Check competitor website traffic before you pick a market

Founders usually want to check competitor website traffic for one reason: to decide whether a market is worth entering, or how far behind they are in one they already chose. The honest version of that exercise takes an afternoon, a handful of paid lookups and one ground rule. You are comparing sizes and directions, not counting visitors.

The ground rule: nobody can see a rival's analytics

The only exact traffic numbers sit in the owner's own analytics and Google Search Console. Every outside figure is a model. The common kind starts from Google rankings: it lists the phrases a domain ranks for, attaches a monthly search volume to each, applies the click share typical for that position, and sums the result.

Each input is approximate, so the output is too. Ranking snapshots are taken now and then, volumes are averages, and click curves ignore ads, AI Overviews and rich results crowding the page. Treat the total as a rough size class.

Step 1: pick five to eight rivals

Do not size the whole market. Choose the rivals a buyer would actually compare you with: the two or three you lose deals to, the category leader, and a couple of small upstarts. If you are unsure who they are, seogeoaeo.ai's Competitor Finder lists the sites that rank for the same Google keywords as yours for 38 credits.

Step 2: run one overview per rival, plus yourself

seogeoaeo.ai's Domain Overview is the tool for this step. For each domain and one Google country (it supports 20), it returns:

• ranking keyword counts in bands: first place, 2 to 3, 4 to 10 and below
• estimated monthly Google visits
• the Google Ads cost of buying those visits instead
• paid keywords and estimated monthly ad spend
• referring sites, a link rank from 0 to 1,000, average link spam score and nofollow share

Run your own domain first, same country, same day. That run is your calibration.

Step 3: calibrate against your real clicks

Open your Search Console and compare its Google click total with the tool's estimate for your site. Suppose the tool says 4,000 and you know you get 6,000. The tool reads about a third low for a site of your shape. Apply the same adjustment mentally to rivals who look like you. It is crude, but it beats taking the raw figure at face value.

Step 4: sort rivals into three tiers

The third tier is the trap. A ranking-based estimate leaves out direct visits, social, email, newsletters and AI assistant referrals, and it tends to undercount branded searches. A rival with a loyal audience can look tiny in every checker.

Step 5: repeat in three months

One snapshot tells you size. Two tell you direction. A rival whose estimate doubled over six months gained rankings; a sudden fall usually means a few big keywords slipped. To see which ones, run Competitor Keywords on that domain (35 credits).

Budget for the afternoon

Domain Overview costs 50 credits a run. Eight rivals plus your own site is 450 credits. Add one Competitor Finder run and you are under 500. The Indie plan gives 2,000 credits a month for $29, so a full sizing pass uses about a quarter of it. Prices show before each run, and runs that fail are refunded.

When to pay for a suite instead

If you will check the same rivals every week and want a stored history chart without rerunning anything, a subscription suite such as Ahrefs Site Explorer keeps traffic graphs over time. For a founder doing a sizing pass every quarter, paying per lookup is the cheaper fit.

Two mistakes to avoid

Never mix vendors. A figure from one tool set against a figure from another compares two models, not two companies. And never put a raw estimate in a pitch deck as a visitor count. Present it as what it is: a modeled estimate of organic Google visits, useful for ranking rivals against each other.