Traffic Estimates for Other's Sites

[Jimville]

Besides Traffic Estimate and Alexa, are there any other sites that estimate the traffic that websites get? (I'm not looking for analytics software for my site...I'm trying to find out about my competitor's sites.)

Thanks. Jim

[stapel]

Jimville said: Besides Traffic Estimate and Alexa, are there any other sites that estimate the traffic that websites get?

This question has come up before [webmasterworld.com]. The answer, as much as there is one, seems to be that Alexa is about as good as you can do for making estimates (within the same industry), but that even Alexa's numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.

Note: The "Traffic Estimate" gave a value for my site which was about two-fifths of the actual value, as determined by my server logfiles. Make what you will of that....

Eliz.

[lqyromeo]

Your question is very good, which site you have.

Best regards,

[edited by: engine at 3:42 pm (utc) on Aug. 20, 2007]
[edit reason] See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Jimville]

Traffic Estimate is reporting 55% of my site's traffic according to Google Analytics.

[cgrantski]

For our sites, both traffic estimator and alexa are 'way off on their estimates, and not always in the same direction either. They show some of our sites higher than others when the opposite is true. Even worse, the trends they show over time (ups and downs) don't resemble actual trends at all. Not at all. I don't trust either of them.

[MitchellT]

Have you tried www.Quantcast.com for traffic estimates to rival/surpass Alexa?!? You can even add a tag to your site which will "Quantify" your site and get those 'estimates' to be real data!

Enjoy!
- MitchellT

[stapel]

MitchellT said: Have you tried www.Quantcast.com for traffic estimates...?

Quantcast appears to be returning values which are 1/3 to 1/2 of the actual totals, according to my log files. But at least the pattern of numbers looks realistic, which is more than can be said of the "Traffic Estimate" service.

Eliz.

P.S. to MitchellT: Welcome to Webmaster World [webmasterworld.com]!

[arieng]

If I had a dime for every time a client asked me this question...

Many people are simply flabbergasted that, in this day and age of information at your fingertips, you can't figure out how much traffic a website receives.

As mentioned before, unless you are in the top 1000 sites traffic estimators like the sites mentioned are probably no better than your own best guess. If you have 5-figures to spend, you can buy the data from a company like Hitwise, who aggragates data from ISPs. Their guesses seem to be much closer to the mark.

However, the best resource I've found so far is Internet Retailer's annual Top 500 guide. I can't believe they convinced these companies to share so much information! Some is estimated, but most of it comes directly from the horse's mouth. Of course, if you are looking for site's outside the top 500 then you are our of luck.