Possible to measure other's traffic?

Finding out if partner's sites has traffic they say

[silverbytes]

I want to exchange banners 1:1 with relevant travel sites, the question: how can you really know if they have the traffic they say they have? Can you find out how many visits they actually have in order to make the exchange fair? Of course I don't want to exchange with sites with very different traffic amount (specially low traffic sites)

[larryn]

Silver,

Are you going to host the banner? If so, you can determine how often it is viewed from your logs. You might want to consider making remote hosting part of your requirement for sharing (as opposed to giving them a file to put on their server).

Larry

[silverbytes]

I mean how can I measure how many traffic does the other site have, not how to measure how many clicks my banner to them.
What's the way to know the traffic of other sites in order to exchange with those that have similar traffic to yours to be even?

[hmatisse]

silverbytes,

Have you checked traffic rankings section on alexa.com? The data there is not perfect, but it is something...

[martinibuster]

Another way to do it:
If they run AdSense on the site and haven't opted out of the CPM program, you can start a site targeted campaign on adwords and see a range of what their traffic is, i.e. under 10k pageviews, 10-100k, etc.

[silverbytes]

Good tips. I thought it would be a service out there to acomplish such a common task besides alexa.
Some sites are not in alexa furthermore.

[percentages]

silverbytes,

Larryn solved your problem earlier. You host the banner that the other site displays. From the impressions of that banner you know exactly the traffic that the other site is generating to those pages.

Alexa wouldn't be an option for me to measure traffic unless it was one of the 100 most popular sites on the web, and I don't think we are talking that popular!

So, do as Larryn suggested and host the banner/Ad, then measure the results. If your partner is fibbing about their traffic you will catch them within a few days!

[silverbytes]

I think you don't understand my point. I don't care to find out if partnership is good or bad *afterwards* trading banners. I need to know *before* making the deal how many visitors do they have. So my options seems to be: 1) take a look at alexa
2) guessing or trusting what they say they have

[topsites]

I would do a little more than trusting alexa figures.
Check and see if they're listed in Yahoo and Dmoz.
For yahoo, go to yahoo.com then click the 'directory' tab above the search-entry box, then enter their domain as:
www.theirdomain.com
then click search. If it is listed in the Yahoo directory, it will show. Otherwise, it will return no results, but make sure you click the directory tab as Yahoo does 'web' search by default.
for dmoz.org, real simple enter domain.com in the box and click.
then get a google pr checker and get that.
then, run it through a code-checker and a load-time tester. Use w3's or View-source, take a look and also review the site in depth, you can usually tell if a site is crap or not but:
- No one test is conclusive.
- The above is only a general guideline.
- Even an overall failure is not 100 percent indicative of no traffic.
- Never take someone else's word, not in and of itself.

p.s.: You're almost never going to get a perfect 1:1 50/50 trade. Most of the time it's always 90/10 one way or the other, don't look a gift-horse in the mouth too hard, commercial banner exchanges are 2:1 but it feels more like 1000:1

[silverbytes]

Those are useful tips too, but none of these has to do with traffic really. Being listed in Yahoo and Dmoz is not guarantee at all of traffic. I do have myself sites in dmoz with lowest traffic possible belive me. Regardless Yahoo Directory as far as I know there is no inclussions actually, no more. So sites that didn't get into time ago will never be. There is plenity of websites with traffic not in Yahoo directory as well.
I'ts true you hardly may get 1:1 traffic but you can do your homework before trading to get a fair deal...

[Receptional]

The only service that offers that I know of is Hitwise. Sadly, this would cost massively more to find out than you are going to spend in the first place.

One thing that many people do is start with a very short term trial - or have a very quick get out clause in these sorts of situations, so that any con doesn't get very far.

Then of course - banners still don't anyway IMHO :)

[cgrantski]

If you know anyone with a Hitwise, Nielson, or Comscore account they would be able to quickly look up the site for you. It's not much effort on their part and won't cost them anything extra, unless they have a restricted subscription. These people are often working for ad agencies.

Or if you don't trust the numbers they are giving you, ask if you can look at their traffic reports directly and get a traffic expert to take a look with you. Somebody knowledgeable about traffic reporting will be able to tell whether they are fudging the numbers or not. There are about 10 good ways to end up with inflated numbers in traffic reports and almost all of them can be detected by somebody who knows what they are looking at.

[silverbytes]

Now it's getting closer, thanks!
Any ideas of pricing in hitwise?

[bakedjake]

Go to the ISP that the person is hosted on and offer to sniff their traffic for $1000 for one month. Tell them your intent.

Sometimes they'll say "we'll give you the logs for $1000".

[silverbytes]

I wouldn't pay 1000 for logs ever. U$1000 to decide if I trade a banner?. I sell you mine's in U$900!

[jtara]

Go to the ISP that the person is hosted on and offer to sniff their traffic for $1000 for one month. Tell them your intent.

Sometimes they'll say "we'll give you the logs for $1000".

Now, that's a scary thought.

There are ISPs that will sell your logs out from under you?

[jkwilson78]

Traffic volume doesn't mean more sales.

Lower traffic sties can deliver far higher conversions if they send very targeted traffic as opposed to sites that deliver tons of untargeted traffic or "browsers" instead of buyers.

If they charge on a CPM basis does it really matter how much traffic they send since you will only be charged for impressions or is this an ad buy with an upfront fee?

Also, do you see the same advertisers on this site all the time? If so then you know it must be effective or they wouldn't keep paying for the traffic.

[kaz]

Why not ask for a copy of their stats for verification that they are using to quote you traffic?