Analyze competitors across platforms with structured data

This skill analyzes competitors by extracting structured data from Google Maps, Booking.com, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok using Apify Actors, then walks through five steps: identify the competitor-analysis type and pick the matching Actor, fetch that Actor's live input schema through the mcpc CLI, ask the user for an output format and result count, run the analysis script, and summarize the findings. The Actor catalog spans location and feature benchmarking (compass/crawler-google-places, compass/google-maps-extractor, poidata/google-maps-email-extractor for contact discovery), hotel benchmarking (voyager/booking-scraper, voyager/booking-reviews-scraper), Facebook ad, page, post, reels, comment, event, follower, and review analysis (apify/facebook-ads-scraper, apify/facebook-pages-scraper, apify/facebook-posts-scraper, apify/facebook-reels-scraper, apify/facebook-comments-scraper, apify/facebook-events-scraper, apify/facebook-followers-following-scraper, apify/facebook-reviews-scraper, apify/facebook-search-scraper), Instagram profile, post, comment, reel, and follower-growth tracking (apify/instagram-profile-scraper, apify/instagram-post-scraper, apify/instagram-comment-scraper, apify/instagram-reel-scraper, apify/instagram-followers-count-scraper, apify/instagram-scraper, apify/instagram-api-scraper), and YouTube and TikTok video, comment, channel, and profile analysis (streamers/youtube-scraper, streamers/youtube-comments-scraper, streamers/youtube-channel-scraper, clockworks/tiktok-scraper, clockworks/tiktok-video-scraper, clockworks/tiktok-profile-scraper). Once an Actor is chosen, the skill fetches its live schema and README through mcpc so the run reflects the Actor's real, current inputs and outputs.

Use this skill when you need competitor benchmarks for content, reviews, pricing, ads, audience, or channel performance, or when the task is selecting Apify Actors to compare competitors across maps, booking, social, or video platforms and turning the result into structured data with synthesized takeaways for strategy or positioning. It is not the right tool for unrelated data pulls that aren't about a named competitor - lead generation and pricing-monitoring work are covered by sibling skills built for those specific jobs. Per its own limitations, it should be used only when the task clearly matches this scope, its output is not a substitute for environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review, and the workflow calls for stopping to ask for clarification when required inputs, permissions, safety boundaries, or success criteria are missing.

Running the skill requires an .env file with APIFY_TOKEN, Node.js 20.6 or newer for native --env-file support, and the mcpc CLI installed via npm install -g @apify/mcpc. The chosen Actor's schema and details come from:

export $(grep APIFY_TOKEN .env | xargs) && mcpc --json mcp.apify.com --header "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" tools-call fetch-actor-details actor:="ACTOR_ID" | jq -r ".content"

which returns the Actor's description and README plus its required and optional input parameters and available output fields. The user then picks an output format - a quick in-chat answer, a full CSV export, or a full JSON export - and a result count sized to the use case. The analysis itself runs through run_actor.js with the selected --actor and --input, adding --output and --format for file exports. The closing step reports how many competitors were analyzed, the output file's location and name, the key competitive insights found, and suggested next steps such as deeper analysis or benchmarking.

The skill runs on the Apify platform through Apify Actors and the mcpc MCP client, with credentials loaded from .env. Documented error handling covers a missing APIFY_TOKEN, a missing mcpc install, a misspelled Actor ID, a failed run pointing to the Apify console link in the error output, and timeouts, which it suggests fixing by shrinking the input size or raising --timeout.

Competitive-intelligence analysts, marketing and growth teams, and product strategists who need repeatable, structured competitor data - ad creatives, review counts, follower growth, post cadence - pulled from Google Maps, Booking.com, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok without hand-building a separate Actor call for each platform.