SimilarWeb.com, the web traffic intelligence tool from SimilarGroup aims to set itself apart from other competitive intelligence and web ranking tools by harnessing the huge trove of clickstream data that comes from their browser plug-ins.
Much has already been written already about SimilarGroup’s plans to unseat Alexa as the leader in web rankings, but the company also has services like Quantcast and Compete in its site. SimilarWeb.com uses data gathered from the company’s browser plug-ins including SimilarSites and SimilarWeb as well as many others unrelated to the company’s products that have been downloaded tens of millions of times.
Launched earlier this year, SimilarWeb distinguishes itself by providing traffic insights by source.
In the screenshot above you’ll see ranking scores (thus the Alexa rivalry). The traffic trend shows weekly traffic “reach” rather than actual visit or visitor counts. The stand out data features that go beyond most, if not all, other free tools include engagement metrics — average page views, average time on site and bounce rate — and the traffic sources data (to the right of the traffic trend line). Drill down and you can get engagement metrics by country.
The UI is pretty slick and it’s easy to drill down into the data by clicking on the left-hand navigation icons. Below is a view of the Audience Interests view. “Also Visited” site information is included along with a topics cloud and interest categories.
Competitive Analysis
You can compare up to three sites in SimilarWeb. A neat feature is the integration of SimilarSites, which offers site suggestions when you click on the “Add Competitor” button.
You’ll be hard pressed to find results for smaller sites, and don’t expect an apples-to-apples comparison to your analytics data. The company did say they will soon enable sites to add their own data from Google Analytics. And it plans to add a display campaign tool in May as part of the free tool and has partnered with WhatRunsWhere to show display campaign creative being run on main ad networks used on SimilarWeb.com.
A pro version is coming out in a few weeks with deeper monitoring functionality. With a new round of funding secured in January, TechCrunch reported that the 25-person company, based in Tel Aviv, is planning to open offices in New York this year to market and sell the Pro service and other paid packages.
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