US analytics
firm Compete, a company formed in 2000 by Bill
Gross of Overture fame, has quietly released a new search engine and at the same time
opened up some of its analytics data to the public. What's more, there is an e-commerce
component that displays special shopping deals next to search results. I spoke to Compete
CEO Don McLagan and other members of his team today to find out more...
Formally Compete was a Web statistics firm that provided analytics services to private customers - similar to Hitwise and Nielsens. So this move to offer search and associated analytics tools is designed to increase their collaboration and community on the open Web.
The main analytics product being offered is called Snapshot, which does Alexa-style comparisons between websites - as well as additional metrics such as 'trust'. Indeed the new Compete is similar in nature to Alexa, in that it collects data about website traffic and makes it available to the public. However Compete (unsurprisingly) says that its data is superior to Alexa's, because it uses more than just a toolbar to collect it. Compete gets its data in the following ways:
Compete currently has more than two million members - and this is growing as new users download their toolbar and Compete expands its data collection, via ISP relationships and the other methods mentioned above.
As with Alexa, there is ranking, pages/visit, avg stay and comparisons (up to 3 domains in total). There's also a People metric - an estimate of unique visitors to a site.
Compete is really challenging Alexa (owned by Alazon) front-on here. The following table, which I found in the FAQs, makes this clear:
Source: Compete.com FAQ
However in my tests, I identified a couple of downsides to Compete's data - which makes me think that Alexa isn't vanquished just yet. The first is that Compete data is US only. Even the data of international toolbar users is not included. So, as with comScore, this immediately makes Compete's data less comprehensive than it could be. [update: comScore advised me that "comScore has offered international data for quite some time."] Compete told me that this will change over time, but for now they only offer US data.
The second issue is that Compete doesn't provide very accurate data on blogs or small websites. I tested Read/WriteWeb, Techcrunch and some other blogs - and the data was significantly under-reported and trends weren't accurate. So for this reason, Alexa maintains its edge for now as a stats service for blogs and small startups. The Compete data for large websites, like MySpace and Yahoo, is much more compelling though. Compete told me in our briefing that they do intend to cater to 'the long tail', so I'm hoping that data for small websites improves soon.
At first glance when you go to compete.com, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's just another search engine. But search results come with some nifty features. For example search for "computers" and the following page comes up:
At the top are 'sponsored links' (ads). These are followed by 'Compete Picks', which are search results that are determined by the 2 million + community of Compete users. In the FAQ it states that "Compete Picks 'promote' specific search results based on the input of the Compete community." Compete Picks only appear for popular search terms currently, but it's hoped that as Compete's memberbase grows it will be able to feature Compete Picks for more obscure search terms.
There are also icons for trustworthiness of websites and a Snapshot stats icon. But of most interest is the little blue dollar icon which displays on some results. This means there are special deals and promotional codes associated with the domain. Click through to the Snapshot page for the domain and you'll see something like this:
This is potentially a great feature, because it ties in specific shopping deals with search.
Below the Compete Picks are normal search results, provided by Yahoo.
Another feature is MyCompete, "a personalized homepage for Compete community members" (includes retail incentives). Add that to the search, analytics, shopping deals - and this is quite a package being released by Compete. I'd personally like to see the data expanded beyond US and improved in regards to blogs and small websites - but overall Compete's feature set is impressive. Also the shopping component seems to me to be a potentially very compelling part of their search site.
Compete.com will officially launch on November 1, but the site is currently available for testing.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Compete Takes On Alexa - Launches SnapShot and Social Search.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2843
I read this very interesting article on Read/Write Web about how Compete.com will be taking on Alexa in the web analytics market.  Compete has recently opened up a new search engine and web analytics tools for its users.  Compete used to provide web... Read More
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Great review Richard. How would you compare Quantcast to Compete ?
Posted by: Cristian Mezei | October 31, 2006 3:11 AMExcellent post .... but Compete is so terribly bad ... try to search for small web pages ... cannot find anything, wrong results, missing pages .... loooooong way to go to challenge Alexa.
Posted by: hombrelobo | October 31, 2006 3:32 AMThorough review...I wonder how fast it will take Compete to focus on international and long tail sites...I suspect very quickly after your review! In the meantime, I can't stop playing with this and comparing every site I know!
Posted by: stevieray | October 31, 2006 5:11 AMGreat post Richard.
You're dead on about Compete's current strengths and development areas. The long tail is long... super long... So even with 2M users (twice the size as any comparable metrics firm) it can be a challenge, but as more people opt-in to contribute to the collective (both domestically and internationally) we will improve.
There will be a video posted to the Compete Blog tomorrow that will provide "coming soon" additions to the Compete.com service. Our expectation is to continually create more transparency in the market.
Thanks...
Posted by: TJ Mahony | October 31, 2006 6:10 AMI am none too pleased with the hysterical anti-phishing warning these guys assign to any web site that hasn't received the requisite number of visitors. Is this an analytics tool that's strictly for big sites? I'm not touching it with a 10-foot-pole until they get rid of that warning.
Posted by: Jeffrey McManus | October 31, 2006 7:40 AMCompete doesn't seem to skew towards sites with lots of techie users like Alexa... must be all that ISP data.
I think this is a nice development - it's hard to take Alexa seriously when we saw our Alexa rank triple on a day when we got 200 clicks from Mashable (against an overall traffic day of 25K visits.)
Posted by: Lawrence Coburn | October 31, 2006 11:03 AMi think compete sucks...i have a small business and b/c it doesn't get tons of traffic it tells any new cusotmer to be cautious in giving over personal data or downloading software.
the thing is, my business isn't web-based. so it will never draw tons of traffic; its used to advertise my products.
these guys are assholes.
Posted by: lemon obrien | October 31, 2006 11:19 AMCompete is no more accurate than Alexa. See SEOmoz's article comparing many stats from popular SEO sites to Alexa, Compete, and others.
http://www.seomoz.org/articles/search-blog-stats.php
Posted by: Jeremy Luebke | October 31, 2006 4:37 PMSo let me get this right.
mba4success.com has been around for almost 10 years, and has thousands of people visit the site for news on MBA and MBA Rankings. Our rankings have been published in many business schools magazines.
We are one of the most trusted independent business school news bulletins and because Compete has not validated the site, mba4success.com is not a trusted site.
To gain trust all I have to do is hand over some money to GeoTrust, and that makes me a trusted site. This is a terrible money spinner: blackmailing sites to pay for the ‚ÄúTrust Tick‚Ä?‚Ķ
Posted by: Mark Hebblewhite | November 7, 2006 2:21 PMOr have I just got the whole concept wrong?