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A nice Search Engine Watch Forums thread asks for tips on how to learn about your competitors web statistics in any way. Normally, the best and most accurate method is to see the actual log files, but very often that is not possible. So what data can you get?
Some suggestions given in the thread include:
- Alexa - but we all know that it is far from accurate
- Quantcast - free internet ratings service.
- Compete - like Alexa
There are other services listed in the Search Engine Watch Forums thread, but I also want to point you to A List of Every Website Statistic Publicly Available by Rand, it is a very comprehensive list of publicly available tools that can help you learn as much as possible about your competitors web site.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
Comments:
SearcH EngineS WeB
01/22/2007 12:31 pm
The other way is to look at the title tags - and the use a search tool to isolate the most common anchor text in their BackLinks.... This gives a high correllation regarding what search terms they will come up on in GYM Using the Overture keyword tool and keyword Discovery - you can estimate their traffic with reasonable accuracy. Also check Digg and StumbleUpon and search by Domain name - nowadays, the amount of traffic generated by them are significant. Some companies use free trackers: http://seoptimization.blog.com/1221628/ So doing a Google search for:: sitemeter + product or service offered by your competition can yeild some surprising results. BTW: It would be fantastic if Sitemeter could be added to this blog. Blog Stats really should no longer be hidden
Gary Byrd
01/22/2007 03:10 pm
Quantcast is a free service - not "paid."
Barry Schwartz
01/22/2007 03:28 pm
Sorry about that, fixed...
Jordan Christensen
01/22/2007 08:23 pm
If you're willing to look at paid services, both comScore and HitWise get log files from ISPs and use that to provide competitive weblog-like data.