spying on competitors?

is it possible?

[antipodes]

I'd like to learn more about spying on site stats of competitors. The Alexa stats give something of a guide as I've learned but I want real figures. Is there software that can do this? I want to be able to conduct my own search for stats and not through a paid enterprise. I personally don't think stats should be unavailable.

thx

antipodes

[webwoman]

Then I assume you make your weblog stats available to the casual visitor?

[antipodes]

yes as matter of fact I do. Why should i hide this information?

[Shak]

More and more tools on the market allowing you to gain valuable information on your competitors.

Hitwise is very good at giving some deep information about your competition and industry sector.

Shak

[vincevincevince]

Why should i hide this information?

- Your competitors can see which search terms you target, and their returns trafficwise... then steal your traffic from you
- Your competitors can work out just how big you are - and whether you are a threat that needs "special action" etc...

be careful!

[trillianjedi]

I agree with vincevincevince. As per another thread on this some time ago, I find that trying this often yields results from those foolish enough not to hide their stats:-

www.domain.com/sitestats

www.domain.com/stats

www.domain.com/webstats

And you can guess the others. Using this has made it very easy for us to beat competitors in the SERPS.

TJ

[vincevincevince]

also try:
www.domain.com/logs

[chiyo]

It depends a lot on the website.

Highly competitive or commercial websites depend a lot of recripocal links, so a competitor can just go down the list and ask all referrers to link to them. Most Information sites tend to have links from others because other sites have reveiwed the site and decided to link on their own accord. So the same strategy wont be as effective.

The only reason we leave ours non-public is because of the "spoof" referrers often from porn or casino sites that will end up in us linking to bad neighbourhoods unintentionally.

Im not aware of any software as such, but most people do searches for unique text in the URLs or HTML of well known log analyser outputs, and then refine it with a keyword relating to their industry.

But really, most competitive and commercial webmasters will not leave their logs in the open so the best data, as always in intelligence, is the hardest to get.

[vincevincevince]

i know one large virtual host which uses a well known logs package, and relies on the referrer to /logs being the domain of the ISP itself... really makes you worry about the security elsewhere in the host!

[webwoman]

antipodes: Logs are like bank records - some things just have no place in the public view, except in extreme circumstances. But I wish you luck with spying on your competitors. I hope you will share with us what you find, so that we can all increase our security appropriately.

Personally, I pay as little attention to competitors as I can get away with. I find it much more productive to concentrate on *my* sites. I have a client who was with another seo before me, and this seo could tell you everything about each competitor's site - while my client's site stayed on the bottom of the serps.

[davewray]

Logs are Extremly valuable! Three or four of my top competitors don't bother hiding their stats from the world. I have used these stats to my "advantage". Namely, you can see exactly where they get their referrals from, what percentage come from certain sites, and like previously mentionned, what keywords they optimize for specifically! I have gone to every site that is sending my competition referrals and have been almost 100% successful in forming partnerships with these sites. My traffic, as a result, is doubling almost every three weeks (new site). Site statistics and logs are GOLD, lock them up in a vault ;) The one downfall is that my site is new, so it will take some time to knock them out of the top positions in the SERP's...but time well worth spent. :)

Dave.

[webwoman]

Davewray - my point exactly.

[stevedob]

And I thought I was being unnecessarily retentive for putting my stats behind password protection.

My objection was that I was seeing a lot of (obviously) spoofed referring pages from adult sites appearing in the stats.

[hostlead]

also try
www.domain.com/webalizer/
www.domain.com/bandwidth/

HostLead

[ecommerce man]

A script or tool that checked for stats using all possible directory names would be good. Has anyone written such a tool or know where there's one available?

If not I'll just have to write my own!