Can I Track Competitors on Google Analytics?

Wishing you could plug a competitor's website into your Google Analytics and see all their traffic data? It's a common dream, but unfortunately, Google Analytics only works for websites you own and on which you can install a tracking code. This article breaks down why that is, shows you the closest you can get using GA’s built-in features, and walks you through other powerful methods to get the competitive insights you need.

Why Google Analytics Can’t Track Competitor Websites

Google Analytics operates on a simple principle of ownership and consent. To collect data, you must place a unique JavaScript tracking code (the GA tag) into the HTML of your website. This code acts like a sensor, sending information back to your Google Analytics account every time a visitor interacts with your site - what pages they view, how long they stay, where they came from, and so on.

Because you can't access your competitor’s website files to insert your own tracking code, you can't collect their data. Think of it like a security camera system for a retail store. You can install cameras all over your own shop to monitor foot traffic and customer behavior, but you can’t install your cameras in the competitor's store across the street. It’s their private property, and the same principle applies to websites and their data.

This limitation is a fundamental feature, not a bug, designed to protect website owners' privacy and data security.

Using Google Analytics Benchmarking Reports for Indirect Insights

While you can’t see a specific competitor’s stats, you can compare your website's performance against broader industry trends using Google Analytics' Benchmarking reports. This feature pools anonymous data from thousands of other websites that have also opted in, allowing you to see how your metrics stack up against the average for your industry, region, and size.

How to Enable Benchmarking in GA4

Enabling this feature is quick. Your account data remains anonymous and is aggregated with others, so your specific details are never shared.

Navigate to the Admin section of your Google Analytics 4 property (the gear icon in the bottom-left).
Under the Property column, click on Data Settings > Data Collection and ensure you have enabled Google Signals.
Return to the Admin page. Under the Account column, click Account Settings.
Scroll down and check the box for "Benchmarking" under Data Sharing Settings.

What You Can Learn from Benchmarking

Once enabled, benchmarking data subtly appears throughout your standard reports. You can compare your data against the industry benchmark to answer high-level questions like:

Channel Performance: Is my Direct traffic percentage higher or lower than the industry average? Am I getting more or less traffic from Organic Search than similar businesses?
User Engagement: Is my average engagement rate better or worse than the benchmark? Are users bouncing from my site faster than they are from others?
Geographic Performance: Is my website underperforming in a specific country compared to the industry trend?

These reports won’t tell you what "Competitor A" is doing, but they provide valuable context. For example, if you see your organic search traffic is down 10% this month, you might panic. But if the benchmarking data shows the entire industry is down 15%, your performance suddenly looks quite strong in comparison. It helps you tell the difference between a company problem and an industry-wide trend.

Keep in mind that the usefulness of this data depends on the accuracy of your industry category setting and the number of other businesses in that category who have opted in.

Leveraging Other Google Tools for Competitor Intelligence

Google Analytics may not be your spy glass, but Google offers other free tools that are excellent for gathering competitive intel.

Google Trends

Google Trends visualizes the relative popularity of search queries over time. It's an incredibly powerful tool for understanding brand awareness and market interest.

How to use it:

Compare Brand Search Volume: Enter your brand name, followed by the brand names of your top 3-4 competitors. You'll get a line graph showing which brand is searched for most often over your chosen time period. This is a brilliant proxy for brand recognition and top-of-mind awareness.
Identify Seasonality: See if your competitors' demand cycles match yours. For example, a competitor might see a huge search spike every January, hinting at a successful New Year's campaign you could learn from.
Discover Related Queries: Google Trends shows "Related queries" for your competitors' brands, giving you insight into what else their audience is searching for.

Google Alerts

This is one of the simplest but most effective monitoring tools available. Google Alerts allows you to set up email notifications for any time a specific keyword or phrase is mentioned online and indexed by Google.

How to use it: Set up alerts for:

Your competitors' brand names to track their press mentions and PR efforts.
Their key product names to see reviews or user-generated content.
Industry-specific keywords to stay on top of new content and articles from all players in your market.

Third-Party Tools for Direct Competitor Analysis

To get a direct look at your competitor's performance, you need to turn to dedicated digital marketing and SEO platforms. These tools use massive databases of web crawling data, clickstream data, and sophisticated algorithms to estimate what’s happening on your competitors' sites. While they aren't 100% accurate, they are indispensable for strategic planning.

For Traffic and Audience Insights

Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Similarweb are the industry standard for this. Simply enter a competitor's domain, and you can uncover estimated metrics like:

Overall Traffic Volume: Get a directional sense of how much traffic they receive monthly.
Traffic Sources: See a breakdown of their traffic from channels like Organic Search, Paid Search, Referral, Social, and Direct. This can reveal if they have a strong SEO presence or rely heavily on paid ads.
Top Pages: Discover which pages on their site receive the most traffic, helping you identify their most valuable content hubs or product pages.

For SEO & Content Strategy

Understanding which keywords drive traffic to competitors is grounds for action. Ahrefs and Semrush excel here, allowing you to see:

Top Organic Keywords: Find out every keyword your competitor ranks for in Google, along with their position and estimated traffic from that term.
Paid Keywords: See what terms they’re bidding on in Google Ads and even view their ad copy for inspiration.
Keyword Gap Analysis: Identify valuable keywords that your competitors rank for, but you don’t. This is a goldmine for your content strategy.

For Backlink Strategy

A backlink is a link from one website to another and is a crucial factor in SEO. Using tools like Ahrefs or Moz's Link Explorer, you can analyze a competitor’s backlink profile to understand:

Who Is Linking to Them: See the exact websites and articles that are sending traffic and authority their way.
What Content Earns Links: Identify their "link magnets" - the pieces of content (like blog posts, studies, or tools) that attract the most backlinks.
Link-Building Opportunities: If an industry blog linked to your competitor, they might be open to linking to an even better resource from you.

Your Competitor Analysis Workflow

Collecting data is only half the battle. Here’s a simple workflow to turn these insights into action.

Identify Competitors: List your direct competitors - the ones who appear alongside you in search results for your most important keywords.
Establish Your Baseline: Open Google Analytics and get a clear picture of your own performance. What are your key traffic sources, top pages, and conversion rates?
Set an Industry Benchmark: Check your GA Benchmarking reports. Are you generally ahead of or behind the curve in your industry?
Dive into Specifics with Third-Party Tools: Pick your biggest competitor and use a tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. Analyze their top keywords, traffic sources, and most popular content. What are they doing well that you aren’t? Find the gaps.
Formulate a Plan: Don't just admire the data. Turn your findings into a concrete to-do list. For example: "Competitor X gets 20% of its traffic from a blog post about 'how to fix [common problem]'. We need to create a more comprehensive guide on that topic and promote it to publications that linked to them."

Repeat this process quarterly to stay on top of the competitive landscape and continuously refine your digital strategy.

Final Thoughts

In short, you can't use Google Analytics to directly monitor a competitor's website traffic. Instead, you can leverage its benchmarking feature for a high-level view of industry performance and combine that with free tools like Google Trends and premium platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush to build a comprehensive picture of their strategy.

As you gather data from all of these sources - Google Analytics for your site, SEO tools for competitors, data from your ad platforms, CRM, and Shopify store - bringing it all together can feel overwhelming. At Graphed, we automate that entire reporting process. You can connect all your data sources in minutes and use simple, plain-English prompts to instantly create real-time dashboards that show the full picture, saving you from hours of manual spreadsheet work and helping you find actionable insights faster.