Compete: Free Website Ranking & Analytics

Compete is a relatively new player in website ranking and third party analytics, a space dominated so far by Alexa rankings and Google PageRank. Whereas Google PageRank is an approximate ranking for a single page, Compete rankings are, like Alexa, for the entire site and they offer it for free. In my initial analysis compete is far more accurate than Alexa. The other major players in this market are: comScore Media Metrix 2.0, Hitwise and Nielsen//NetRatings. Compete can be a very useful tool for web advertisers and venture capitalists. It allows independent assessment of sites to help estimate their advertisement potential as well as overall business potential (for web based businesses).

Compete is the brainchild of Bill Gross, a serial entrepreneur who previously started search engine GoTo which became Overture which pioneered the business of paid search, and was later acquired by Yahoo.

How does Compete measure the web traffic?

Compete estimates site traffic and engagement metrics based on the daily browsing activity of over 2,000,000 U.S. Internet users. Compete applies a rigorous normalization methodology, leveraging scientific multi-dimensional scaling (by age, income, gender and geography) to ensure metrics are representative of the U.S. Internet population. Compete members are recruited through multiple sources, including ISPs, the Compete Toolbar and additional opt-in panels to ensure a diverse distribution of user types and to facilitate de-biasing across the data sources.

How does compete get data?

Compete gets its data from Compete Toolbar (like Alexa), ISP, ASP, opt-in panels. Compete aggregates data from ISP’s and ASP’s which gives it a distinct advantage over its competitors.

How does Compete estimate site visitors?

Compete doesn’t elaborate much about its methodology except to say:

Compete has developed a unique methodology created by experts in the fields of mathematics, statistics and the data sciences to aggregate, transform, enhance and normalize data in order to estimate U.S. Internet traffic.

Based on the daily web usage of more than two million members (and growing!) of the Compete community, Compete calculates and estimates total traffic and rank for nearly every site on the web. We use rigorous statistics to make sure our estimates balance demographic and connection factors that match the entire U.S. Internet population. Currently, we’re calculating the number of people in the U.S. that visit any given Web site each month (international usage calculations are in development).

Compete has got quite some favorable reviews:

“A quick, informal survey of consumer Internet VCs suggests that those that had heard of Compete.com were including its stats in their due diligence. So I pass it on to you.”

- Alexander Haislip, peHUB.com

“The importance of the web is increasing by the day. We are increasingly dependent on it, but there is one aspect that is missing — a critical evaluation of consumer and non-consumer internet services. The market needs better information to measure the impact of this evolution and Compete.com offers a comprehensive, and more importantly openly available tool to help those involved make critical and important decisions. Compete.com has become a barometer for us at GigaOm when evaluating consumer-related web services.”

- Om Malik, Business 2.0 Magazine columnist and executive editor of popular technology blog GigaOM.com

“New FREE ranking system better then Alexa by far.”

- Markus Frind, CEO of Plentyoffish.com

VC’s aren’t far behind:

“I played with compete.com this morning and to be honest, its results better conform to my gut check and what I know from some of my companies than Alexa does.”

- Michael Eisenberg, Partner at Benchmark Capital, Six Kids and a Full Time Job

“I find them more accurate for US sites than Alexa, and a lot easier to read.”

- Howard Morgan, First Round Capital, WayTooEarly

How accurate is Compete estimations of visitor traffic?
I analyzed their data for my sites and they are uncannily accurate. I am pleasantly surprised to see how our traffic compares favorably with A-list blogs like PaidContent.org, Scobleizer & Scripting News and ProBlogger. Please check the enclosed graphs for details.