Looking at a website's traffic gives a good idea of how successful that
website is. If you own a website, then finding out traffic stats for it
is not that big a deal. But what if you don't own a website, but still
want to spy on it? Maybe, that site is your competitor i.e. in the same
niche as your own. In my post on 20 Hot SEO Tactics,
I raised the point that if you want to succeed, you should keep an eye
on what your competitors are doing, so that you get a better idea of
what you need to do, and what you don't need to do. Luckily for you,
there are a bunch of free tools that can give you estimated stats for a
certain website. They might not be very accurate, but at least they give
you a general approximation of stats, such as page-views, unique
visits, earnings etc. Here are the top 5 such tools;
1. Alexa - The Web Information Company
Alexa is the leading web information company which is free. And it
provides a good, detailed list of stats. It will give you estimates on
the number of page-views, bounce rate, search analytics, audience
information, reach (which, according to Alexa, is determined by the
number of unique visitors), and a lot more.
Now Alexa might not be as good as Google Analytics, but it comes close.
In fact, its page-view stats are quite near to those shown by Google
Analytics, and it follows the same graph as well. Below is a picture of
MBT traffic stats as shown by Alexa. Note that these might not be
accurate, but they are closer to the facts than any other analytics
company.
2. Google Ad Planner
This is one of the best tools for monitoring website statistics. And
it's a lot more accurate than many other tools. It gives you the option
for monitoring worldwide stats as well stats by region. It gives you all
the basic stats like unique visitors, page-views, demographic details,
and more. Google Ad Planner is a must-try for all. One thing though. You
have to sign into your Google Account for viewing Ad Planner stats
3. Google Trends
If you want to look at stats for large websites, like Wikipedia etc,
then this is the thing for you. Google Trends statistics can be very
accurate, since it makes use of multiple analytics tools such as Google
Analytics, third party statistic tools, and other marketing researches.
The only drawback to it is though, it shows stats for sites that have a
very high traffic flow.
4. Compete
Compete is a good resource for monitoring website stats for the U.S. It
can get pretty close to the actual stats of a websites, since it uses
data from ISPs as well. But unfortunately, it is limited to the U.S.
Hence, it displays stats for traffic coming from U.S. only. But on the
positive side, it has web statistics for nearly every website on the
internet.
5. TrafficEstimate
TrafficEstimate, as the name suggests, gives a general estimate of your
website stats. It provides information in many areas, such as
page-views, unique visits, keyword stats, and more. If you are looking
for keyword suggestions and similar information from your competitor
websites, then this is a good place to start.
In the end, just for fun, let me tell you about another such tool, Site
Worth Checker. The only thing I think is accurate about this tool is the
page-views, although other are good estimates too. But the fun part
about it is, it tells you how much your website is worth in USD.
According to Site Worth Checker, MBT is worth $215,000 :D. Of course, it
is not an accurate estimation, but you could compete with your friends
and fellow bloggers, just for the sake of fun :)