Compete.com launches Nov. 1. Just yesterday I asked if anyone can help us with an Alexa we can trust, this seems to be addressed at that market, and more. I do not have time to grok it, I am afraid (it *is* Halloween night after all) but check it out, and let us all know what you think here. And here’s a t’rati link for coverage of the launch.
From the about page:
Today, search engines help us find sites, but they fall short of showing how safe, popular and valuable a site is. Through click-sharing, Compete extends search algorithms by tapping the collective online experiences of millions of people. By sharing our clicks, we create useful new information about the websites we visit that can help us answer questions like:
Is this website safe from spyware and other threats like phishing?
How many people visit this site and how does it compare to other sites?
Are there promotion codes for this site that can save me money?
Compete.com helps you personally benefit from click-sharing. Whether it’s protecting you from a dangerous site, profiling each website you visit, or showing you promo codes that will save you money at check out, Compete wants to help create a more trusted, transparent, and valuable Internet.
Here is a perfect opportunity for to compare their traffic estimator with YOUR traffic data…
Comparing THEIR estimation for battellemedia and Federated Media – with the private data only you have available…
How close are they?
snapshot.compete.com/battellemedia.com/?domain2=http://federatedmedia.net/
All of the readers with popular sites could offer their input about the accuracy as replies to this Post – allowing for a collection assessment – that would be valuable for everyone
Wow. That’s a whole lot of promises from Compete with zero information about how the stats are collected. If I were to trust my Kids online experience with Compete’s trust labels, I would want to know a bit more about how they are gathered and summized first…
ReadWrite Web has a pretty good breakdown on Compete and where they are getting their stats.
Snip:
Compete gets its data in the following ways:
* The Compete toolbar – works very similar to Alexa toolbar, in that “community members” download the toolbar and opt in to share information on the web pages they visit, as well as other marketing data.
* ISPs
* Opt-In Panels
* Application Providers
I checked 3 sites where I know exactly what the traffic is thanks to stat tracking code on each page.
In the FAQ, Complete explains why their stats would be different than what shows on a site, using internal log files:
“Compete’s definition of ‘people’ is also different compared to traffic reported through common local analytic solutions and traffic log analyzers. Compete measures U.S. consumers, which means we will only count a person once no matter how often he or she visits your site throughout the course of a month. In comparison, local analytic solutions will include domestic and international traffic and often include spiders and bots that appear as traffic, but do not represent actual human activity. Compete’s services do not rely on log files or cookies and therefore do not count this activity as traffic.”
So how does Complete explain being as far off as they are (and for the sites I checked they were waaaayyyy off) as compared to perfectly capable stat applications that already filter out international traffic, spiders/bots and repeat visitors?
I found the answer in the FAQ to be quite arrogant (gee, you mean all those “hits” from some guy called “googlebot” weren’t real visitors? Wow, I had no idea…gee, thanks, Compete). Maybe it’s good for larger sites (top 50,000) but for those of us with sites ranked in the 250,000-500,000 ranges I wouldn’t consider Compete a valuable or fair measure at all. Do people really just use these things to compare and analyze monster sites? Seems to be another Alexa-like service that relies on its own toolbar to give information about the surfing habits of people that use the toolbar. Not much more.
Thanks for the comments. The long tail is very long and it’s a challenge to accurately report on smaller sites. Compete’s projection base is from 2M users (ISPs, Opt-In panels, Toolbar) which is the largest in the industry, but still can only support strong reporting for the upper tail of the internet.
By launching Compete.com we are opening our data and hoping to include more contributors in the exchange – the Compete Toolbar is the community’s vehicle.
We are excited to open our data to the world, but are also realistic and understand it will be scrutizined and challenged. From today forward Compete’s user base will grow, the time and rigor we invest in normalizing the data will increase and we’ll work further and further down the tail…
We would love to hear from you if you have any questions or suggestions.
membersupport(at)compete(dot)com
Thanks.
I am not sure what it is. It is a search engine like google. or is it site information finder like alexa. Its confusing. and it doesnt have data on us.
We put a short, but fun 2:43 minute video together to help celebrate and explain the launch of Compete.com… Enjoy!
http://blog.compete.com/files/compete_flash/
I like compete so far, in terms of accuracy their stats seem to jibe with what I am seeing in internal logs for some large client sites.
However, they need some work on the way they present the data. Check Alexaholic.com for an example of how they ought to be giving the info.