion.com/pricing and summarize each plan,
its price and the features it adds.Check costs first
@firecrawl Which tools show website traffic, search interest, podcast ad
counts or software reviews? List each with its price.What it costs
No credits go to browsing tools or reading their prices. Spending starts with the first priced call, and Firecrawl pricing explains what each plan allows.
| Tool | Answers | Credits per call |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic and engagement (Similarweb) | How big is a competitor's site | 110 per metric returned |
| Traffic geography (Similarweb) | Where its visitors are | 110 |
| Marketing channel shares (Similarweb) | Which channels drive its traffic | 550 per row returned |
| Interest over time (Trends) | Is interest growing | 5 |
| Shows carrying a company's ads (Particle) | Where it advertises on podcasts | 25 |
| Sponsor leaderboard, top ten (Particle) | Who runs the most podcast ads | 25 |
| Reviews (PeerSpot) | What users say | 5 |
Each answer ends with a note of the tool ChatGPT chose and its credit cost.
[ Marketing in ChatGPT ]
Install the Firecrawl plugin and research competitors with real traffic and ad data. Checking prices is free.
Related use cases
- How to use ChatGPT for SEO keyword research: keywords, rising queries and the pages that rank.
- How to find podcast sponsors in ChatGPT: a deeper look at Particle's podcast advertising data.
- How to use ChatGPT at work: competitor, vendor and account research for other teams.
Coverage limits
- Similarweb by month. Each call covers one complete month, and worldwide requests were more reliable than country-level ones in our tests. Traffic geography defaults to desktop visits.
- Podcasts only. Particle tracks podcast ads, not paid social, search or display spend.
- Software reviews. PeerSpot covers enterprise software, so consumer brands may have no reviews there.