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Best Competitor Analysis Tools- SEMrush or SimilarWeb?

by ashstronge
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have started taking on a few clients in order to bring their website into more in line with competitors, in terms of online traffic.

At the moment, I use SEMrush and SimilarWeb to measure the online traffic of competiting websites. However, I found on one website that SEMrush and Similarweb gave widely different data for online traffic (3k monthly visitors vs 50k monthly visitors). Does anyone know why they are producing such a huge difference?

My initial feeling is that SEMrush is wrong, as it didn't have the seasonal traffic changes that I would expect from a website in its market.

Does anyone know of better tools used to measure competitor traffic, in order to use as a benchmark?
#analysis #competitor #seo #tools
  • Profile picture of the author ashstronge
    Does no-one have any thoughts on competitor analysis tools?

    Or even why these two tools are showing such drastically different results?
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  • Profile picture of the author Domainxpert
    Compare both keyword searches with google keyword tool searches and check which tools has stat close to google keyword tool and decide which is better.

    I think our brain + SERP is best to judge the competition.
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  • Profile picture of the author trier
    The main difference in how the two tools say they collect their data -

    From what I understand, SEMRush are basing their visits estimations on SERP data – meaning they calculate the estimated visits based on ranks of keywords times the avg. CTR for each rank. It was hard to find this information. Couldn't find it on SEMRush.com, but read it on several review articles about them. With SimilarWeb it's easier to find out how they estimate their traffic, since they publish this on their site (Compare Websites Traffic With SimilarWeb Analytics Tool)
    What they say they do is: track visits based on a user panel, buy ISP data and they also offer people an option to connect their Google analytics with them.

    Personally, I've been using the two tools for a while now and can say that while I've been a big fan of SEMRush for years now, I find SimilarWeb much closer to reality when it comes to traffic estimations. I've compared it with several sites I own and the closeness of the stats SimilarWeb show for my sites, to their real numbers is scary. Hope this helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author BlackHatM
      Yea, I did the same thing - compared it with my own sites and found that they give a very close number to what I see in my GA account. Got to say that I'm loving this tool. I've been using their free version so far, but considering giving their paid one a try. By the way, would love a feedback from anyone here that tried it already before I buy a subscription. Is it worth it?
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    • Profile picture of the author ashstronge
      Originally Posted by trier View Post

      The main difference in how the two tools say they collect their data -

      From what I understand, SEMRush are basing their visits estimations on SERP data - meaning they calculate the estimated visits based on ranks of keywords times the avg. CTR for each rank. It was hard to find this information. Couldn't find it on SEMRush.com, but read it on several review articles about them. With SimilarWeb it's easier to find out how they estimate their traffic, since they publish this on their site (Compare Websites Traffic With SimilarWeb Analytics Tool)
      What they say they do is: track visits based on a user panel, buy ISP data and they also offer people an option to connect their Google analytics with them.

      Personally, I've been using the two tools for a while now and can say that while I've been a big fan of SEMRush for years now, I find SimilarWeb much closer to reality when it comes to traffic estimations. I've compared it with several sites I own and the closeness of the stats SimilarWeb show for my sites, to their real numbers is scary. Hope this helps.
      Great reply! Really helped me out. Thanks!

      Its good information to know- I knew from experience that SEMRush seemed to be further from the truth- the amrket is fancy dress so I would exoect to see spikes in traffic around September and October, which Similarweb showed, but SEMrush data did not.

      The only issue I have had with Similarweb so far is that it doesnt seem to show any data for new websites or websites with low traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author rajeshsah45
    I prefer SEMrush mostly for analysis competitors.
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