(Page 1 of 2 )
As a webmaster who competes with other websites or has an interest in entering a new niche, you might want to get traffic numbers for sites that you don't own. You can't actually do that with Google Analytics...but Compete.com, combined with Google Analytics, may give you at least a very reasonable estimate. Keep reading to find out how.
It is important as a webmaster to at least estimate the number of actual unique visitors to any website. Of course, you know that you can get accurate data using Google Analytics and other tools. However, you need to be the owner of the website in order to see those data.
If you are not the verified owner of the website, then you cannot obtain website traffic data using Google Analytics or other tools such as Stat Counter.
A feasible but not entirely accurate approach is to use online tools that can estimate the traffic/unique visitors' data of any website, and for free. One of these tools is Compete.com.
However, the main problem with using such tools is the accuracy of the result. The data given by Compete.com could never be the same as the Google Analytics data.
While the tool provides you with some data, you will never have a clue as to how it relates to Google Analytics which is a standard in web analytics.
This study aims to estimate the unique visitors of a website as if measured by Google Analytics but using Compete.com's raw data.
At the end of this study, any webmaster will be able to estimate the number of unique monthly visitors to any website, if they are using Google Analytics, given its Compete traffic value, to a certain accuracy level (an 83% confidence level, for example).
The main objective is that, even if you do not have access to the Google Analytics account of a certain website, you will still be able to estimate the number of unique visitors it receives, using Compete.com data.
Methodology of the Study
In order to estimate traffic, a model needs to be generated using regression analysis. To conduct a regression analysis, the following steps are employed:
Step 1: Select a website with at least one full year of Google analytics data.
Step 2: Gather the Compete.Com unique visitors' data of the website. Compete.com by default provides one full year of data (12 months maximum).
To do this, you need to go to this URL: http://compete.com/. Click "Site Profile," enter the domain name and then hit "Go."
Screen shot:
The unique visitors' data is available from the resulting unique visitors' plot.
Step 3: Gather the equivalent unique visitor's data in Google Analytics for those months with Compete.com data.
To get the absolute unique visitors data in Google Analytics, first, click "View Report" after logging to your Google Analytics account. In the "Dashboard," adjust the date range to reflect the same date range used by Compete.com's data gathering.
For example, if Compete.com provides September 2009 to September 2010 data, then adjust the date period to September 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010 in Google Analytics.
Finally, click "Visitors" -> click "Absolute Unique Visitors." To get monthly data, click the "Month" option beside "Graph by:" It should look like the screen shot below:
Step 4: Summarize all the data gathered in an Excel spreadsheet.
Step 5: Perform regression data analysis.
Step 6: Make conclusions and consider recommendations/case examples.
Next: Data Gathering and Regression Analysis >> More Search Optimization ArticlesMore By Codex-M
No comments:
Post a Comment