Ever wonder how much monthly traffic a website gets? C’mon, you’ve got to be curious about what kind of visits your competitors get. If you’re not, you should be!
Well, there’s a FREE and easy way to check, just use Compete. It’s really simple. I should note that I am not being paid to make this recommendation.
Here’s a graph of Compete.com’s traffic for the last year:
Once you get to the home page, all you need to do is choose the “Site Profile” tab and type in the domain name (i.e. yourdomain.com) of the site for which you want to see stats. You can also select the “Compare Sites” tab and enter in as many as three domains to compare numbers. That can be very helpful if you want to see how your site stacks up with the competition.
Cool, right? I use this all the time, especially when I get a call from a new lead. It’s a super-quick way for me to get a sense of what theyr traffic load is like. In most cases, poeple are calling becuase they’ve seen a big drop in traffic and want to know how to fix it.
I will say this – don’t take the data Compete displays as gospel. For instance, there is a disparity when I compare the numbers for my site from analytics program to what it says on Compete. But it’s not large enough for me to use another service. One other thing I have noticed is that the oldest data being displayed seems to be more accurate. For example, the data older than the previous month is more accurate than what I typically see for the previous month. So keep that in mind.
One clarifier about where the data comes from. According to Compete, they have a consumer panel of about 2 million users. Here’s what they say, “our online panel is comprised of a statistically representative cross-section of consumers who have given permission to have their internet clickstream behaviors and opt-in survey responses analyzed anonymously as a new source of marketing research. The Compete panel is several times larger than traditional panels, which means that we help clients measure and benefit from more insights.”
I’ve never had a reason to try the premium subscription, but it offers a lot more data. I’m not sure this makes sense for the common webmaster or business owner. If you love stats, give it a shot and let me know what you think.
Add Compete to your toolbox and let me know what you think.