Estimating traffic for a competitor

algospider

algospider

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Hello guys,

I am trying to estimate traffic for my competitors. Currently, I am using semrush, which is pretty cool. However, I was wondering if there are also other sources, which I could use to estimate how many visitors a competitor site is getting?

Appreciate your reply!
 
secretagentdad said:
nobody else will let you free trial it.
Click to expand...

I didn't asked for a free trial of semrush, I asked for:

How to measure competition?

Please read my question!

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You missed his point.

No other service that offers that data will give you a free trial like semrush does.

Don't be a dick to people on forums that are trying to help you. He has probably forgotten more than I know and you just spat in his face. Now he'll never help you again.
 
Gentlemen, that's a nice and proper resolution to an easy-to-make mistake online. Without hearing tone of voice, it's very easy to misread the intention of another person. Glad to see a nice apology.

Algospider, it's not the most accurate thing, but Alexa might give you some info. Spyfu might have some data as well. It's all going to be very +/- by a long shot without access to their analytics.
 
Just ask the website owner. Seriously, tell them you are looking to buy ad space (not as your brand but use some fake site or random@gmail.com email and claim you are from XYZ company, use your imagination) and want to known monthly stats to determine budget... you would be surprised at what they reply back, with analytics data and all.

With that said due to the nature of the internet it's impossible for any service to determine true amounts, since there are traffic sources which cannot be measured accurately by 3rd parties like email - (newsletter drops), or offline campaigns like direct mail, TV spots that drive traffic to the direct URLs, radio spots, etc.

At most SEMrush, Nielsen and the likes will get you a close enough estimate of what search engines are sending as well as sources which they tap into, but to truly know with 100% accuracy - only the website owner will know.

I've got a site above the Alexa 1MM mark that generates 1K visitors a day, but my target is outside of the Alexa audience, so as far as anyone knows, I'm getting less then 2 people a day if we go off of 3rd party reporting.

Narrow your question down to source types, search engines, social media, and so on, and you'll be able to get some better data.
 
One way that I've been using in the past is using Alexa.com's reach value. This method provides rather accurate results for sites that are have traffic rank better than 100000. I wrote a custom script to calculate this but essentially the method boils down to this:
  1. You need to find out 3 months real visitors for at least three big sites in the country you're mainly targeting. Some big sites share their numbers online but remember that you need to match the period those numbers are from to Alexa's 3 month average reach you are using.
  2. Use some linear function magic (8000000000*REAL TRAFFIC + 49771) and then divide the answer with real traffic number - let's call this error range.
  3. Do step 2 for every website you've data from.
  4. Get average of all error ranges.
  5. Then you use polinomic 2nd degree function to estimate traffic for the site your are interested in based on its Alexa reach: (-10000000000000*(SITE_REACH^2)+10000000000*(SITE_REACH) - 3272,2)
The idea for calculating errors for big sites first is to see what's the average error is. Then you'll have better understanding how much error there could be in the number you get from step 5.
 
You can also try compete.com and quantcast.com; they're useful for general numbers and also getting an idea of what the demographic looks like, but the data is based on rough estimates and you'll have to make your best judgement.
 
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