1. Do you think that any value or insight can be extracted from comparing two different sources of information like Comscore and Hitwise, for the same website?

Both ComScore and HitWise being unique things to the table, and each of those is very different.

ComScore is good at deeper website behavior (if your website gets greater than one million unique visitors a month). HitWise is great at customer behavior that gets people to your site (acquisition, search, etc etc).

I tend not to compare the two unless there is a nasty problem I am trying to solve (and the website in concern gets greater than a few million unique visitors a month, else the data will just be so far apart it is not even funny).

2. If you have a website with a decent amount of traffic (+1M UV/month and +4PV/Visit), and Hitwise shows one trend and Comscore the opposite one, then which one do you trust? How do you determine which one is the real insight?

It is hard to make a generic statement in your case (a heavily trafficked website). I (others) would have to know a lot more about your specifics.

I have to admit that because of my own experience in this space I tend to favor non intrusive data collection models like HitWise, Compete, G Ad Planner etc.

3. Which do you think could be the role of Google Ad Planner in this mixture?

(Caveat: I am the Analytics Evangelist for Google, though I don't work with the Ad Planner product.)

I think Ad Planner provides another excellent source of competitive intelligence, and it has perhaps the largest sample size. It also provides data that was thus far available only at very high cost. It is primarily for media planning purposes and in as much I am quite impressed with the data that is already there (and Google has indicated that is just the start – is is still in preview beta after all). Demographic, psychographic, visits, site usage etc is already there.

My guidance on every competitive intelligence tool is that you should take time yourself to understand how each collects data (that is key!) and then pick the source that collects data most optimally for the decision you want to make.

In the world of CI there is no such thing as a golden source, each has its biases, each has its strengths.

-Avinash.
PS: This post might also be interesting:

Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Why, What & How to Choose

I found this post very useful. However I still have a couple of questions:

1. Do you think that any value or insight can be extracted from comparing two different sources of information like Comscore and Hitwise, for the same website?

2. If you have a website with a decent amount of traffic (+1M UV/month and +4PV/Visit), and Hitwise shows one trend and Comscore the opposite one, then which one do you trust? How do you determine which one is the real insight?

3. Which do you think could be the role of Google Ad Planner in this mixture?

Thank you in advance for your answers.

Jose

The very first steps in our SEO consulting services include a thorough competitive analysis of your website as well as your competitors’ websites. A website competitive analysis conducted through detailed research and along several established parameters can tell you exactly what your competitor is doing and how you can better it.

Sometimes you explain such complicated subjects in so simple words… I think Israel's government should bring you here to try solving the Middle East conflict. I can see you lecturing for both Palestinians and Israelis and everyone with a shocked expression: "Why did we fight terrible wars for 60 years? How couldn't we see that the solution was so simple? Just a JavaScript and a few logs!!!" What do you say? ;-)

Your podcast is great, really insightful. I have worked heavily with Hitwise last year and I believe we had some very precious results. But I felt that people were really frustrated that WebTrends/ClickTracks numbers weren’t even close to Hitwise’s. Not the increase/decrease in traffic and not the keywords we use. No matter how much I tried to explain that Hitwise is not about numbers, but about trends, managers didn’t recover from the initial shock.

Now I have a slightly lower budget and Alexa is the only option… but I feel so statistically sick about their numbers, there are so many biases… I try to comfort myself with the same “it is not about numbers, it is about trends” but now I understand what they felt :-)

In fact, you said just a few words about the most difficult competitive analysis task (IMHO): defining the competitors. There so many of them and, as you said, it is so hard to understand who, where, and what they are, that analyzing competitors become a very abstract concept. Then, you find yourself comparing your website to the big guys, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook… and again: frustration! But I think that as a Web analyst I am becoming more and more used to it ;-)

Just a slight comment about what you said on Quantcast being more Web Analytics oriented. On March, Hitwise bought HitDynamics and they were really serious about getting into Web Analytics features, but since then they did not release any related feature. Let’s wait and see…

Hope it adds to the discussion.
Have a great weekend!
Daniel

Five Free “Advanced” Web Analytics Examples: Look Outside, Think Different.

Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Metrics, Tips & Best Practices

It is really impossible, and perhaps not even advisable, to tie the competitive intelligence data with the clickstream data from your own website web analytics tool. The data collection is very different and the purpose is very different.

In the context of competitive intelligence you are comparing two entities (you and your competitor) using the same tool / process / application and that normalizes the "bias". All other things being equal you can still find actionable insights and make fundamental changes to your strategy.

Hope this helps.

-Avinash.