Pick your competitors, and say which channels are the same person
Three competitors switch on the field measurement and the climb email. One person often runs several channels, a Shorts channel, a second subject, a personal brand, so you can say which belong together: a brand counts as one competitor, and your own second channel is never treated as a rival.
After you connect, one more step
The instant audit lands with a card: pick three competitors. VideoCore measures what their audiences reward, finds what they do that you never have, and emails you when one of their videos starts climbing. Click Pick competitors.
Add them on Channel setup, step 3
One box: a channel name, a channel link, an @handle or any video link from the channel, and the name fills itself. A video link names its channel exactly; a plain name is accepted only when VideoCore already measures one channel under that name, never guessed from a search. Direct, Adjacent or Aspirational says what each one is to you. Added here, they join the daily sweep: views, new uploads and title changes, measured and dated.
Same person as
Every resolved competitor row has a Same person as control. Choose your own channel or another competitor, then what this channel is to that person: Shorts or clips, a second subject, a personal brand. Linked channels count as one competitor from the next nightly pass.
Looks like the same person
Each night VideoCore reads the names and the links in video descriptions and proposes pairs, here vidIQ and vidIQ Podcasts, Think Media and Think Media Podcast. Nothing is linked until you click Link them. Not the same means it is never proposed again. You get a notification and an email when a pair appears.
The Competitors page
The same list as cards, with Analyze per channel and the full radar scan. A channel that belongs to a brand says so on its card: Same person as, and the brand name.
Why it works this way
A competitor is a channel you chose, never one we guessed; a field built from guesses would rank the wrong people. Ownership is not something YouTube tells anyone, so VideoCore proposes from names and links and leaves the decision to you, and it says why it proposed each pair.