# Business areas

Business areas are your lines of business, such as "Payroll" and "Expense management", or "Home insurance" and "Car insurance". Each topic sits in one area, and each area has its own competitors, so a brand you only meet in one line of business isn't counted against you in the others.

## Why areas matter

Without areas, every tracked competitor counts on every prompt. For a company with several lines of business that skews the comparison: a car insurer would show up as missing from your home insurance answers, and pull your share of voice down there. With areas, a competitor counts only in the answers of the areas it competes in.

## Setting them up

- **During setup:** step 3 groups your topics into areas. Rename an area, add one, and move a topic with its **Area** picker.
- **Afterwards:** **Settings → Project settings → Business areas** lists each area with its topics. Click **New area** to add one, rename an area, or **Merge into…** another to fold two together.

A project with one line of business needs only one area, and you won't see area controls anywhere until there are two.

## Competitors per area and market

A competitor is tracked per market and per area: a brand can compete with you on payroll in Germany and on nothing in France. On the [Competitors](competitors.html) page, the **Areas** column shows where each competitor counts, and the tabs above the table show one area at a time.

- **New:** found in the area's first scan. It is confirmed once later answers there name it often enough.
- **Rarely named:** recent answers in that area have rarely named it. **Keep** keeps it tracked there anyway.
- **Not a competitor here** (the × on an area) takes a competitor out of that area's comparisons only. It isn't tracked there again on its own; everywhere else it stays as it is. To rule a brand out everywhere, stop tracking it from **Actions**.
- **Track here** brings it back into an area where it was ruled out.

If a brand you ruled out in an area is named there often enough later, the Competitors page asks whether to track it there after all, rather than adding it on its own.

Competitors you add yourself are tracked in the area you're viewing, or in every area when you're viewing all of them.

## Reading the dashboard by area

Once a project has two or more areas, the bar at the top of each dashboard page has an **Areas** filter. Pick one area to see its prompts, its competitors and its numbers only. See [Filters and time range](filters.html#areas). Reports show each market as a whole, then per area.