“Ignorance might be bliss but isn’t when it comes to internet marketing (and many more things).” Getting an idea about your competitor’s traffic is very important. If you don’t know about what others are doing you’re going to fall behind.
There are a lot of ways to spy on your competitors. However, to check if a niche works in blogging you have to know whether others are getting traffic else it’s a bad plan. Knowing the traffic of other bloggers also have many other benefits.
If you’re someone who thinks you can succeed without knowing about what others are doing then you’re WRONG. It’s impossible for your blog/business to get profitable if you don’t learn from others.
So, what are the other advantages of getting other bloggers data? Is it limited to getting an idea of what’s working? Let’s talk about it in little details.
Why you should check the traffic of other sites?
Some hidden benefits of knowing the traffic of knowing your competitor’s traffic –
- Easy to know the daily/monthly visits of any competitor.
- You will know their top keywords which you can target to get more traffic to your own blog.
- Knowing others traffic sources (social, organic, referral) is a big advantage.
- Getting insights like bounce rate, page views, time spent on site is great.
Now, here is the list of some amazing tools which let you do so (there are both paid & free tools). Let’s start…
15 Best Website Traffic Checker Tools To Know Your Competitors Traffic
#1 SEMRush
SEMRush is the tool I use to get insights into my competitor’s data. It’s one of the best tools to check website traffic of others. The data provided by SEMRush is near perfect. And, therefore a lot of bloggers also recommend it.
Not only does SEMRush provide the volume of visitors it also shows you the keywords other sites rank for. There’s a lot you can do with it. However, right now we’ll be sticking to the spying part only. It’s easy to spy on others with SEMRush.
These are the steps – go to the dashboard, put the URL of the other site in the dashboard then you’ll see the results. Make sure you select the domain overview option in the search box. Here are the results –
You can also see the breakdown of traffic as organic search/paid traffic. SEMRush is one of the most powerful SEO tools and you should consider to use it. If you want to know more about it, read our detailed review of SEMRush.
#2 SimilarWeb
Another tool which I frequently use to check the traffic of my competitors’ sites. This tool is much easier to use check traffic as it’s also available as a Google Chrome extension so I don’t need to visit the site again and again.
If you need a tool only for checking other people’s traffic then using SimilarWeb is better. It’s a freemium tool i.e, you can use it for free but to get more detailed results you will need to upgrade. However, their free version is also good.
SimilarWeb is made especially for getting an edge over your competition by knowing their traffic. You can easily get the no. of page views, bounce rate, time on site with the free version. And it’s not limited to these details there are a lot more.
It also gives you other information like sources, the location of visitors, top keywords, etc. Even if sometimes it can not be 100% accurate it’s worth trying as the free version is just free to use. Right? So, you must check it out.
#3 Quantcast
Quantcast is one of the oldest tools to measure a site’s traffic. It was started way back in 2006 and is an online advertising company. Quantcast gives almost exact figures to a site’s traffic most of the times. But sometimes it doesn’t.
Also using Quantcast isn’t easy. While you need to login to most of the tools in this list but for Quantcast, you will have to do much work. Finding sites isn’t a cakewalk in it and it doesn’t have data of sites with little searches.
But for sites which Quantcast has data, it’s almost accurate and doesn’t differentiate much. However, I think there are much better options on this list like Alexa or SimilarWeb. It’s still great to check the data of top sites.
When used to its maximum, Quantcast can provide with you with amazing data. You can know shopping interests, media interest and more which will help you to create your own brand. But remember it won’t have data for new blogs (or sites).
#4 Ahrefs
Aherfs is much more of an SEO tool but can be also used to spy on your competitor’s sites. You can use Aherfs to monitor the organic traffic of any given site. It’s the same as SEMRush yet a little different in some aspects.
Ahrefs is the only tool that gives a hard time to SEMRush that’s what I think. Using Ahrefs is the same as SEMRush i.e, login to dashboard then enter the website and enjoy the precious data.
However, power comes at a cost and using a powerful tool like Ahrefs isn’t going to be cheap. It’s more costly than a lot of other tools. But it’s worth it as the data makes it up for the cost. With the data, you can get your site ahead.
They have even written a blog post on this same topic. Ahrefs blog is one of the best SEO blogs (I like to read from their blog). If you’re looking for a tool that’s good for SEO and can give you insights about your competitors then it’s a good tool.
#5 SitePrice.Org
SitePrice is free to use tool for getting traffic estimates of any website. It uses several sources to get an estimated number of visitors, but it isn’t 100% accurate. There are a lot of better tools in this list, but it isn’t bad.
The results for some sites are accurate. In my experiments, they are correct most of the times. Their data is almost the same as of SimilarWeb. It also has a site estimated worth checker tool which helps to evaluate the worth of your site.
The sources they use for getting the data are Google Ad Planner, SimilarWeb, Alexa, etc. that’s one reason I found their records the same as SimilarWeb. Overall it’s a good tool but can be a hit or miss for you.
Using this tool is very simple. You just need to go to the homepage and enter the domain, you will get the details of the traffic there. In the same way, you can use the site worth tool. Right now, they also have some other small tools.
#6 Alexa
From the internet giant – Amazon, here comes a tool which is helpful to the ranking of our websites. And that tool is none other than Alexa which we bloggers love to check after every hour, each day and night.
Alexa is one of the most popular tools, it’s so much popular that its own global rank is under 10k. While you will need to pay for using advanced features, knowing the rankings is free. Higher Alexa ranking is one thing that all bloggers strive for.
Using Alexa is easy.. You just need to visit Alexa, find the column for getting rankings then entering the website’s URL. Then on the next page – you will get the results like global rank, country rank, bounce rate, time on site, etc.
You can get more advanced results but for that, you’ll need to upgrade. Even in the free version, Alexa is one of the best tools to know the estimated traffic of any given site. However, like any other tool, it’s not 100% accurate.
#7 SpyFu
SpyFu is one of the best competitor research tools. Like SEMRush and Ahrefs it’s not limited to website traffic analysis but goes much deeper. With SpyFu you can also know the organic and paid data of any site.
It’s a great SEO tool to know what your competitors are doing. The reason I think SpyFu is one of the top SEO tools is that it’s packed with a lot of features. And, when Ahrefs and SEMRush exist you gotta be good to stay in the race.
SpyFu comes with a lot of powerful features, some of the features are – complete PPC research, SEO research, Keyword research, etc. It’s an amazing tool so all of its features can’t be described in a small time. We will do a review of SpyFu in future.
Using SpyFu is simple and free (for getting basic reports). You need to visit their site, then there’s a box to enter site details, enter the site and click on search. You will get the estimated data of any site to some extent.
#8 Website Informer
Website Informer is a tool designed for marketers and webmasters to gather detailed information about any site. It’s an easy to use service, it doesn’t require much to be done by you. Website Informer does what it’s created for.
I think it’s the best free tool on this list. All the other great tools are either incompetent or freemium. I did some searches with this tool and the data I got was almost perfect. It was only a little different to the real stats.
Using this site (or tool) is plain simple – you need to head to the website, enter the URL on the search box and BOOM! you will get the estimated traffic. This tool isn’t limited only to website estimate.
With Website Informer, you will also get other metrics like the list of competitors, similar sites, WHOIS, and IP (DNS) lookup. Pretty much for a free tool. Right? I suggest you try out this tool. I liked it very much!
#9 Serpstat
Serpstat another SEO tool in this list can be used to get the organic traffic details on any site. Started in 2013 as a keyword research tool, Serpstat has come a long way and now, is a complete SEO tool.
Although, Serpstat’s a paid SEO tool you can still get the basic details for free. But like other SEO tools, it only shows the organic traffic to any site. You can’t get details of the traffic coming through social media.
Still, it’s one of the best SEO tools out there. You can get a lot of details for free like organic traffic, organic keywords, etc. It’s one of the tools which deserve a whole post for them. I’ll also try out this tool and do a review of it.
Using Serpstat for getting traffic estimates is easy. First, you will need to visit Serpstat (obviously) then enter the website URL into the search box, you will get the organic traffic estimate and many other details.
#10 Ask Directly!
As crazy it might sound asking the site’s owner directly how much traffic they get can be an easy way. However, this would only apply to small to medium blog owners (as they are more likely to respond).
This trick can also be applied to big blogs and site owners but knowing their traffic details is much easier. The owners of big blogs also take their time seriously so they might not be interested in replying to you. This doesn’t apply to all.
Now a question arises how do you contact blog owners? It isn’t a hard one as it’s actually easy to contact all the bloggers. Every blog has a contact page or a contact email in their about section.
If you can’t find their email use tools like Hunter.io to find the email address associated with a domain name. Create an eye-catching heading which should be direct, and hope for a reply. If it doesn’t work use other methods.
#11 Income Reports
Many bloggers do income reports to keep track of their earnings and to show how much can be earned through blogging. These income reports are a great way to know the blog’s traffic, that too without doing anything.
Along with traffic details, you get to know what the bloggers are up to, how much they make, etc. Income reports also make you a popular blogger, as people often link to blogger’s income reports.
Again this way is only possible for bloggers who want to keep their secrets with them. And the figures can’t be trusted 100% as some bloggers show a maximum or minimum of their earnings. But it does gives a rough idea.
Checking other bloggers income report is a good way to see some hidden details. This method is only available if you want to check some blogs traffic. Big sites never do these reports, for them using tools it the best way.
#12 Website’s Advertising Page
One of the most thing that almost every site has in common is that they all have important pages such as advertise here. contact, about us. With the help of a site’s advertising page, you can know the traffic details.
It’s the easiest way as you don’t even need to use any tool and the details there are perfect. The blog owners and site owners won’t lie on an advertising page. If they lie then it will be a great loss of their own.
This is an advantage which can be helpful in spying. Most bloggers not only tell their traffic they also tell other important metrics like email subscribers, social media following, etc. This gives an idea of their reach.
And the data of the advertising page is updated frequently as compared to other important pages. So, if you are in a hurry to know about a site’s traffic head straight to their advertising page. It’s rare to not find something important there.
Final Thoughts…
With the help of the above tools, you will be able to check the estimated traffic of any site. However, you should remember the statistics are just estimates and can be off by some thousands. These are not to be taken as an exact no. as they can only be known by the site’s owner.
Use as many different sites you can to get an estimated figure, some tools are better than others. Never ever rely only on one tool. I hope you find the tool which can be great for you to use.
The figures for paid website traffic checker are much close (or correct) than the free ones. The ones we highly recommend are SEMRush, Ahrefs, SimilarWeb…(We also use them.)
So, what are your thoughts on our list of best website checker tools? Did I miss out on any great tool? What’s your favorite one? Let us know in the comments below.