Top 16 Free Web Analytics Tools For Researching Competitors’ Traffic, Backlinks, Keywords and More

If you’re eager for competitive intelligence on your competitors’ web traffic, backlinks, targeted keywords, paid search budgets and other key web analytics, check out this list of 16 free tools.

Finally, be sure to approach each tool and the data it provides with some degree of caution. Depending on the tool and data in question, the information generated is indicative rather than conclusive.

Oh, and using these tools can be addictive (don’t say I didn’t warn you)!

Traffic Analysis Tools

1. Alexa

Alexa provides a range of web analytics about a site, including its 3-month global Alexa traffic rank, 3-month traffic rank in other countries, the number of sites linking to the site, the most common search queries used by visitors to the site, and even estimates of the demographics (age range and education level) of those visitors. You can view this data on the Alexa website or install the Alexa toolbar, which is compatible with the Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome web browsers, and displays metrics about a site when you visit it.

The accuracy of the Alexa traffic rank – which is a combined measure of ‘reach’ and page views (where the more reach and page views, the lower and better the rank) – has been questioned since it relies on traffic data from people who have installed the Alexa toolbar. For this reason, the Alexa traffic rank may actually be quite helpful if you’re targeting Internet marketers, but less so if you’re targeting ‘normal’ people! Either way it’s probably best viewed as an indicator of whether a site’s traffic is growing or declining.

2. Compete

Compete offers a free account which lets you see the estimated monthly unique visitors and visits to a website, going back 12 months. Compete also lets you compare a site’s traffic with other sites, and provides limited data on search referrals (what keywords drive traffic to a given site) and keyword destination data (what sites get traffic from searches with specific keyword phrases).

Compete’s traffic estimates are based on the web usage of a panel of over 2 million U.S. Internet users. For this reason the results are both indicative and U.S. centric. Unfortunately, Compete’s web analytics are somewhat unhelpful in relation to sites targeting users in other countries, since even popular sites in other countries will often have low Compete numbers.

3. Doubleclick Ad Planner

Doubleclick Ad Planner is a Google tool primarily aimed at advertisers looking to advertise on websites. Helpfully, it also provides traffic data and web analytics about all kinds of websites. Just type in a domain and Doubleclick Ad Planner generates monthly and daily estimates of unique visitors, reach, page views, average visits per visitor, and average time on site.

Doubleclick Ad Planner also displays a list of other sites visited by the site’s audience, along with a list of audience interests, each with an ‘affinity’ score. The affinity score estimates ‘how many times more likely you are to reach an audience who visits a specific site or searches for specific keywords versus an audience on the internet overall’.

4. Google Trends For Websites

Google Trends For Websites is another Google web analytics tool which provides an indication of daily unique visitors to a website. You can use the tool to see traffic estimates over certain time frames and in certain regions. Google Trends For Websites also lists other websites that visitors to the original site tend to visit. Unless you have a Google account and sign in, Google Trends For Websites will only display a trend line to indicate traffic volumes. If you sign into your Google account (which you can get for free here) Google Trends For Websites will indicate actual traffic numbers.

5. Quantcast

Quantcast provides web analytics on websites that (a) use Quantcast to track their website usage and (b) have agreed to make that information public. For these reasons, Quantcast probably provides the most accurate traffic data of all… but can only do so for a limited number of websites.

If your competitor is a website tracked by Quantcast and that has agree to display its audience data to the public, Quantcast provides daily, weekly and monthly traffic numbers, which you can further analyze in terms of geographic region, demographics and other factors. Quantcast also lists other websites that audiences of the original site are also likely to visit.

Backlink Analysis Tools

6. Majestic SEO

Majestic SEO generates backlink information for a given website. This data includes such external backlinks statistics as the number of indexed URLs, .edu and .gov backlinks, backlinks embedded in images, no-follow backlinks, redirects, frames, deleted pages and plain text mentions of a link.

Majestic SEO provides a helpful chart showing the growth or decline in the number of backlinks to a given website, and also provides statistics for individual pages of that site. Majestic SEO data is based on the Majestic-12 Distributed Search Engine rather than on meta-searches or queries of actual search engines.

7. Open Site Explorer

Also powered by its own web index (called Linkscape), Open Site Explorer (OSE) from SEOmoz is a web analytics tool that lets you type in a domain URL and then view figures for a website’s ‘Page Authority’, ‘Domain Authority’, backlinks to the given URL, and total backlinks.

The Page Authority score is based on a 100-point, logarithmic scale and is a prediction of the page’s ranking potential in the search engines. Similarly, the Domain Authority score predicts the domain’s ranking potential. In addition to giving you scores, OSE displays the actual linking pages, including the title of the page, anchor text of the link (if applicable) and the Page Authority and Domain Authority of those pages.

You can also view details of those web pages with the most in-bound links, the anchor text distribution and see pie charts with the relative percentages of followed versus no-followed links and internal versus external links.

8. ReverseInternet.com

ReverseInternet.com is a web analytics tool that let you generate a list of backlinks to a given URL, as well as dig a bit deeper into your competitors and their online activities. In particular, if you’re interested in finding out how many (and which) websites your competitor operates, you can perform a search based on such variables as a Google Adsense ID, some other affiliate ID (such as Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc), an identifiable content management system (CMS) or blog engine, a Google Analytics ID, nameserver, IP address and other such details.

Search Engine Analysis Tools

9. iSpionage

The free version of iSpionage provides a wealth of web analytics about both keywords (including who is targeting those keywords via organic and paid search marketing) and a given website, particularly its organic and paid search engine presence.

Along with Whois data about who holds the domain name, iSpionage provides such search engine optimization (SEO) data as the website’s Google PageRank, Google backlinks, the number of indexed pages in Google, the Yahoo! backlinks and the number of pages indexed by Yahoo! It also provides a list of keywords for which the site has high (e.g. #1) rankings on Google, Yahoo and Bing, and also details a competitor’s paid search activity, providing such data as their monthly pay-per-click (PPC) advertising budget for the past year, which search engines they advertise on, the keywords they buy, their chief competitors (organic and paid), and even the actual ads they’re running. iSpionage recently introduced a new feature – Social Mentions – which tracks mentions of the site on Facebook and Twitter.

10. SEMRush

SEMRush provides Google focused search engine marketing information. Among other things, the free version of this web analytics tool generates a list of keywords for which a website has a high (e.g. #1) ranking in Google, the site’s main competitors for the same keywords, the keywords the site is targeting in Google Adwords (if it is paying for ads) and estimates of the site’s traffic from the first 20 Google search results per month. SEMRush also assigns the site a SEMRush traffic rank, which is based on the number of visitors coming from the first 20 Google search results per month.

All-In-One Tools / Browser Toolbars / Extensions

11. SearchStatus

SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox and SeaMonkey that, following installation, sits at the bottom of your browser on the status bar. SearchStatus generates a ton of web analytics about both a website and the specific page you’re visiting.

In terms of analyzing a website as a whole, SearchStatus lets you view a website’s Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete ranking, SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank, Alexa related links and the number of backlinks from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. On top of that you can right-click the SearchStatus ‘q’ icon to display such information as a web page’s meta-tags (title, description, keywords, etc), highlight specific keywords, evaluate the keyword density, and display the number of in-bound and out-bound links… to name just some of the data available.

12. SEMToolbar

Available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer, the SEMToolbar browser extension lets you search Google or Bing and see the Google Page Rank, backlinks and pages indexed for the top 5 search results, along with the Google Page Rank, backlinks and pages indexed for any given web page you visit.

The SEMToolbar includes language support for more than 20 different languages and lets you search and analyze the results for specific locales. On top of this, the SEMToolbar provides keyword statistics – average daily search queries, cost per click, average click-through data and monthly search trends – along with website category and demographic (age and gender) data.

13. SEOQuake

SEOQuake is a Firefox extension that sits on the status bar at the bottom of your browser and lets you generate a range of web analytics about each website and web page you visit. After clicking on the SEOQuake icon to activate the tool (it will go from gray to multicolored) you can then right-click the icon to pull up a range of buttons to choose from. You can click these to generate either additional toolbars – such as the SEO Toolbar and SEObar which will appear in the top of your browser above the browser screen – or specific data. For example, if you click ‘Page Info’ a new browser tab will open to display items such as the Google PageRank of the page and domain, the number of backlinks indexed by Yahoo!, the Alexa, Compete and SEMRush traffic ranks, and the most common keywords and associated keyword densities.

14. SEO For Firefox

SEO For Firefox is a Firefox extension from Aaron Wall that sits at the bottom of your browser on the status bar. When you click on the icon to activate it (it goes from gray to multicolored) and then perform a search in Google, Bing or Yahoo!, the extension displays a range of web analytics underneath the search results. This data includes a website’s Google PageRank, domain age, backlinks indexed in Yahoo, .edu and .gov links indexed in Yahoo!, Alexa traffic rank, Whois data and other metrics. The idea behind SEO For Firefox is that you can, on one page – in fact the search results page – view these kinds of details about all the sites ranking highly for the keywords you’re targeting.

15. SEOBook Toolbar

Another tool from Aaron Wall, the SEOBook Toolbar is a Firefox extension that sits above your browser window and displays data about a website as you visit it. Such data includes a given website’s Google PageRank, domain age, backlinks counted in Yahoo (both to the site as a whole and to the specific page you’re visiting), whether or not the site is listed in the Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ directory or the BOTW directory, plus traffic estimates and rankings based on Compete, Alexa, Google Trends for Websites, Quantcast and SEM Rush.

You can click on the ‘information’ icon to get all these details and more, and also click on the specific Yahoo, Compete, Quantcast, etc buttons to get further analyses from those particular sites. Another feature of the SEOBook Toolbar is the SEO X-Ray button which generates information about meta-tags, keyword density and internal/external links relating to the specific page you’re visiting.

16. SEO Toolbar

SEOmoz’ SEO Toolbar is an extension for Firefox that provides SEOmoz metrics about a given website and web page you visit. These include such SEOmoz metrics as the Page Authority, Domain Authority, the mozRank, mozTrust level, and the number of URLs and domains linking to a given web page. You can click on any of the buttons in the SEO Toolbar to access further details from the applicable SEOmoz tools (including Trifecta, Keyword Difficulty, Linkscape and Open Site Explorer) or third party tools.

Thank you :)