how to tell how often a certain link is clicked on a competitor site?

[csoriano08]

I recently posted a job to find someone who can determine the best selling products on certain online retailers.However, one vendor has said that he can measure the number of clicks on particular links on a webpage - for a product webpage, this would indicate greater interest in this product. This makes sense, but I do not know if it is actually possible. The vendor has said that he can get access to this information. I want to kow if he is telling the truth (Pardon me, but I'm an absolute newbie in this business, so Im trying my best to learn the ropes).

In other words, please answer this question: can someone NOT associated with a company look at that company's webpage and measure the number of clicks on any given link? If so, how? I basically wanted to check what are the fastest moving products of a possible competitor website.

any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[videomike]

Hi
In my opinion this is not possible. The only way I could think of would be that the vendor must have access to technology like the alexa bar that can track user behaviour on a statistacal basis. Even this approach would only work if his user base was a regalur visitor to your competitors site in large (like a minimum of 1000 user using it) to gain statistically relevant data.
Why don't you just ask him how he will be doing this because you doubt it is possible. If he comes up with a satisfactory and plausible answer, then you have found something very valuable. Please share your further findings here on the forum :-)

Mike

[csoriano08]

Thanks Mike! Appreciate your input! All the other people that I've asked said the same thing.

[LifeinAsia]

I can think of a few possible ways he can get the information:
1) He currently or previously worked on the site and left some sort of tracking code on the site (most likely without the knowledge or approval of the site owner).
2) He hacked the site and left some sort of tracking code.

Both are unethical, and the latter is probably illegal.

[videomike]

LifeinAsia:

You are right - both with the two possibilities and with your conlusions ;-)

Mike