What tools do you use for market analysis?

[AnonyMouse]

I'm looking to break into a new market, and am investigating all the competition. One aspect of this is estimating the traffic each site is getting, and I'm wondering what the best tool for the job is.

Hitwise seems popular, but very US-centric from what I can tell.

Alexa relies on the toolbar being installed, so I'm not convinced it's a representative sample to then draw conclusions from.

What do YOU use?!?

[guia]

We used the
Google Analytics is used in checking and monitoring the website traffic , keywords, ppc campaign and goal conversion

Statcounter is used in checking the site traffic and the URL which the traffic came from.

Submitexpress is used in checking the number of backlinks from the major
search engines

[tuftey]

You can also add compete to you list, very much like alexa, but a different toolbar. I think hitwise is the best overall, but it is the most expensive.

I tend to use all three with a large dose of scepticism.

Tuftey

[mhhfive]

are you looking for traffic data on your competitors.. or for your own site? or both?

[steve_pat]

Web stats is one more free tool to analysis website :)

[gogame]

compete is good.

[semcommonsense]

I agree with gogame on compete -- easy to get traffic numbers. They are inconsistent from some other sites. If you want to audit, you can also use trafficestimate.com -- but this may be less reliable. If you do searches on "website traffic", you may be able to find more.