How to Find Out How Other Sites Are Doing: Complete 2026 Guide

Ever wondered how your competitors get their traffic? This is one of the most common questions in digital marketing. The answer holds the key to massive strategic growth.

You can't access their Google Analytics. But you can get incredibly close. Powerful tools and proven methods exist to give you a highly accurate picture of how other sites perform.

This guide shows you exactly how to do it. We'll cover traffic volume estimation, identifying valuable traffic sources, finding top-performing pages, and uncovering successful keywords.

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Why You Must Analyze

Learning how to find out how other sites are doing isn't about vanity metrics. It's about gaining a decisive strategic advantage. It transforms your marketing from guesswork into a data-driven operation.

Analyzing the competition helps you:

• Benchmark Your Performance: Understand your true market position and set realistic goals.
• Discover New Keyword Opportunities: Find valuable keywords already proven to drive traffic to competitors.
• Identify Content Gaps: See popular topics and formats you haven't covered yet. This reveals clear opportunities.
• Uncover Their Marketing Strategy: Learn which channels work best for them - organic search, paid ads, or social media.
• Make Data-Driven Decisions: Allocate your marketing budget and resources with confidence. Invest in what works.

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Understanding Methodologies

To trust the data, you need to understand where it comes from. All competitor traffic figures are estimates. But they're highly educated ones based on massive datasets.

No tool has direct access to a competitor's server logs or analytics account. Instead, they use sophisticated models to estimate traffic.

This transparency is key. Understanding the methodology helps you evaluate information critically and make smarter conclusions.

How Data is Collected

These powerful estimates come from two distinct data collection methods.

1. Clickstream data comes from massive, anonymized user panels. It involves gathering browsing data from millions of internet users through browser extensions and ISPs. This method excels at understanding broad user behavior and traffic channel distribution across the web.
2. Search data and backlink crawling is used by SEO-focused tools. They crawl the web constantly, indexing search engine results pages for trillions of keywords. By combining a keyword's search volume with a site's ranking position, they estimate the organic traffic a page receives.

The most accurate analysis combines insights from both data types. One tells you the "what" (total traffic). The other tells you the "how" (which keywords and links drive it).

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Level 1: Free Methods

You don't need a large budget to start your analysis. These free methods provide a quick snapshot of competitor activity. They offer valuable initial insights.

This is the perfect starting point to understand the competitive landscape without financial commitment.

Using Similarweb

Similarweb is a market intelligence platform that primarily uses clickstream data. Its free version offers a fantastic high-level overview of any website.

The free report includes:

• An estimate of total monthly visits.
• Key engagement metrics like Bounce Rate and Average Visit Duration.
• A breakdown of Traffic Sources (Direct, Mail, Referral, Social, Organic, and Paid Search).
• The top websites referring traffic to them.
• Their top 5 organic and paid keywords.

The process is simple. Go to the Similarweb homepage. Enter your competitor's URL and hit enter. The dashboard gives you an immediate, digestible summary of their digital footprint. We use this as a first-stop benchmark for any analysis.

Manual Google Analysis

You can learn a surprising amount using Google itself. Advanced search operators let you dissect a competitor's content footprint directly within the search engine.

Here's a simple step-by-step process:

1. Use the site:competitor.com "keyword" operator. This shows all pages on their site that Google has indexed for a specific topic, revealing their content depth.
2. Use the site:competitor.com operator alone, then click "Tools" and filter the date range. This shows what content they've published recently, revealing their current focus.
3. Manually search for your primary target keywords in an incognito browser window. This confirms where they actually rank. It's a crucial reality check for any tool-based data.

The main limitation is that this is labor-intensive and provides no traffic numbers. However, it's an unparalleled method for understanding a competitor's content strategy and on-page focus for free.

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Level 2: Professional Tools

When you're ready to move beyond a quick snapshot, professional SEO tools are the industry standard. These platforms provide the depth required for comprehensive, actionable analysis.

Investing in one of these tools is a rite of passage for any serious digital marketer, SEO specialist, or business owner.

Ahrefs: Organic Analysis

Ahrefs is a powerhouse for organic traffic and backlink analysis. Its strength lies in its world-class web crawler and massive index of search data.

To establish its authority, consider the scale: Ahrefs' database contains over 400 billion indexed pages. It tracks over 12 trillion known links, giving it an unparalleled view of the web's structure.

Key reports we use constantly include:

• Site Explorer > Overview: This is your mission control, showing top-level metrics like organic traffic estimates and Traffic Value (what their traffic would cost via paid ads).
• Organic Keywords: This report lists every keyword the site ranks for, its current position, and the estimated traffic it brings. This is a goldmine for keyword discovery.
• Top Pages: This shows which of their content pieces attract the most organic traffic, revealing their most successful content assets.
• Competing Domains: Ahrefs identifies other websites that rank for the same keywords, often revealing competitors you didn't know existed.

Semrush: All-in-One Toolkit

Semrush is an expansive all-in-one marketing suite. It combines its own search crawler data with clickstream data to offer an exceptionally broad set of features.

While Ahrefs is laser-focused on organic search, Semrush provides strong capabilities across SEO, PPC, content, and market research.

The most valuable reports for competitor analysis are:

• Domain Overview: A comprehensive dashboard that provides a quick yet detailed summary of a domain's online visibility.
• Traffic Analytics: This is Semrush's answer to Similarweb, using clickstream data to estimate total traffic, traffic sources, and user journey insights.
• Advertising Research: A must-use tool for analyzing paid strategy. You can see a competitor's ad copy, landing pages, and estimated PPC budget.
• Keyword Gap: This feature lets you directly compare your keyword profile against up to four competitors, instantly highlighting keywords they rank for that you don't.

Comparing the Titans

Choosing the right tool depends on your primary goal. Ahrefs excels at deep SEO and link analysis. Semrush offers a versatile all-in-one solution. Similarweb provides the best high-level market and traffic source data.

Here's how they stack up:

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The Triangulation Method

Here's an expert-level secret: no single tool is 100% accurate. We see it constantly—Ahrefs might report one organic traffic number, while Semrush reports another. Relying on one source can lead to flawed conclusions.

The problem is that each tool uses a different dataset and algorithm. The solution is to not trust any single number. Use multiple sources to find the truth in the middle.

We call this the Triangulation Process:

1. Step 1: Establish a Baseline with Similarweb. Start here to get a broad understanding of total traffic volume and, more importantly, the channel mix. This gives you the big-picture context.
2. Step 2: Deep-Dive into Organic with Ahrefs or Semrush. Use one of these SEO tools to validate the organic portion of traffic. Analyze their top pages and keywords. Does the estimated organic traffic from Ahrefs/Semrush roughly align with the organic percentage shown in Similarweb? This validates the most important channel.
3. Step 3: Manually Verify Top Rankings. Take their top 3-5 traffic-driving keywords, as identified by your SEO tool, and perform a manual Google search in an incognito window. Do they actually rank where the tool says they do? This is your essential reality check.
4. Step 4: Synthesize and Conclude. Now, you can form a more educated conclusion by cross-referencing your data. For example: "Similarweb estimates 100k monthly visits with 60% from organic. Semrush estimates 55k organic visits. Our manual check confirms top 3 rankings for their main keywords. We can confidently estimate their organic traffic is in the 50-60k range, and their total traffic is likely between 90k-100k."

This method moves you from simply reporting a number to developing a reliable, defensible insight.

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Turning Data into Action

Gathering data is only the first step. The real value comes from turning those numbers into a concrete action plan that drives business results.

Your goal is to move from how to find out how other sites are doing to "how to do what successful sites are doing, but better."

Your Action Plan

Use this framework to translate your findings into strategy.

If their top pages are "How-To" guides...

• Action: This signals that their audience seeks educational, problem-solving content. Your plan is to create a more comprehensive, up-to-date, or better-designed guide on a similar topic. This is the essence of the "Skyscraper Technique."

If a large portion of their traffic comes from a keyword group you're ignoring...

• Action: You've just discovered a content gap in your own strategy. Prioritize creating a pillar page and a cluster of supporting articles around this proven topic.

If they get significant referral traffic from a specific forum or industry blog...

• Action: Investigate that referral source immediately. Can you become an active member of that community? Can you explore a guest post or partnership opportunity? This is a pre-qualified traffic source waiting to be tapped.

If their paid ads consistently point to a free trial landing page...

• Action: This reveals their primary conversion strategy for paid traffic. Analyze their ad copy, value proposition, and landing page flow. You can learn from their testing and apply the principles to your own campaigns.

Mini Case Study

Let's put this into practice. Imagine we analyze competitor-bike-shop.com and discover a major content win for them.

• Data Points (from Semrush): We find their page "How to Choose a Mountain Bike" gets an estimated 20,000 monthly visits from organic search. It ranks #1 for "how to choose mountain bike" and #2 for "best mountain bike for beginners."
• Further Analysis (from Ahrefs): We see the page has earned backlinks from three major cycling blogs.
• Strategic Insight: They have successfully captured a high-intent, top-of-funnel audience. The content is clearly comprehensive and authoritative, as evidenced by its rankings and backlinks.
• Our Actionable Plan: Trying to beat them on that exact keyword immediately would be difficult. Instead, we will create content that targets a related, less competitive long-tail keyword like "how to choose a mountain bike for trails." We could also create a video guide on the topic to offer a more engaging format and differentiate our approach.

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From Analyst to Strategist

Tracking competitor traffic is not about spying. It's about strategic intelligence. The goal is to understand the "why" behind their numbers—the strategies that earn them traffic, links, and customers.

Remember that the most accurate insights come from the triangulation method: combining data from multiple tools and verifying it with manual checks.

But the most important step is always the last one: turning your analysis into tangible action that improves your own marketing performance.

Your Next Steps:

• Choose your tools, starting with the free ones if you're new to this.
• Identify your top three direct competitors.
• Run your first analysis, focusing on their traffic sources and top pages.
• Find one single, actionable insight and build a strategic plan around it.