There are numerous reasons you might
want to find out how much traffic a blog
gets. Perhaps you are interested in
researching blogs that compete in the
same niche as a website you own. Maybe
you are considering starting a new blog,
and you want to research the niche to see
if there is enough interest in the topic for
your new website to be viable. Perhaps
you want to grow the traffic to a blog that
you own. Maybe you’re curious about how
much traffic some of the big media
publishers’ websites get.
Whatever your reasons for wanting to find
out traffic data, there are tools and
resources available that can give you a
general idea of a website’s metrics. Unless
you own or manage the actual website,
you’re probably not going to be able to
pinpoint the visitor count or pageviews with
certainty.
However, you can get an estimated idea of
the site’s popularity overall.
1. Alexa.com Rankings
Alexa.com tracks website visitor traffic
rankings for many websites on the Internet.
Their data is not completely accurate,
because it involves flawed methodology.
Alexa ranks websites based on how much
traffic they get from users who have chosen
to install the Alexa toolbar. Alexa toolbar
users are a small minority of website
users, which makes the data somewhat
skewed. However, basic Alexa data is free
to the public and easy to obtain, and it
does give you insights you wouldn’t have
had otherwise.
2. Comscore Reports
Comscore publishes a number of different
traffic reports. Their reports tend to cover
only the largest publishers, and they
include metrics by country for websites
with the highest traffic numbers. This can
be useful if you are interested in learning
about how much traffic the most prominent
websites on the Internet are generating.
3. The BuySellAds
Marketplace
If a website is using the BuySellAds
platform for generating advertising revenue,
the site’s ad impressions are disclosed in
the BuySellAds marketplace.
4. Press Kits, Media Kits and
“Advertise Here” Pages
Many websites make their metrics available
to potential advertisers via press kits,
media kits or “advertise here” pages.
These pages typically might include data
about the number of unique visitors, repeat
visitors, monthly pageviews, daily
pageviews, newsletter subscriber counts,
rss feed subscribers and social media
followers the website gets.
5. Traffic Estimator at
Trafficestimate.com
This free resource gives you a bunch of
data in one place, although some of it is
inaccurate. You’ll be able to find out some
basic Alexa rankings, keyword phrases the
website is targeting, other websites
targeting similar keyword phrases and
websites with close relationships. If you’re
researching smaller or newer websites, you
might not get any results from this tool.
The closely related websites report is
flawed; in some cases it does find closely
related sites, but in other cases the sites it
shows are all unrelated.
6. Compete.com Site
Analytics
This is a paid service that allows you to
monitor a number of different website
metrics, including the USA-based traffic to
competing websites.
7. SEMrush.com Competitive
Data
SEMrush.com offers another paid service
that’s useful for researching the traffic
levels to competing websites. You can also
use this service for finding information
about your competitors’ paid ad campaigns
and other details. You can read more on
how I use SEMRush for finding traffic data .
8. Similarweb Pro
Similarweb.com makes multiple services
available. They offer both a free version
and a pro version. Their pro service allows
you to monitor competitors’ website traffic
statistics. You can also get data about
apps using the similarweb.com site.
9. Quantcast Analytics
Quantcast offers you a multiple
opportunities to discover a website’s traffic
measures. If you are interested in finding
out metrics for your own website, you can
subscribe to their services to receive
detailed insights.
Quantcast also offers website owners the
choice to make selected analytics data
publicly available. Many website owners
take advantage of this because they think it
benefits them to show potential advertisers
their site’s metrics as verified by an
unbiased, trusted third-party source. So you
can check to see if the website you are
interested in researching has a public
Quantcast profile available.
10. Searchmetrics
Similar to SEMRush, Searchmetrics will
show you the organic search visibility for a
website and also some of their top
keyword terms.
11. Income and Traffic
Reports
Some bloggers such as Pat Flynn and
Matthew Woodward often share their
traffic/income reports with their audience.
So have a dig in their archives to see their
traffic stats.
Of course some of these third party tools
don’t have the full picture but they can
really help give you a flavour of what is
going on, this study by Moz has some
useful insights on how these tools collect
data and their accuracy.
Tools You Can Use on Your
Own Blog
However, if you’re more interested in
understanding your own blogs traffic a little
better than these tools will be very useful.
1. Google Analytics
If you’re interested in monitoring traffic
counts to your own website, Google
Analytics is one possible resource you
could use for this purpose. Google
Analytics is worth considering if you want a
free solution and you don’t mind sharing all
your data with the Internet’s monolithic ad-
driven monopoly. If you want more control
over your data and your site’s privacy,
there are also some alternative options you
could consider.
2. Clicky Web Analytics
If you’re interested in monitoring traffic to
your own website, Clicky offers both free
and paid versions you might be interested
in checking out. Clicky integrates with
some of the data from Google Analytics,
and this platform also gives you bunches
of options that are not available through
Google analytics. For example, Clicky
offers you some detailed information about
your website visitors. You’ll learn their
usernames, locations, web hosting
companies , web browsers, return visits and
more.
3. Piwik Analytics
Piwik is a free, open source analytics
platform for monitoring traffic to your own
website.
Piwik has some distinct advantages over
Google Analytics and other third-party
provided analytics platforms. The open
source nature of the software allows you to
retain complete control over your data
without allowing a profit-motivated third
party to have access to it.
There are some WordPress plugins
available for use with Piwik, and there are
also options for custom development.
4. Statpress WordPress Plugin
If your blog or website is powered by the
WordPress blog platform, you could use
the Statpress plugin to monitor your traffic.
Statpress gives you details about the visits
to your website from both human visitors
and ‘bots. Graphs are included to help you
visualize your traffic patterns. You’ll be
able to see your metrics for unique visitors,
pageviews, ‘bot visits, and more.
Statpress also provides data about the
latest hits to your website and where they
came from. You’ll be able to access a list
of the latest 500 keyword phrases that web
searchers queried to find your website.
Statpress is a free, self-hosted plugin. You
do not need a security key to use it. You
retain control over your data when you use
this plugin.
There have been multiple versions of
Statpress released and maintained by
different WordPress plugin developers. The
link above takes you to the version that’s
been most recently updated as of the time
of this writing.
5. Woopra
Woopra is a paid service offering
customizable analytics for the purposes of
discovering how much traffic goes to your
own website and understanding your
website’s customer base. Woopra can help
you to develop individual profiles for every
user who visits your site. They offer a free
trial if you want to learn more.
In my experience so far, these resources
have been the most helpful for determining
the traffic to a website. You could use a
combination of these resources to discover
interesting insights about traffic data and
metrics for many different websites or
blogs on the Internet.
Have you used any additional resources for
finding out how much traffic a website
gets? If so, please share them in the
comments. I welcome suggestions for
other sources that would be good additions
to this list.
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