10 Free Tools for Website Traffic Checkers

Marketers and entrepreneurs need to have a firm grip on their websites. They must judge the performance of their landing pages and ascertain how the target audience responds to their content. This is vital, as a website is one of the company's company's most essential digital assets.

If you wish to get more conversions, it is essential to drive more traffic to your website. For that, you need to get information about the number of people visiting your site and then plan on how to increase the traffic. 

With the help of a website traffic checker, you can keep an eye on the activities of your competitors. Your business can become less profitable if you don’t learn from others, according to marketing experts from Lentis LLC. So, what are the benefits of getting website traffic information from your competitors? Let’s find that out in the next section.

What makes it Essential to Scrutinize the Website Traffic of Other Sites?

There are some hidden benefits to knowing your competitors' website traffic. These include:

• Effortless knowledge of daily/monthly visits of any competitor
• It gives you the knowledge of their top keywords that can be targeted to get more traffic on your website
• It makes you comprehend the other traffic sources like social, organic, referral
• It helps you gain insightful details like bounce rate, page views and time spent on the site

Now, the question is whether you can use these tools to learn about your website’s or other websites’ traffic. Let’s find that out.

Your traffic vs others' traffic

Let's make an important distinction first. You don't need any special tool to check your site's traffic. You have Google Analytics for that, and it's amazing. Google will tell you how many visitors you get from different sources: search engines, social media, referrals, AdWords, etc. 

You can filter the traffic by location and demographics, see where your visitors were before coming to your site, and much else: 

So if you aren't using Google Analytics and Google Search Console yet, you should start doing so ASAP. 

The traffic checkers I'll be talking about in this post have different functions. They are supposed to show you how where other sites get their traffic from.

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu states, “Know your enemy.”
This is exactly what traffic-checking tools can help you with. By analyzing your competitors' traffic, you can position your site better and gain an advantage. 

Table of Contents

1. Ahref
2. SEMrush
3. Ubersuggest
4. Google Search Console
5. Google Analytics
6. Sitechecker
7. Open.Trends from Semrush 
8. SiteWorthTraffic
9. Matomo (Free Version)
10. Serpstat Free Plan

1. Ahref

Ahrefs offers a limited free version of its website checker, known as Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT). This free tool allows users to monitor their website's backlinks and keywords, providing basic SEO metrics and insights. Users can also set up alerts to notify them of changes to their backlinks and keywords. Additionally, AWT provides a limited content analysis, allowing users to identify areas for improvement.

However, the free version has limitations. For instance, users only have access to limited historical data, and the number of keyword and backlink checks is restricted. Moreover, the free version does not offer advanced features such as content gap analysis, SEO audits, and competitor analysis.

2. SEMrush

You must register to use SEMrush traffic analytics, but it only takes a moment. A bigger problem is that it only works for large sites. The only part of the analysis you can access for free is the overview. It provides mostly the same data as SimilarWeb, including the number of visitors, visit duration, and the average number of pages viewed per visit:

You can also view traffic by source, the top 5 countries, and the proportion of desktop/mobile traffic for each subdomain:

However, you can buy a premium package whenever you click on Full Report or any of the advanced tabs. They cost at least $200 per month – not a great option if you are just starting out. 

3. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a powerful tool that offers more than just keyword research. While it's primarily used to find relevant keywords and phrases for content, it also provides valuable insights into website traffic and SEO metrics. With Ubersuggest, you can identify content ideas based on popular keywords and topics, and even analyze your competitors' websites to identify gaps in your content strategy.

The free version of Ubersuggest does come with some limitations, however. You'll only get limited keyword research results, traffic insights, and SEO metrics. Additionally, competitor analysis is restricted to the free version. If you need more advanced features and unlimited access to keyword research, traffic insights, and SEO metrics, you can upgrade to Ubersuggest Pro.

4. Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool offered by Google that helps website owners monitor and maintain their website's presence in Google search results. With GSC, you can track your website's performance, identify issues, and optimize your content to improve your search engine rankings. One of the key features of GSC is its ability to track your website's traffic, including the number of impressions, clicks, and click-through rates (CTRs) for each page. You can also use GSC to monitor your website's technical performance, including crawl errors, sitemap submissions, and robots.txt files.

GSC also provides insights into your website's search analytics, including the keywords and phrases that drive traffic to your site. You can use this information to optimize your content and improve your search engine rankings. Additionally, GSC offers alerts and notifications for critical issues, such as crawl errors, malware detections, and manual actions. This helps you stay on top of any issues affecting your website's performance.

5. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a robust, free tool that provides in-depth insights into website traffic. It tracks key metrics like website visits, session duration, bounce rate, and user demographics. You can monitor acquisition channels such as organic search, paid ads, social media, and direct traffic. 

The platform offers real-time traffic monitoring and allows for customizable reports to analyze specific metrics relevant to your business goals. Google Analytics seamlessly integrates with other Google tools like Search Console and Ads, offering deeper insights into your online performance. 

This comprehensive tool is best suited for all website owners and marketers seeking actionable data to optimize their site performance.

6. Sitechecker

The Traffic Checker tool in Sitechecker lets you check the website traffic stats of any website in the world.

Assuming your competitor’s website receives lots of traffic, the traffic checker tool will return lots of traffic data for that website.

The tool gives you an overview of what the website traffic is. Actually, like many website checker tools, this is an estimate of the website traffic.

It also reveals the website traffic stats by country, engagement, top organic keywords, top paid keywords, referral traffic, social traffic, and top competitors.

7. Open.Trends from Semrush 

Open Trends from Semrush is the perfect tool for businesses to find out which websites are the most popular within their chosen industry and geo. This tool allows users to easily access data about the most visited sites and analyze them to discover insights about their current competition.

The data provided by Open. Trends in comprehensive and include factors such as the number of visitors, Main Traffic Source, and more. It also offers a variety of metrics for each site to provide users with an in-depth look at the website’s performance. 

With Open Trends, businesses can get an accurate picture of which sites are driving traffic within their industry and make better-informed decisions about their strategies

8. SiteWorthTraffic 

This tool gives you something that others don't – an estimate of how much a site earns from ads. You can view daily, monthly, and yearly numbers.

However, SiteWorthTraffic seems to fetch the rest of its data from Alexa:

Though it provides much less data, SiteWorthTraffic is completely free. It doesn't try to sell you expensive subscriptions, and there's no registration.

9. Matomo (Free Version)

Serpstat's free plan provides a taste of its powerful SEO and analytics capabilities. This plan offers valuable insights, including traffic data, website ranking analysis, and competitor research. 

The user-friendly interface makes it easy to navigate and understand the provided metrics. While limited, the free plan provides valuable data for small businesses or beginners who want to explore SEO concepts and track their website's performance.

10. Serpstat Free Plan

Matomo is an open-source analytics platform prioritizing user privacy and data ownership. It offers in-depth analytics comparable to Google Analytics, including visitor data, location, devices, and behavior flow. 

You can host Matomo on-premise or in the cloud, giving you complete control over your data. Advanced features like heatmaps, session recordings, and form analytics are available in paid plans. 

Matomo is ideal for businesses and organizations that prioritize user privacy and want to avoid data sharing with third parties.

Bottom Line

Whichever tool you choose, don't forget that none of them is 100% correct. They aren't even 90% correct. In fact, all traffic checkers base their calculations on very incomplete data. Try to put in your own site's URL – and then compare what the checker tells you with what you see in your Google Analytics. You'll be surprised by the difference.

Still, checkers are valuable because they show you the general trends – and give you a direction for further research.

Say you find out that a competitor’s site gets many more visitors. In this case, you can ask yourself: is it because their content is more engaging? Do they select their keywords better? Or perhaps they chose faster web hosting with better uptime and thus rank better on Google? 

At the end of the day, competitor analysis is not about perfect accuracy. It's about what you need to do to help your site perform better.

FAQs:
1. What is a website traffic checker, and how does it work?

A website traffic checker analyzes web traffic data, providing insights into visitor numbers, sources, and behavior on a website.

2. Are free website traffic checker tools reliable?

While free tools offer valuable insights, they may have limitations in accuracy or features compared to premium alternatives.

3. Can these tools track competitor website traffic as well?

Yes, many free traffic checker tools provide estimates of competitor website traffic, helping with market analysis and benchmarking.

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