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.

---

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.

---

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.

Note: 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: This 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 & Backlink Crawling: This 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 Bottom Line: 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).

---

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.

1. 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: 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.

2. 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.

Simple Step-by-Step Process:

1. Check Content Depth: Use the operator site:competitor.com "keyword". This shows all pages on their site that Google has indexed for a specific topic.
2. Check Recency: Use the operator site:competitor.com alone, then click "Tools" and filter the date range. This shows what content they've published recently, revealing their current focus.
3. Reality Check: Manually search for your primary target keywords in an incognito browser window. This confirms where they actually rank.

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.

---

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.

Ahrefs: Organic Analysis

Ahrefs is a powerhouse for organic traffic and backlink analysis. Its strength lies in its world-class web crawler (tracking over 400 billion indexed pages) and massive index of search data.

Key reports we use constantly:

• Site Explorer > Overview: Your mission control, showing top-level metrics like organic traffic estimates and Traffic Value.
• Organic Keywords: Lists every keyword the site ranks for, its current position, and the estimated traffic it brings. A goldmine for discovery.
• Top Pages: Shows which of their content pieces attract the most organic traffic, revealing their most successful content assets.
• Competing Domains: Identifies other websites that rank for the same keywords, often revealing competitors you didn't know existed.

Semrush: All-in-One Toolkit

Semrush combines its own search crawler data with clickstream data to offer an exceptionally broad set of features across SEO, PPC, and content.

The most valuable reports:

• Domain Overview: A comprehensive dashboard for a quick yet detailed summary of visibility.
• Traffic Analytics: Semrush's answer to Similarweb, estimating total traffic and user journeys via clickstream data.
• Advertising Research: A must-use for paid strategy. See competitor ad copy, landing pages, and estimated PPC budget.
• Keyword Gap: Directly compare your keyword profile against up to four competitors to highlight missing opportunities.

Comparing the Titans

Choosing the right tool depends on your primary goal. Here is how they stack up:

---

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 because each tool uses a different dataset and algorithm.

The Solution: Do 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 (Similarweb). Start here to get a broad understanding of total traffic volume and the channel mix. This gives you the big-picture context.
2. Step 2: Deep-Dive into Organic (Ahrefs/Semrush). Validate the organic portion of traffic. Analyze their top pages and keywords. Does the estimated organic traffic roughly align with the organic percentage shown in Similarweb?
3. Step 3: Manually Verify Top Rankings. Take their top 3-5 traffic-driving keywords 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. Form an educated conclusion by cross-referencing data.

Example Insight: "Similarweb estimates 100k monthly visits (60% organic). Semrush estimates 55k organic visits. Manual checks confirm top rankings. We can confidently estimate their organic traffic is in the 50-60k range."

---

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 Framework

• IF their top pages are "How-To" guides...
  • Action: This signals their audience seeks educational content. Plan to create a more comprehensive, better-designed guide (The "Skyscraper Technique").
• IF a large portion of traffic comes from a keyword group you ignore...
  • Action: You've discovered a content gap. Prioritize creating a pillar page and cluster articles around this proven topic.
• IF they get significant referral traffic from a specific forum...
  • Action: Investigate immediately. Can you join that community? Is there a guest post or partnership opportunity? This is pre-qualified traffic.
• IF their paid ads point to a free trial landing page...
  • Action: Analyze their ad copy and landing page flow. Learn from their conversion strategy and test similar principles.

Mini Case Study: The Bike Shop Analysis

Let's put this into practice. Imagine we analyze competitor-bike-shop.com.

1. Data Points (Semrush): Their page "How to Choose a Mountain Bike" gets ~20k monthly visits and ranks #1.
2. Further Analysis (Ahrefs): The page has backlinks from three major cycling blogs.
3. Strategic Insight: They have captured high-intent, top-of-funnel audiences with comprehensive, authoritative content.
4. The Action Plan: Beating them head-on is hard. Instead, we will target a related, specific long-tail keyword like "how to choose a mountain bike for trails" and create a video guide to offer a superior content format.

---

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: The most accurate insights come from the triangulation method, but the most important step is always action.

Your Next Steps:

• Choose your tools (start with free ones if needed).
• Identify your top three direct competitors.
• Run your first analysis, focusing on traffic sources and top pages.
• Find one single, actionable insight and build a strategic plan around it.