October 23, 2008, Vol. 2, Issue 20

The only thing scarier than your competition this Halloween is not knowing how to keep track of them!. So, here are a few of our favorite ways to gain insight into your competition. After all, what’s Halloween without a few tricks to go with those treats?

GRRRRR!

Attentionmeter is a cool web application that allows you to compare site traffic from up to five different sites and uses multiple engines to do so. It aggregates results in chart form from Alexa, Quantcast, and Technorati. Plus, there’s a bookmarklet so you can track any website you’re browsing. Competition, beware!

BOO!

This application is a cool tool for recreating times, doing competitive analysis and gaining intelligence. It’s called the Wayback Machine. No, I’m not kidding. You can browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to just a few months ago. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for there’s another Internet archive at the New Library of Alexandria, Egypt – it’s is very similar to the Wayback Machine (mummies included!). Both sites are fun, but remember, you can’t live in the past – the future is now (or something like that).

EEEEK!

All we can say about Xenu Returns is WOW! Ok, that wouldn’t make for a very good newsletter so we’ll expand on that. This site allows you to find out how well your site is doing in popular search engines and social bookmarking. It also provides other helpful site statistics like site rank, bookmarking, and back-links. But wait, there’s more! It  can give you stats on the site like how long  it’s been operating, who created it, and where it was created. This site has a ton of potential for competitive analysis. The faint of heart need not apply!

AAAAH!

When you need to know stats quickly, Statbrain is the place to go. It uses different resources on the web combined with mathematical and statistical methods to estimate how many visits a website has. After all, what’s scarier than doing your own math? Shiver!

Have a question for Gus?

Ask Gus. He Knows! We know there’s something you want to know. Anyone? Bueller? Come on and send Gus a question. He’s just sittin’ here waiting. You don’t want him to get a complex, do you?