How to check website traffic: your site and your competitors

Tools to check website traffic

How to check traffic in Google Analytics 4

1. 1Open GA4 and go to Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition.
2. 2Set the date range, such as the last 28 days compared with the previous period.
3. 3View sessions by default channel group: Organic Search, Direct, Referral, Paid Search and others.
4. 4Open Engagement, then Landing page, to see which pages people arrive on.
5. 5Add a comparison or filter for Organic Search to focus on SEO traffic.
6. 6Check Key events to see how many visits turned into leads or sales.

How to check search traffic in Search Console

1. 1Open Search Console and choose your property.
2. 2Go to Performance, then Search results.
3. 3Turn on Total clicks, Total impressions, Average CTR and Average position.
4. 4Use the Queries tab to see which searches bring clicks.
5. 5Use the Pages tab to see which pages earn the most clicks.
6. 6Compare date ranges to spot trends.

Search Console only counts Google search. Use it with GA4 for the full picture, as explained in our Google Analytics glossary entry.

Which traffic metrics matter

How to check competitor website traffic

1. 1Enter the competitor domain into Semrush, Ahrefs or Similarweb.
2. 2Look at the estimated organic traffic trend over 12 months or more.
3. 3Check their top pages by estimated traffic.
4. 4Check which keywords bring them the most visits.
5. 5Compare several competitors against your own site using the same tool.
6. 6Use the data for direction, not exact numbers.

Estimates can be far off for small sites and local businesses. They are most useful for spotting trends, strong pages and keyword gaps.

Why your traffic numbers might differ between tools

How to explain a traffic drop

1. 1Check if the drop is real: compare GA4 and Search Console over the same dates.
2. 2Look for seasonality by comparing the same period last year.
3. 3Check the Google Search Status Dashboard for core updates on those dates.
4. 4Look for technical issues in Search Console, such as indexing or server errors.
5. 5Find which pages and queries lost the most clicks.
6. 6Check for new competitors or new SERP features such as AI Overviews.

Website traffic benchmarks to watch

Step by step: build a simple monthly traffic report

1. 1In Google Analytics 4, open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, and set the date range to last month.
2. 2Note sessions and key events by channel: organic search, direct, referral, paid and social.
3. 3Open Search Console, then Performance, and note clicks, impressions, CTR and average position for the same dates.
4. 4List the top 10 landing pages by organic clicks and their conversions.
5. 5Compare with the previous month and the same month last year.
6. 6Write three sentences explaining what changed and what you will do next.

Our guide on how to create an SEO report shows a full template.

How to check traffic for a specific page

1. 1In GA4, go to Reports, Engagement, then Pages and screens, and search for the page path.
2. 2In Search Console, open Performance, add a Page filter and paste the URL.
3. 3Compare queries, clicks and impressions for that page over time.
4. 4Check whether traffic dropped after an edit, migration or Google update.

Traffic sources explained

How to check traffic on Shopify, WordPress and Wix

Mistakes when checking website traffic

Setting traffic goals that make sense

There is no universal 'good' traffic number. A local electrician may need only a few hundred targeted visits a month to stay busy, while an online store may need tens of thousands. Set goals from your own baseline and business needs: how many leads or sales you want, your conversion rate and how many visits that requires.

Review goals every quarter, and focus on growth in organic visits to the pages that bring revenue.

Tracking traffic from AI search

1. 1In GA4, open Traffic acquisition and look for referral sources from AI assistants.
2. 2Create a custom channel group for AI referrals so they are easy to track.
3. 3Note which landing pages AI tools send visitors to.
4. 4Strengthen those pages with clear answers and up to date facts.

How to check website traffic in real time

Real time reports answer one narrow question: is anyone on the site right now, and is tracking working? They are useful on launch day, during a campaign, or right after you change a template. They are not useful for judging SEO, because a single hour tells you almost nothing about a trend.

The fastest way to confirm your tracking is to open your site in a private browser window, visit two or three pages, and watch your own visit appear in the real time view. If it never shows up, fix the tracking before you trust any other number in this guide.

1. 1In GA4, open Reports, then Realtime overview.
2. 2Open your site in a private window on your phone and on a laptop.
3. 3Check that both visits appear with the correct page and device.
4. 4Click a button that should fire a key event, such as a form submit, and confirm the event shows.
5. 5If nothing appears, check the tag in Google Tag Manager preview mode or your plugin settings.

Pick the right date range before you read any numbers

Most bad traffic decisions start with the wrong date range. A Monday compared with a Sunday, or December compared with January, can show a big swing that has nothing to do with your SEO. Choose the range that fits the question you are asking.

Search Console keeps 16 months of data, so export it every quarter if you want a longer history. GA4 keeps standard reports, but detailed explorations follow your data retention setting, which defaults to two months. Change it to 14 months under Admin, Data settings, Data retention.

Users, sessions and views: what each traffic number counts

Different reports use different units, which is why one tool says 3,000 and another says 9,000 for the same month. Neither is wrong. They are counting different things.

For SEO reporting, pair Search Console clicks with GA4 organic sessions and key events. Clicks show search demand you won, sessions show what people did next, and key events show whether that traffic was worth having.

Branded vs non branded search traffic

Branded traffic comes from people who already know your name and search for it. Non branded traffic comes from people searching for a service or a problem, such as "emergency plumber near me" or "how to check website traffic". Non branded growth is the clearest sign that your SEO is reaching new people.

In Search Console, open Performance, add a Query filter, choose Custom (regex) and enter your brand name and common misspellings. Switch the filter to "Doesn't match regex" to see non branded clicks only. Google has also added a branded queries filter for many properties, which does the same job with less setup.

How to label campaign traffic with UTM tags

When a newsletter, social post or QR code sends people to your site without tags, GA4 often files the visit under Direct or Referral, and your channel reports become muddy. UTM tags tell analytics exactly where a click came from. Never add UTM tags to internal links on your own site, because they start a new session and break attribution.

https://example.com/spring-offer?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring_2026

Keep a shared sheet of the tags your team uses, always in lowercase, so "Email" and "email" do not split into two rows in your reports.

Check traffic by country, device and landing page

A flat total can hide a mobile problem or a single country that suddenly dropped. Break traffic down at least once a month so you catch these early.

In GA4, open Reports, then User attributes, then Demographic details, and switch the table to Country. For devices, open Tech details and choose Device category. For landing pages, open Engagement, then Landing page, and add a filter for Session default channel group equals Organic Search.

Other free ways to check your own traffic

GA4 and Search Console cover most needs, but a few other free sources fill gaps that Google tools leave open.

Use one source as your main record, usually GA4, and treat the rest as cross checks. Switching your main source every few months makes trends impossible to read.

Estimate a competitor's traffic from their top pages

Third party tools give a domain level traffic estimate, but you can make the number more useful by working backwards from the pages that earn it. This tells you not just how much traffic a rival gets, but where it comes from and which topics you could win.

1. 1Enter the competitor domain in Semrush, Ahrefs or Similarweb and open the top pages report.
2. 2Note the five to ten pages that bring the most estimated organic traffic.
3. 3Check the main keyword for each page and its search volume in a keyword research tool.
4. 4Compare those pages with yours: do you have a page for the same intent, and is it as complete?
5. 5Cross check the totals in a second tool. If two tools disagree by more than 2x, trust the trend line, not the number.

Monthly website traffic checklist

Run this short list once a month. It takes about 20 minutes once your reports are saved, and it catches most problems before they cost you leads.

1. 1Confirm tracking still works with a private window test visit.
2. 2Compare organic clicks and sessions with the previous month and the same month last year.
3. 3Split branded and non branded clicks in Search Console.
4. 4Review the top 10 organic landing pages and the 10 biggest drops.
5. 5Check key events from organic traffic: calls, forms, bookings or sales.
6. 6Look at the Pages report in Search Console for new indexing errors.
7. 7Note any site changes, Google updates or campaigns that month so future you can explain the numbers.
8. 8Share a one page summary with your team or your SEO consultant.

How to grow website traffic