16 September 2015

Find Out How Much Traffic a Website Gets


Would you like to know how much traffic (or page views) other websites in your niche are getting for competitive analyis? While it will be difficult for any third-party to accurately measure the traffic of a site, there are a bunch of traffic estimation services that can give you a better understanding of the popularity of a website. Here’s a list:

1. Alexa – Enter the website’s domain and Alexa will reveal the ranking of that website based on a combined measure of unique visitors and page views. The rank isn’t based on a site’s traffic alone but is relative to the traffic of all other sites that are monitored by Alexa. Webmasters are often skeptical of Alexa number but they the rank is still a good indicator of a website’s popularity over time.

2. Compete – You can use Compete to estimate the total US traffic (unique visitors) for nearly every site on the web. Compete uses data from ISPs, their own toolbar and other data sources to measure the traffic. It offers other metrics like Page Views, average stay duration, demographics, etc. but these are only available to paid users.

3. Similar Web – It started out as a tool for finding similar sites but now offers a range of data including traffic analysis in a clean interface. You get to know the site’s traffic over time, the countries that are sending the most traffic, what search keywords are bringing the organic referrals, how much time users are spending on a site and so on. The traffic reports can be downloaded as PDF files for archiving.

4. SEM Rush – It offers plenty of information around search (organic) traffic for any website. Put in the website URL and you’ll instantly know how the site has fared in organic search over time. The data can be split by country, you get to know which sites are sending traffic and also the keywords that are bringing the most visitors. Open Site Explorer is another popular tool in this category.

5. QuantCast – Like Compete, you can use QuantCast to determine how many people have visited a selected site during a give period from desktop or mobile phone. For sites that have implemented the QuantCast tags, you get more accurate metrics including visitor demographics, traffic by country, and the split in mobile and desktop traffic.

Also see: Know Everything About a Web Site

Website Traffic Chart

Find Website Traffic with Google AdWords

Few years ago, Google Ad Planner and Google Trends for Websites were the go-to tools for estimating a site’s traffic but they have since been discontinued. You can however still use the Display Planner tool inside Google AdWords to get a good idea of a site’s traffic and demographics. Here’s how:

Go to Display Planner and sign-in with your Google Account. You need not be an AdWords advertiser to use this tool.

Next put the site’s domain in the search box, set the Campaign targeting to United States (or remove geographic targeting to see global traffic) and click “Get Placement Ideas.” Google will now show you the average impressions per week for that domain and if you multiply that number by 4, you get a good estimate of the site’s monthly traffic (hits).


The story, Find Out How Much Traffic a Website Gets, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 16/09/2015 under SEO, Internet.

Download Mac Apps and OS X Updates Once for Installing on Multiple Computers


Mac OS X updates are huge with the installation files running into several gigabytes. The same is true for Mac apps like iMovie or Microsoft Office that have massive installers. The problem is compounded when you own multiple Mac computers and you need to upgrade them all to the latest OS X update. It will not just take too much time but you may end up consuming your monthly download bandwidth.

A simple and obvious workaround to the problem is that you download the installer files on one Mac machine and then transfer the downloaded apps to all your other systems through AirDrop or WiFi. The Apple website says that “Apps [downloaded] from the Mac App Store may be used on any Macs that you own or control for your personal use.” This is however easier said than done.

Installing Mac OS X on Multiple Macs

You download a 5 GB Mac OS X installer from the App Store, the machine restarts, your system is upgraded to Mac OS X Yosemite or El Capitan but wait, where has the installer disappeared? Your Mac, in a bid to save space, deletes the original installer automatically after the upgrade and thus you cannot reuse it on other machines.

To get around the problem, after the installer has downloaded, quit the installation routine and do not restart the machine. Go to the ~/Applications folder on your Mac, find the installer file and Option+Drag it to another folder like ~/Downloads to make a copy that will stay even after the machine is restarted.

For minor updates, like OS X 10.10.8 or 10.10.9 updates, Apple releases standalone installers as .dmg files that you can download once and install on multiple machines. The releases are available as incremental updates (containing only changed files) or combo updates (all changed files since the last major release).

A simple Google search for “download mac ox x 10.10. combo” will reveal the direct download links for the .dmg files on the Apple support website.

Mac App Store Download Folder

Installing Mac Apps from App Store

In the case of apps downloaded from the Mac App Store, you’ll find the .app files in your /Applications or /Users/username/Applications folder that you can easily copy to your other Mac machines. Internally though, the App Store downloads the installer as a package file (with a .pkg extension) and this will not reside in the Applications folder but in a separate hidden folder.

You can grab these Installer Package files and install the same Mac app on other machines without having to download it again thus saving data. To get started, open terminal on your Mac and run the following command to know where the App Store has downloaded the installer files:

defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

Now open the Mac App Store app and you’ll see a new Debug menu (see screenshot). Click the “Show Download Folder” menu and it will open the location of the download folder inside Finder where the Mac apps are temporarily download. You can find the .pkg files inside one of the sub folders that you copy to your other Mac systems via Airdrop.

[Bonus Tip] If you are upgrading to a new version of Mac OS X, like the upcoming El Capitan, press Cmd+L at the installation screen and it will open the installation log so you know what’s exactly happening behind the scene.
The story, Download Mac Apps and OS X Updates Once for Installing on Multiple Computers, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 16/09/2015 under Apple Mac, Software.