My competitor copied my content and somehow outranked me

I also know this happens many times.

Had this exact thing happen to one of my sites last year. Older page, more depth, still got passed. What fixed it for me wasnt more content... it was internal links. The competitor had their page linked from like 4 or 5 of their stronger pages and mine was basically an orphan sitting at the bottom of a category. Once I pointed a few authority pages internally toward it, started clawing back position within a few weeks.

@MajestySEO is right about the backlink check too, pull both profiles in ahrefs and compare referring domains, not just total links. quality matters way more than count there. But honestly dont sleep on the engagement angle either, if their layout keeps people on page longer google notices. seen pages with thinner content win just because the bounce was lower.

Run copyscape first like he said though. if its an actual copy thats the easy win.

google rewards strong authority site.
once i put a single sentence content (about 15 words) with same title. and it outranked the all sites having 400-600 words content. my site is DA90.

this is common mostly older authroty domains beat new domains by publishing the same content.

Before assuming its just authority, check if google search console is flagging a duplicate, google chose different canonical notice on your page like starblazer described, thats a very specific signal and tells you exactly whats happening rather than guessing

If thats not it, pull both pages through a backlink checker and compare referring domains specifically in the last 60-90 days, not total backlinks. ive seen cases where the original had way more total links but the copycat picked up 5-6 fresh relevant links right before the swap happened, recency of links matters more than total count for this kind of overtake

If its neither of those, check your internal linking, sometimes the copy gets linked from a higher traffic page on the same site and that internal signal alone tips it

if its an exact copy, hit them with a Google DMCA/Spam report. If it's rephrased reports wont work. Just outoptimize them

I have run into this before and itss frustrating when a newer similar page outranks the original in many cases google isnt rewarding who published first its rewarding the page or site it trusts more stronger authority better backlinks tighter intent matching or stronger user signals can often outweigh content depth and publish date.

i have seen this happen before. being first does not always mean you will rank higher. in many cases authority, backlinks, internal linking and overall site trust carry more weight than who published first.
If the content is nearly then i would compare their link profile and page level authority first. i have seen weaker content outrank better content simply because it was on stronger domain.