SimilarWeb Review: What Is It and How To Use It? The Complete 13 Pros & 3 Cons + Alternatives

Last Updated on April 4, 2019 by

Do you want to steal your competitors SEO strategies and get more free traffic to your blog or website? Then SimilarWeb is made for you.

What is SimilarWeb?

SimilarWeb is a competitive intelligence tool. It provides users with insights on their competitors’ website traffic, the traffic sources, keyword analysis, ranking, and website engagement metrics like bounce rate, page views, time spent by visitors on site, etc.

Before we dive deep, let’s first get back to SimilarWeb history.

SimilarWeb Background

SimilarWeb was founded in 2007 by Or Offer in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

By 2009 SimilarWeb won the first Israeli SeedCamp, attracting the attention of international media and investors. The company raised its Series A round of $1.1 million with the investment being led by Yossi Vardi, and Docor International Management. Later that year, they launched SimilarSites, a browser extension to help users find sites similar to those they are visiting.

On September 24, 2013, the company closed a $6 million Series B round led by David Alliance, Moshe Lichtman with the participation of existing investor Docor International Management. On February 24, 2014, South Africa media giant Naspers invested $18 million into SimilarWeb and leading their Series C round.

Within a month, SimilarWeb used a part of the capital for the acquisition of Israeli early-stage company TapDog for a few million dollars in shares and cash, less than a year after TapDog was founded. In November 2014 raised $15 million in a series D investment. In July 2015, SimilarWeb acquired personalized content discovery platform developer Swayy.

On December 10, 2015, SimilarWeb announced it had acquired Quettra, a Silicon Valley-based mobile intelligence startup, to boost its mobile operations. Quettra provided personalization tools for developers in return for detailed mobile telemetry data.

In July 2017, the company announced a $47 million round of financing led by Viola Growth, Saban Ventures with participation from CE Ventures and existing investors.

Source: Wikipedia

 

Why SimilarWeb?

What if you could see exactly what your competitors are doing? The keywords that convert in sales, how they get their traffic and everything about their performance? It would be amazing. Right? Yes. And that is what SimilarWeb tries to do.

• It Reveals the best strategies from the market and your competitors
• Uncovers the best SEO and content strategies
• Helps Enhance your display and paid search strategies
• Helps understand your market, your competitors and your customers

It also helps you

• Monitor website traffic statistics to boost retention
• Analyze trends, competitors’ strategy and audience behavior
• Understand the shopper’s journey for smarter decisions (if you have an e-commerce)
• And more…

How Does SimilarWeb Work?

All you have to do is to go on their website and type in a website URL. The tool then gives you an overview of monthly traffic, it sources, social engagement, top keywords, advertising, and audience behavior… more on that in the features section below.

You can also filter data by categories like “country” or “industry” to get more specific insights. It is really simple.

 

SimilarWeb Features

SimilarWeb distributes metrics through 09 main features including…

• General Overview
• Geography
• Referring Sites
• Search Traffic
• Social
• Display Advertising
• Audience
• Similar sites
• Mobile apps

The cool thing is all those 09 features are available in the free version of the tool and you are even allowed to compare 2 websites’ metrics head to head.

Let’s now take a look at those features to see how they perform. For the screenshots, I will spy on amazon.com! So let’s see what comes out.

OVERVIEW

This is the first section you see in the tool. It displays valuable data like:

• Website Global Rank: How a site performs in a given industry. SimilarWeb also shows a website ranking in a specific country.
• Estimated Monthly visits for the last 6 months.
• Users’ Location: Where visitors are coming from (the tool displays the top 5 counties).
• User Engagement: Page views per visit, Time on page, Bounce ate.

REFERRALS

Here you get the top 5 referral websites and also the tops 5 destination ones (inbound and outbound).

SEARCH TRAFFIC

A side by side comparison between free organic traffic and paid search.

SOCIAL

SimilarWeb displays here the traffic coming from social media especially the networks that bring in the most traffic (the top 5).

DISPLAY ADVERTISING

The tool shows you in this section the Top Publishers in your industry and the Top Ad Networks they use. It even shows you the Ad screenshots to give you a preview of what exactly your competitors are doing.

WEBSITE CONTENT

I like this part. It shows you all the most visited subdomains, folders, and even the top performing pages! When you know that, you can then create the same pages with better quality.

AUDIENCE INTERESTS

This part is what I like the most. You see exactly what your competitors’ clients/visitors are interested in the most. It is even sorted by category, topics and visited websites.

COMPETITORS & SIMILAR SITES

Nothing to explain here. It just shows sites similar to the URL you entered in the tool. The tool also displays here the ranking of each similar site.

MOBILE APPS

Does the website have a mobile app? If so, it is then displayed. SimilarWeb show you competitors mobile apps from Google Play Store and App Store.

How Do I Increase Traffic To My Website With SimilarWeb?

When you know what is working for your competitors, it is much easier to succeed. You will just have to write new content or optimize the existing one to match the trends.

For example, when you see that your competitors are getting a lot of traffic from podcasts, it may be time for you to start podcasting too. Or, if they get huge traffic from social media or YouTube, you might also consider targeting those sources of traffic.

Also, when you notice that some pages are performing really well, you then need to create a better version of them and in a more actionable fashion. And, as it is working with them, chances are it will also work for you because you are in the same industry.

How Accurate Is SimilarWeb?

Market intelligence tools are not made for absolute numbers operation. That is not their main purpose. Instead, they are made to help businesses, bloggers, professionals, and marketers to:

• See trends
• Compare performance
• Spy on competitors’ strategies.
  So…
  – The data should be considered as a snapshot of a constantly changing environment.
  – If you compare two competing websites – then their relative performance can be judged very accurately.

Pavel Matveev

However, I found SimilarWeb to be more accurate than many other tools I have used. I also noticed that for websites with high traffic, the tool tends to be perfect. But, for sites with low traffic, it overestimates in most cases.

After the maths, I came with a standard deviation of 30% compared to Google Analytics reports. And, I have to mention that it is really great.

Why? Because even GA is an estimation tool; not the exact traffic state. The only tool that could give you the exact number of visits is your web hosting account. Yes because your server is the only thing your website is directly linked to.

SimilarWeb Pricing (How Much Does it Cost?)

The tool has both a free and paid version. The free version though, as expected, comes with some limitations.

SimilarWeb Free

The 10 features listed above are available on the free version of SimilarWeb. But, it allows users to get only 5 results for each metrics which I think is not bad. As far as data are concerned, the free version provides 3 months of estimated traffic and only 1 month of mobile app data. Try it free here.

SimilarWeb Pro

The paid version of SimilarWeb grants you more power. It allows users to get unlimited results for each metrics, 3 years of estimated visits and 28 months of mobile app data.

Moreover, the paid version displays data like:

• Popular pages
• Unique Visitors
• Keyword analysis
• Mobile app engagements
• Industry analysis etc.

SimilarWeb Chrome Extension

The chrome extension of SimilarWeb is free and allows users to see up to 10 SimilarSites to the one they are currently visiting and provides website traffic, sources, and an option to view the full analysis. It has nearly 543,000 users.

SimilarWeb also has a Firefox add-on which is widely used.

Who is SimilarWeb for?

SimilarWeb is made for Digital marketers, professionals, businesses, e-commerce owners, bloggers, and any website owner or person interested in online Business (investor).

Marketers, Professional bloggers, and businesses

• Reveal best strategies from the market and your competitors
• Uncover the best SEO and content strategies
• Build & grow your affiliate and media partnerships
• Enhance your display and paid search strategies

LEARN MORE

For Research Purpose

• Understand your market, your competitors and your customers
• Benchmark your market and find ways to grow your share
• Analyze trends, competitors’ strategy and audience behavior
• Understand the shopper’s journey for smarter decisions

LEARN MORE

E-commerce owners

• Enhance performance throughout your sales funnel
• Find, enrich and qualify leads to increase sales opportunities
• Generate the insights you need to perfect your pitch
• Monitor website traffic statistics to boost retention

LEARN MORE

Investors

• Evaluate companies and empower better investment decisions
• Source, track and evaluate investment opportunities
• Map markets and spot emerging players and market trends
• Surface digital signals to inform buy, sell and hold positions

LEARN MORE

User Experience with SimilarWeb

Using SimilarWeb is a great pleasure. The interface is clean and beautiful. Everything is fast and insanely intuitive (biggest point). SimilarWeb’s dashboard is one of the best and easiest to use ever made. Visuals are fantastic with data chats, list and images that make things stupidly simple to use and understand. Best experience so far…

SimilarWeb Pros and Cons

No tool, no company is perfect. So, what is good and what is bad about SimilarWeb?

Pros

• Easy to use
• Comprehensive data analysis.
• Good user experience.
• Beautiful and intuitive user interface.
• Amazing data visuals.
• More than enough data coverage
• Rich Mobile app data analysis
• Keywords analysis
• Google Play keyword analysis for mobile app
• Custom Alerts
• Satisfying free version.
• Worldwide data for users.
• Data export (Users can export reports in pdf for free version, PNG & Excel for Pro version)

Cons

• Only desktop traffic is estimated. No mobile and tablets.
• Number of unique visitors is not available for the free version
• Overestimation for sites with low traffic.

SimilarWeb Competitors

SimilarWeb is not the only market intelligence solution. There are many others on the web. Some are far behind (Alexa) and some are really close or even better depending on your needs.

Therefore, here are some competitive intelligence tools that could be nice alternatives to SimilarWeb in case you decide that it is not the right tool for you.

Top SimilarWeb Alternatives

As this post is not specifically about SimilarWeb alternatives, I’m just going to list some tools I know and which could be a good replacement.

SEMrush

SEMrush is the direct competitor to SimilarWeb and it is my favorite tool.

Not only SEMrush offers every feature SimilarWeb provides, but it also offers wealthy insights like your competitors’ social media exposure, who is sharing their content, website Authority, and more in a fashion way.

SEMrush also helps you find low competitive keywords to target, Long Tail Keywords in a given industry, and track your backlinks or your competitors’ ones among many other features.

If you want to beat your competitors, then you should definitely try SEMrush. Get it free here

There are other great tools you can also try like:

Quantcast

Moz Local

Ahrefs

I will come back soon with a dedicated post about SimilarWeb competitors.

SimilarWeb Review- Conclusion

The biggest rock when it comes to online business is “rude competition”.

No matter who you are; since you own a website and want to make money from it (take it as a business), then, you might consider a market intelligence tool. And, SimilarWeb is one of the best competitive intelligence solutions.

On another hand, if you decide you want something more in-depth for bloggers, then you better go with SEMruch. Try it Free Now.

Now It Is Your Turn

What do you think about these tools? Which one are you going to try now? SimilarWeb or SEMrush? Do you use any other competitive intelligence tool? Let me know in the comment below.

Cheers!

Obaro.