Comments on: Looking for reliable site-traffic data

By: LFNeilson

LFNeilson — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:53:05 +0000

Off-season, our traffic counts are pretty low. The meter reader came down the road today and tripled it.
zzzzzzzz

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:15:14 +0000

I should explain that the Google stuff is search volume, but it’s been shown to be a somewhat reasonable proxy for site sizing/traffic.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:04:02 +0000

Google has their Trends site to compare websites:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=cnn.com%2C+msnbc.com%2C+foxnews.com&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

By: Adam Gaffin

Adam Gaffin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:39:43 +0000

Ah! What Jason said. The main issue is that, yes, Quantcast is more accurate with sites running their code.

By: Nick Name

Nick Name — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:18:38 +0000

Data on other people’s websites is a closely guarded secret in most cases. I doubt you’d find anything really reliable that they wouldn’t tell you themselves.

By: lkcape

lkcape — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:12:01 +0000

Try Alexa… http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/dankennedy.com

By: Bob Fontaine

Bob Fontaine — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:09:20 +0000

Your prior posters are correct with both Quantcast and Compete. I have about 20+ sites myself, and another few dozen clients, and both of those measurments are way off, unfortunately. If you’re looking to measure a given site vs another I could probably help you using various other tools. If you looking for position related to specific search criteria, same thing. You can look at page rank, positioning, paid positions, the average pay-per price for a given term, etc.. But I have not found a reliable tool to measure other website’s traffic. If there’s something specific you’re seeking, other than a “number”, shoot me an email and i’d be happy to let you know what I come up with.

By: Jason Butler

Jason Butler — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:56:31 +0000

If you’re just looking for rough comparisons (apples to apples) without putting money of the precision of the results, then either Quantcast or Compete are fine. I’ve found that Quantcast gives you a bit more useful information up front; Compete is quicker to demand money.

Compete also tends to give much higher unique visitor numbers (on the tests I’ve run recently).

By: Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:47:39 +0000

Adam and Ikcape: I didn’t explain myself well at all. I’m looking for data on other people’s Web sites, not mine. I use SiteMeter and WordPress’s own system, which are more than sufficient for my purposes.

By: lkcape

lkcape — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:44:21 +0000

Google Analytics.

Allows detail looks at a variety of of statistics.

If your web host has it, have him activate a Control Panel for you. In that is a function called ASWSTATs which gives you another set of detailed usage data.