How does compete.com know Google analytics data?

Question

Hi,

If you search for any site on compete.com you can get Google Analytics data about that site. I am wondering how they get that information..

Second point is if that data is out in the open, why google makes us insert ga.js files on every page ?

Answer 1

It's probably not data from google analytics. Probably comes from Alexa

Answer 2

Where does compete.com mention that it specifically uses Google Analytics data?

From their About Us page:

We have a diverse sample of 2,000,000+ U.S. Internet users that have given us permission to analyze the web pages they visit and ask them questions via surveys.

As for your second question, the ga.js files are necessary to track that page's usage and send data back to Google.

Answer 3

The data comes from Compete's clickstream panel of 2M users. It is not Alexa data. It is data from multi-sources including but not limited to the Compete proprietary panel where users opt-in to share their internet behavior in exchange for membership in a traditional survey panel or in exchange for application value. The data is standardized, processed and normalized to the US internet browser population in order for Compete to create internet behavior metrics.

Answer 4

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/938650/can-we-write-a-program-to-measure-how-much-traffic-any-website-has-like-alexa-doe

second answer looks like the one I needed to know.

Answer 5

There is an interesting insight from TechCrunch:

How Does Compete Get Its Web Traffic Data? At Least One Way Sounds Very Sketchy.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/25/compete-data/