Web business competition research tools

Now, lots of businesses are getting online and because of ease of starting a web based business, more and more people are gathering their ideas and coming on board to business 2.0. Because of this fact, competition is getting fierce and knowing thyself and your competitor is becoming very important to be able to position yourself in the market and being successful.

Jessica Hupp from virtualhosting put together a great list of online tools that you can do to gather more intel on your competitors in the article Webmaster Intel Basics: 25 Tools to Compile an In-Depth Dossier on a Competitors’ Site. The major quotes on the list are as follows:

Domain Name and Ownership Intel

1. Whois: Check out the Whois on your competitors to find how who owns the site and where they operate. You can also gather contact information through this tool.
2. Mark Alert: Mark Alert lets you know if a domain name is registered with a term or phrase that may violate your trademark. This can help you defend your trademark and make sure that competitors don’t get too close.
3. Company Profile Report: Look up a competitor’s Company Profile Report to get information on sales and contacts. This can be used as a comparison tool.
4. Domain History: Domain History allows you to see the historic ownership of any site. In the case of private registrations, you can view contact information for the site before it was privatized.

Traffic Intel

5. Compete: Compete offers SnapShots of any site. They provide visitor information, growth and traffic counts, If you register, you can compare up to 5 sites at once, save them to a portfolio, and vote to rank sites.
6. Alexa: Alexa’s Traffic Rankings offer stats on the percentage of internet users who visit a site, its traffic rank and page views. You can compare up to 5 sites at a time on Alexa’s Traffic Graph, too.
7. Search Engine Optimization Analysis Tool: Use the SEO Analysis tool to see how a search engine spider sees any website. This is a great way to discover your competitor’s SEO weaknesses and consider how you can improve on your own.
8. Statsaholic: Statsaholic’s website statistics offer information on competitors’ ranks, page views and more. You can create a permalink to any site’s stats for quick reference at a later date.

Hosting Intel

9. Who is Hosting This?: Who is Hosting This? offers a way for you to find out who is hosting any domain name. Whether they’re just using Blogger, a traditional host, or running their own server, you’ll be able to find out.
10. WebSitePulse: WebSitePulse monitors how fast a website’s host is. Find out response time, size and more.

Marketing Intel and Backlinks

11. SpyFu: SpyFu’s web scraping tools let you know how much your competitors are spending on pay per click ads so that you have a reference point to work from. You can also find out how many clicks per day they get and which keywords they are advertising for.
12. URLtrends: URLtrends provides SEO data like Page Rank, incoming links, ranking trends and more.
13. Backlink Checker: Find out who your competitors are sharing links with and use this information to set up link trades of your own.
14. Market Leap: Another SEO tool, Market Leap lets you test the ranking of a competitor’s pages. You can enter your own URL and see how it compares with up to 3 competitors’ sites at a time.

Trademarks and Filings Intel

15. Trademark Electronic Search System: Use the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) to perform basic, boolean and advanced searches for trademarks.
16. SEC Filings and Forms: Check out the Securities and Exchange Commission’s database for company filings.
17. Patent Electronic Business Center: Search the patent office’s records for full-text and full-page image returns on your competitors’ issued and published patent applications.

Public Relations

18. Better Business Bureau: Search the Better Business Bureau’s database for reliability reports on your competitors. You can search by name, address, and phone. You can even check out businesses of a specified type within a certain mile radius.
19. KnowX: Use KnowX to search lawsuit public records by defendant, plaintiff, case number, date and type of case.

Financials

20. Credit eValuator Report: The Credit eValuator Report gives information on creditworthiness and payment history. Using this tool, you’ll be able to find out if your competitor is struggling or flourishing.
21. Business Background Report: The Business Background Report provides information on a company’s history, background, operation and data on senior management.
22. Yahoo! Finance: If your competitor is a publicly traded company, you can check out stock quotes and analysis on them using Yahoo! Finance.
23. BusinesScope: Use BusinesScope to directly compare your financials and credit with your competitors. This report is good for a year and updated quarterly.

Browser Compatibility and Accessibility

24. Watchfire WebXACT: WebXACT tests the quality, accessibility and privacy of single webpages.
25. Wave 3.0: Wave 3.0 tests website compatibility with WCAG 1.0 and Section 508.
26. Browsershots: Use Browswershots to see how any website looks in various browsers like Firefox, Safari and Iceweasal.
27. Ready.mobi: Ready.mobi lets you test any web page to see how it will look on mobile phone browsers.

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