Comments on: Review: Compete

By: Mayur

Mayur — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 02:39:48 +0000

Nice info, but i am wondering how to increase the compete rank because many ad networks have started to consider it along with Alexa rank, i know Alexa rank is the traffic rank but i am not sure what exactly is compete rank. I think its the website rank compared to other websites in similar niche or where your websites stands in competition, hence compete rank? that might sound silly but please excuse.

By: Özel Ders Kurs

Özel Ders Kurs — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 19:37:03 +0000

I totally agree with Fargham, claiming matcutts.com as untrustworthy is reason enough to deem this tool uncredible in my opinion. I mean what must a webmaster do in order to be trustworthy by Compete’s criteria?

By: Fargham

Fargham — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 13:36:05 +0000

Alexa & compete both are claiming what they are not at all. Is it possible to rate the web they way they are doing. NO!

Compete is using Overture, which is not as credible as Google.

If there would be something it would be from Google end.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 07:11:18 +0000

Matt, your post reminded me to email Google and tell them to allow sites to opt into showing our traffic data publicly. I feel confident that my email landed at the bottom strata of a tall pile, but it felt good to click Send anyway. If Google doesn’t start making analytics data public, I’ll put my hopes into Quantcast. I just fear that they’ll fade quickly if they don’t find a lot of exposure quickly.

I have a website dedicated to bargain shopping and Compete shows us as having no “deals” – even though we post 21 deals daily. I searched Compete for other deal sites and large merchants and realized that a “deal” exists only when couponmountain.com has an affiliate-paid coupon for that site. Ha! How very weak. As for traffic accuracy, their numbers are off for our site but the trends are pretty close. Alexa is ludicrously off in numbers and in trends.

By: David P.

David P. — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 09:25:20 +0000

Lawrence Coburn you hit the nail right on the head. Unless websites are actually turning in md5 generated reports from trusted traffic trackers, the stats are useless. They only represent a small portion of internet users that install the toolbar or that live in the purchased ISP’s areas.

No one else sees a problem with Compete buying ISP data? I mean doesn’t this scare anyone that they can purchase this personal information? It boggles my mind to think that this data is up for sale. Talk about getting a lot for a little, no matter how much they pay.

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 08:47:49 +0000

Compete seems to do a good job actually! I am not talking about their search engine part of course, that is less the accurate. I am referring to their snapshot.compete.com feature. I think they capture the FatFront of the long tail very well. Their sample size is big enough to rule out webmaster bias. I find it rather refreshing because the only other source of completive analysis is Alexa data. But could enough webmasters download the Compete toolbar and pollute the data like Alexa rankings do?

As a top 200 Alexa site DomainTools is rather high. But we rank at 31,940 in Compete. So I can safely say their sample set must be non-technical users. Just like in real life (outside work) I would assume only 1 of out 100 people use our service. The Alexa data is polluted with Webmasters and not enough real users. Yes they have a few. But I think it is because webmasters install the Alexa toolbar on their girl-friends computers.

Matt, you remember this post, “Second, there is some serious webmaster skew in the Alexa data. There is no way that I have 1/4th the daily reach of Ask. I think my site gets a little boost because tons of SEOs install the Alexa toolbar.” – http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/thoughts-on-alexa-data/

Well, in contrast take a look at http://snapshot.compete.com/ask.com/?domain2=mattcutts.com

This sort of proves it, Compete is way better then Alexa data.

Now, if only Google would release the Google Toolbar comparative graphs. I think that would be killer.

By: prasan

prasan — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 07:42:27 +0000

Brian its not the question of security, its for the security of visitors

By: Fabio Braghi

Fabio Braghi — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 04:38:54 +0000

Matt,

Same experience as yours. We have an informational site with no downloads or spyware and get the same cautionary rating. C’mon Compete, get real! Unless you count Google analytics code on the site as an invasion of privacy

By: Lever

Lever — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 16:40:35 +0000

Great, a company I work for is listed with a nice yellow “Use caution in providing any personal information or downloading software on whateverthey’recalled.com” that’s charming. LOL

And then further digging explains that the yellow caution symbol means they’re “currently rated *Neutral* due to a lack of information to qualify the site as trusted.”

Well, after surviving the bubble burst and another 6 years of paying everyone on time I’d say they can be trusted

By: Henk

Henk — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 17:54:31 +0000

So at the risk of going against the trend – we use Alexa as well. Hey, we know it’s not the actual stats – that’s why we’ve got three other providers (based on logs) plus Google analytics as well – and they don’t even agree between them.

But what it does do is allow us to compare ourselves with competitor sites – and yes that includes a lot of assumptions on things like browser, platform etc. But as we are not in a techie (well not that sort of techie) environment, I don’t care that Webmasterworld is number 233, or what percentage of our visitors use some exotic SEO professionals only browser. But I do care if our competitor sites go up.

Alexa or Compete absolute numbers are rubbish – but trends on these sites are pretty informative. And until I get access to my competitors’ log files, these sort of sites are all we have.