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Ranjan Dailata
Ranjan Dailata

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Competitor Intelligence Agent: SERP Monitoring + Summary Insights with Thordata + OpenAI

#automation #n8n #webscraping #lowcode

Competitor Intelligence Agent: SERP Monitoring + Summary Insights with Thordata + OpenAI

Download Workflow

Pre-requisite

Signup Throdata

Introduction

Ever wished you could instantly analyze your competitors' SEO performance without spending hours scrolling through search results?

This guide will show you how to build a Competitor Intelligence Agent using n8n, Thordata’s SERP API, and OpenAI GPT-4.1-mini — all without writing a single line of code.

By the end, you’ll have a workflow that automatically:

  • Fetches live search results from Google, Bing, Yandex, and DuckDuckGo
  • Summarizes your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
  • Highlights keyword gaps, content opportunities, and SEO insights — ready to use in your marketing strategy

Why this workflow?

Let’s face it — competitor research is a pain.
You have to open multiple tabs, copy search results, and make sense of it all manually.

This workflow solves that by:

  • Pulling real-time data from multiple search engines
  • Using AI to analyze and summarize insights automatically
  • Delivering structured, human-readable reports within minutes

No more manual SERP scraping. Just actionable marketing intelligence.

Who is this for?

This workflow is perfect for:

  • Digital marketers who track competitors’ content and keyword strategy
  • SEO analysts who need quick SERP summaries
  • Agencies managing multiple clients’ search visibility
  • AI enthusiasts experimenting with automated market research in n8n

What you’ll need

Before starting, make sure you have:

How it works

Here’s a simple breakdown of what happens inside the workflow:

Step 1: Start the Search

You enter a keyword or topic — for example:

“Top AI productivity tools for startups 2025”

Step 2: Multi-Engine Data Fetch

n8n connects to Thordata’s SERP API and fetches search results from:

  • Google
  • Bing
  • Yandex
  • DuckDuckGo

Each request returns JSON results like titles, URLs, snippets, and ranks.

Step 3: AI Summarization

All those results are passed to OpenAI GPT-4.1-mini, which:

  • Identifies common competitors
  • Extracts recurring keywords
  • Finds topic clusters and ranking trends

Step 4: Output Insights

The final output is a clean, structured summary, for example:

{
  "top_competitors": ["HubSpot", "Ahrefs", "Semrush"],
  "content_trends": ["AI automation", "SEO forecasting", "keyword intelligence"],
  "keyword_opportunities": ["AI SEO tools", "content prediction software"],
  "summary": "Most competitors are focusing on predictive SEO and AI-based automation..."
}
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You can push this into Google Sheets, Notion, or Slack for your team.

Setup Guide (5 Minutes)

  1. Import the Workflow
    Download the JSON file and import it into your n8n dashboard.

  2. Add Credentials

  • Add your Thordata Bearer Token (for the search API)
  • Add your OpenAI API Key (for GPT analysis)

  1. Edit the Search Query
    Open the “Set Input” node and replace the sample query with your target topic.

  2. Execute the Workflow
    Hit Run Once — and watch the AI agent do its thing!

  3. View the Output
    You’ll see structured competitor insights in the n8n execution log.

Want to customize it?

Here are some ideas to make it your own:

  • Add Sentiment Analysis: Let GPT detect tone of competitor content
  • Add Alerts: If new competitors appear, send Slack or email notifications
  • Add Visualization: Push data into Looker Studio or Notion dashboards
  • Switch Models: Try gpt-4o-mini or Google Gemini for different perspectives

What you can do with it

Once your workflow runs smoothly, you can use it for:

  • Weekly competitor monitoring
  • SEO and content planning
  • Keyword opportunity analysis
  • Client reporting and insights

It’s like having a mini-SEO research assistant — running 24/7.

Conclusion

This workflow blends automation + intelligence — turning raw search data into competitive strategy insights.

Instead of wasting hours on research, you can focus on what matters — optimizing your content and outranking your competitors.

If you’d like to experiment with this workflow, you can publish it inside n8n’s community templates or fork it for your own AI research tools.

Top comments (1)

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onlineproxy profile image
OnlineProxy •

Import the workflow JSON into n8n and drop in creds with Header Auth - Thordata - Authorization: Bearer {{ env.THORDATA_TOKEN }} and OpenAI - Authorization: Bearer {{ env.OPENAI_API_KEY }}. Use one Set node for query/engines/country/language/location/device, parallelize engine fetches with a rate‑limited wrapper, then Merge - Clean - Summarize - ship it to Sheets/Notion/Slack. Normalize URLs before dedupe, cap results to top 10 to keep tokens in check, and force JSON outputs.