How to See Any Website's Traffic

If you want to make the best decisions possible for your business, you have to stay on top of what the competition is up to. Think about Polaroid. Back in the early 2000s, this giant in the instant photography space failed to innovate, listen to their customers, and keep up with the industry and competition. They eventually went bankrupt. Don't let this happen to you!

Today, I'm going to share with you a tool that provides a lot of competitive insights. This tool lets you estimate the traffic that other websites, including your competitors, are getting. And the best part? Most of these insights are free.

Similarweb

First things first, head over to similarweb.com and create a free account. This is a recent requirement, but it only takes a few minutes.

Steps to get started:

1. Go to the Similarweb homepage.

2. Sign up for a free account using your email address.

3. Verify your email and log in.

Once logged in, you’ll have access to a treasure trove of data. The next step is to input the URL you want to analyze in the "Analyze any website or app" section and click Analyze.

Where does Similarweb get its data from?

Before diving into the data analysis, it's crucial to understand where Similarweb sources its data from. Here are the four categories:

1. Website and App Owners: Some sites opt in to share their data with Similarweb.

2. Contributors Network: Anonymous traffic data collected from Similarweb products installed on millions of devices worldwide.

3. Public Data: Data scraped from publicly available sources like Wikipedia.

4. Partnerships: Data analyzed by global partners such as ISPs, measurement companies, and intelligence firms.

Similarweb combines these data sources to provide their traffic estimates. It isn’t perfect, but I’ve found it to be one of the better options out there.

Analyzing a Website: Example with Amazon

Let’s walk through the process using Amazon as an example.

Traffic and Engagement

After entering "Amazon.com" and clicking Analyze, you'll be presented with various sections of data. The first section, Traffic and Engagement, shows metrics for the past three months, including:

• Total visits: 7.3 billion.

• Device distribution: Breakdown of desktop vs. mobile traffic.

• Global, country, and industry ranks.

Monthly Visits and User Engagement

Similarweb breaks down traffic on a monthly basis. For example, in a recent three-month period, Amazon received 2 billion visits per month. It also estimates how many pages users visit (9.63 pages per visit) and the average session duration (over 7 minutes).

If you see that your competitors have higher user engagement, this may indicate they have a more engaging website.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate for Amazon is estimated to be 34.2%. A high bounce rate might suggest that visitors are not finding the content useful or engaging, leading them to leave quickly.

Competitor Comparison

Without entering any other URLs, Similarweb lets you compare Amazon’s traffic with its competitors.

Geography and Traffic Sources

The Geography section reveals where traffic is coming from. For Amazon, a significant 80% of traffic is from the United States. The Channels Overview shows how the traffic is distributed:

• Direct traffic: 52%

• Email: Small portion

• Referrals: 5%

• Social: 5%

• Organic search: 25%

• Paid search: 10%

• Display ads: Less than 1%

This overview can help you understand the marketing strategies of your competitors. For instance, if a competitor heavily relies on paid search, it might be worth investigating why and considering whether you should invest more in that area.

Additional Insights

Similarweb provides further data, including:

• Branded vs. Non-Branded Searches: Are users searching for your brand specifically?

• Top Organic and Paid Search Terms: Which keywords are driving traffic?

• Top Referring Websites: Where is traffic coming from?

• Top Social Media Platforms: Which social channels are most effective?

   

Summary

Similarweb offers a lot of insights into your competitors and their traffic sources. It's an excellent tool for doing competitive analysis and understanding how your website stacks up in the industry. Even with the free version, you gain access to a wealth of information that can guide your marketing strategy and figure out how you should plan your marketing budget.