10 Ways To Find How Much Traffic / Business Your Competitor is Getting – Using the Internet For Competitive Intelligence
Ever
wonder how that competitor of yours is doing? Curious about how you can
find out how much traffic or how many orders they receive?
You can use the internet to perform competitive intelligence on your competitors, and then take that information and use it to improve your site. By using these existing online Internet tools and social engineering queries, you can find out how much business your competitors is earning.
“Before you can run these competitive analysis tests on your competitors, try running this on yourself or your company or your own site first”
If you are thinking about starting a business, you can “Test” the business by estimating how well you might do.
As a side note, the best way to test this is to try these techniques on your site to see if your competitors can determine how much business you are doing.
Let’s start with the easiest methods and work upwards:
1. Stat Counter: See if they have a visible stat counter – visit every day for a week and see how the counter changes. Then visit it weekly to watch for changes such as spikes around Christmas, or if there is a news story related to your industry, if that results in more traffic.
2. Order Something: Another way to get competitive intelligence on a competitor is to order something small and see what the invoice number is, then go back and order a week later and see how that invoice number changed. Repeat as often as your curiosity and bank balance allows you to.
3. Check Alexa Ranking: Alexa is a service that estimates traffic based on visitors to various sites using the Alexa toolbar. From the Alexa site, it says;
“How are Alexa’s traffic rankings determined? Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and page views. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Page views are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single page view. The site with the highest combination of users and page views is ranked #1.
Alexa’s traffic rankings are for top level domains only (e.g. domain.com). We do not provide separate rankings for subpages within a domain (e.g. www.domain.com/subpage.html) or subdomains (e.g. subdomain.domain.com) unless we are able to automatically identify them as personal home pages or blogs, like those hosted on Geocities and Tripod. If a site is identified as a personal home page or blog, its traffic ranking will have an asterisk (*) next to it: Personal Page Avg. Traffic Rank: 3,456*. Personal pages are ranked on the same scale as a regular domain, so a personal page ranked 3,456* is the 3,456th most popular page among Alexa users.
4. Check Statbrain: Statbrain is another service to estimate the amount of traffic to a site. They say,”How accurate is Statbrain? Statbrain estimates the number of visits that a website has based on offsite factors like backlinks, Alexa Rank etc. Statbrain does not have access to log files or any counter information. The number
of visits that Statbrain estimates gives you an idea of the number of visits that a website has, but not the exact visitor number.”
I have tested it against some of my sites and I would say it is in the ballpark.
5. Yahoo Search: Use Yahoo Search to determine who links to a particular site
In the search box enter EACH of the following permutations, as even though they appear the same, they may produce different results
http://www.DomainName.com
http://DomainName.com
DomainName.com
link:http://DomainName.com
link:http://www.DomainName.com
link:DomainName.com
“http://www.DomainName.com” with the quote marks
“www.DomainName.com” with the quote marks
“DomainName.com” with the quote marks
Please note, that some of the above searches will return zero results, while others may return thousands of results.
6. Google Search: Use Google Search to determine who links to a particular site
In the search box enter EACH of the following permutations, as even though they appear the same, they may produce different results
http://www.DomainName.com
http://DomainName.com
DomainName.com
link:http://DomainName.com
link:http://www.DomainName.com
link:DomainName.com
“http://www.DomainName.com” with the quote marks
“www.DomainName.com” with the quote marks
“DomainName.com” with the quote marks
Please note, that some of the above searches will return zero results, while others may return thousands of results.
7. WhoLinks2Me: Use online link analysis resources to analyze competitors links.
Try WhoLinks2Me
8. Social Engineering Look-Ups: Try “social engineering look-ups” and try and guess the admin
page for the competitors stat program
domainname.com/logs.htm
domainname.com/logs.html
domainname.com/stats.html
domainname.com/stats/
domainname.com/admin/
domainname.com/logs/
… not all these work, but you get the idea.
9. Social Engineering Searchers: Try “social engineering searches” ie
“domainname.com” +logs
“domainname.com” +stats
“domainname.com” +”number of visitors”
“domainname.com “+visitors
… not all these work, but you get the idea.
10. HTML: Try peeking at the HTML
Do a view source and see if you can see a reference to a stat counter. Usually you can find the code for a stat program right before the closing body HTML code, ie /body
Some times domains use free stats counters I just randomly searched and found http://touchngo.com/stats/camyesterday.htm you can see their stats
You can use the internet to perform competitive intelligence on your competitors, and then take that information and use it to improve your site. By using these existing online Internet tools and social engineering queries, you can find out how much business your competitors is earning.
“Before you can run these competitive analysis tests on your competitors, try running this on yourself or your company or your own site first”
If you are thinking about starting a business, you can “Test” the business by estimating how well you might do.
As a side note, the best way to test this is to try these techniques on your site to see if your competitors can determine how much business you are doing.
Let’s start with the easiest methods and work upwards:
1. Stat Counter: See if they have a visible stat counter – visit every day for a week and see how the counter changes. Then visit it weekly to watch for changes such as spikes around Christmas, or if there is a news story related to your industry, if that results in more traffic.
2. Order Something: Another way to get competitive intelligence on a competitor is to order something small and see what the invoice number is, then go back and order a week later and see how that invoice number changed. Repeat as often as your curiosity and bank balance allows you to.
3. Check Alexa Ranking: Alexa is a service that estimates traffic based on visitors to various sites using the Alexa toolbar. From the Alexa site, it says;
“How are Alexa’s traffic rankings determined? Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and page views. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Page views are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single page view. The site with the highest combination of users and page views is ranked #1.
Alexa’s traffic rankings are for top level domains only (e.g. domain.com). We do not provide separate rankings for subpages within a domain (e.g. www.domain.com/subpage.html) or subdomains (e.g. subdomain.domain.com) unless we are able to automatically identify them as personal home pages or blogs, like those hosted on Geocities and Tripod. If a site is identified as a personal home page or blog, its traffic ranking will have an asterisk (*) next to it: Personal Page Avg. Traffic Rank: 3,456*. Personal pages are ranked on the same scale as a regular domain, so a personal page ranked 3,456* is the 3,456th most popular page among Alexa users.
4. Check Statbrain: Statbrain is another service to estimate the amount of traffic to a site. They say,”How accurate is Statbrain? Statbrain estimates the number of visits that a website has based on offsite factors like backlinks, Alexa Rank etc. Statbrain does not have access to log files or any counter information. The number
of visits that Statbrain estimates gives you an idea of the number of visits that a website has, but not the exact visitor number.”
I have tested it against some of my sites and I would say it is in the ballpark.
5. Yahoo Search: Use Yahoo Search to determine who links to a particular site
In the search box enter EACH of the following permutations, as even though they appear the same, they may produce different results
http://www.DomainName.com
http://DomainName.com
DomainName.com
link:http://DomainName.com
link:http://www.DomainName.com
link:DomainName.com
“http://www.DomainName.com” with the quote marks
“www.DomainName.com” with the quote marks
“DomainName.com” with the quote marks
Please note, that some of the above searches will return zero results, while others may return thousands of results.
6. Google Search: Use Google Search to determine who links to a particular site
In the search box enter EACH of the following permutations, as even though they appear the same, they may produce different results
http://www.DomainName.com
http://DomainName.com
DomainName.com
link:http://DomainName.com
link:http://www.DomainName.com
link:DomainName.com
“http://www.DomainName.com” with the quote marks
“www.DomainName.com” with the quote marks
“DomainName.com” with the quote marks
Please note, that some of the above searches will return zero results, while others may return thousands of results.
7. WhoLinks2Me: Use online link analysis resources to analyze competitors links.
Try WhoLinks2Me
8. Social Engineering Look-Ups: Try “social engineering look-ups” and try and guess the admin
page for the competitors stat program
domainname.com/logs.htm
domainname.com/logs.html
domainname.com/stats.html
domainname.com/stats/
domainname.com/admin/
domainname.com/logs/
… not all these work, but you get the idea.
9. Social Engineering Searchers: Try “social engineering searches” ie
“domainname.com” +logs
“domainname.com” +stats
“domainname.com” +”number of visitors”
“domainname.com “+visitors
… not all these work, but you get the idea.
10. HTML: Try peeking at the HTML
Do a view source and see if you can see a reference to a stat counter. Usually you can find the code for a stat program right before the closing body HTML code, ie /body
Some times domains use free stats counters I just randomly searched and found http://touchngo.com/stats/camyesterday.htm you can see their stats
Comments
Post a Comment