Competitive tracking tools help businesses thrive by providing salient data needed to stay ahead of competitors. 

They mine your competitor’s readily available online information according to set metrics and provide the insight you need for the precise business models to make your enterprise a market leader. 

▶ What are Competitor Tracking Tools?
▶ How to Use Competitor Tracking Tools
▶ Top Competitor Tracking Tools in 2023
▶ Software 1: SimilarWeb
▶ Software 2: BuzzSumo
▶ Software 3: Google Trends
▶ Software 4: STAT
▶ Software 5: Hootsuite
▶ Software 6: Brandwatch
▶ Software 7: Rank Signals
▶ Software 8: Mention
▶ Software 9: Price2Spy
▶ Software 10: Prisync
▶ Summary

Competitive tracking tools are software applications that help businesses monitor and analyze their competitors’ activities, performance, and strategies in the market. 

These tools gather and provide their users with valuable insights on various aspects of competition, helping businesses stay relevant in the marketplace. 

For optimum satisfaction, it’s imperative to come abreast with how to properly use competitor tracking tools. To use these tools, here are the steps to follow: 

SimilarWeb is a competitor tracking tool that provides real-time information on any website by simply entering a target URL. It provides insights into the source of the traffic i.e. social, referrals, display ads, email, organic search, or direct. 

The information it provides helps you understand your competitor’s marketing by knowing which platform is driving their traffic. Similar Web also provides you with information about the site’s traffic, and learn more about customers’ interests, including their alternative websites.

A recently launched feature on the platform provides insight into the keywords to target ahead of your competitors. It works by allowing you to search any term, while it provides information on both the search volume and the platforms benefiting the most from it. 

Key Features and Use Cases 

Key Features	Use Cases
Website Traffic Analysis	SimilarWeb provides information about the total visits, average duration, traffic sources, and bounce rate. This feature helps you know competitors that are outperforming you.
Audience Insights	It provides geographic and demographic information about the traffic to a website. Data it provides include gender, interests, age, and location.
Traffic Sources	It shows the breakdown of traffic sources based on organic search, social media, direct traffic, and referrals. It can be a helpful tool in curating traffic acquisition strategies.
Keyword Analysis	It provides data on keyword rankings, search volume, and share of traffic that drives each keyword. It’s helpful to identify the most popular keywords in an industry.

Pricing 

SimilarWeb offers a free service that offers capped features and offerings. Its paid competitive pricing plan is $167/ month. 

BuzzSumo is a detailed content marketing analytics tool that offers in-depth insight to help businesses optimize their content strategies, gain a competitive edge, and identify influential voices in their industry. 

Here are some insights into the platform’s key features and their use cases: 

Key Features and Use Cases 

Key Features	Use Cases
Content discovery	It allows users to discover trending and popular content related to specific keywords or topics.  To use this feature, users simply have to enter search queries, and the tool will provide a list of the most shared and engaging content.  This feature is helpful to the organization that wants to remain in tune with industry trends and identify topics to target.
Content Analysis	This software provides in-depth analysis and metrics for individual pieces of content.  Users can enter a specific topic or URL, while the tool generates data on the number of social media shares across multiple platforms.
Content planning and insights	BuzzSumo offers a range of impressive content planning and ideation features. It lets users analyze past trends and performance.  Users that have engaged in this feature say it helps to plan future content strategies, identify content gaps, and analyze past performance.  It also provides insights into optimal content lengths, content format preferences, and headline analysis based on historical data.
Content Reports and Data Exports	BuzzSumo permits users to generate customized reports and export data for further analysis or to share with stakeholders or team members.  It provides visual charts and graphs to summarize important metrics and trends, easing data communication.

Pricing 

BuzzSumo has 6 pricing plans that include: 

• Basic: $119 / month;1 user 
• Content creation: $249 / month; 5 users
• PR & Comms: $249 / month; 5 users
• Suite: $499 / month; 10 users 
• Enterprise: $999/ month; 30 users

Google Trends is free software that lets users explore and analyze the popularity of keywords and topics. It offers insights into the search interest of specific keywords and discovers emerging topics to make data-driven decisions. 

Key Features and Use Cases

Here’s an overview of its Key Features and their Use Cases: 

Key Features	Use Cases
Search interest visualization	The software presents search interest data in a visually interactive manner.  As such, it allows users to see the popularity of a search time as it varies across different regions and times.
Explore topics and search terms	Users can compare and explore the search interest for different search terms or topics.  You can enter multiple keywords in the search field to view their relative popularity.
Time and geographic Insights	This feature lets users filter data according to location and time. It helps enterprises understand seasonal trends, global search patterns, and regional preferences.
Real-time data and NEWS trends	This feature offers real-time insights into current search trends. Users can explore viral stories, breaking news, and the latest trends based on their niche of interest.

Pricing 

Google Trends is free to use across all geographical areas. 

STAT provides you insights into your competitor’s SEO strategies. You simply have to provide the software with the name of your competitor of interest and it’ll provide you interest every time their SERP position changes. 

The software extracts information from a competitor’s website, laying out data about their platform. Extracting data is pretty simple, and you can schedule reports to regularly export data to your email.

Key Features and Use Cases 

Key Features	Use Cases
Keyword Tracking	STAT enables users to track rankings across multiple search engines and countries. It allows users to monitor their web ranking and competitors’ performance.  The tool offers data on search volume, search features, and SERP.
Search Performance Analysis	STAT helps businesses have a better understanding of their reporting search performance.  With this feature, users can access data on estimated traffic, organic visibility, and click-through rates.
SERP features and Insights	STAT provides knowledge graphs, featured snippets, and local packs.  It’s helpful for businesses that want to optimize their content to improve visibility.
Data Visualization and Reporting	It provides customizable data visualization for better understanding. Users can also schedule automated reports and share them with clients and team members.

Pricing 

STATs pricing starts at $720/ month. It offers a free trial on demand. 

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that helps businesses streamline their social media activities, track competitors’ social media posts, engage with the audience, schedule posts, and track performance. 

It offers some impressive features fueling its popularity. 

Key Features and Use Cases 

Key Features	Use Cases
Content curation and discovery	Hootsuite competition tracking software helps businesses discover and curate content from multiple sources, including RSS feeds, suggested content, and trending topics.
Social listening and monitoring	The software listening capability helps track keywords, conversations, and mentions on social media.  Users can monitor based on brand mentions, hashtags, and industry-related topics.
App integrations	Hootsuite integrates with third-party applications and tools like CRM, content management systems, etc.

Pricing 

Hootsuite offers 4 pricing plans: 

• Professional: £86/month: 1 user
• Team: £249/month: 3 users 
• Business: £660/month: 5 users 
• Enterprise custom: per negotiation with the sales team

Brandwatch is a social media listening analytics platform that lets businesses track their reputation, gain insights on social media conversations, and make data-centered decisions. 

It provides users with a range of features to identify trends, and aggregate audience sentiment. 

Key Features and Use Cases 

Amongst its noteworthy features are 

Features	Use Cases
Sentiment Analysis	Brandwatch uses natural language processing technology to analyze opinions from your target audience. It identifies positive, neutral, and negative sentiments.  In general, this feature is excellent for gaining insights into customer sentiment.
Audience Insights	Businesses can use this feature to access demographic and psychographic insights about social media users. Information from this feature can be used to inform content creation, audience targeting, and marketing strategies.
Image and visual analysis	Brandwatch uses image recognition technology to analyze and categorize images that are shared on social media. It’s a helpful feature to identify brand logos and visual content.

Pricing 

Brandwatch has 2 pricing plans, from $800 to $3,000. A free trial of Brandwatch is also available.

• Pro: $800 : up to 10k mentions
• Enterprise : unlimited mentions and queries. 

Rank Signals is a web growth software with components of competitive intelligence. Rank Signals lets you reverse engineer the backlink sources of your competition with its free backlink checker. 

To use this feature, you simply have to enter a domain, and the software will analyze your competition strategies. Specifically, it helps you track your competitors’ backlink sources. 

The software also checks your backlinks for toxic links that can affect your SEO efforts. 

As with other intelligence tools’ use cases, this software also has features that make it function and stand out.

Key Features and Use Cases 

Its top features are: 

Key Features	Use Cases
Backlink Analysis	Analyzing the quantity and quality of backlinks pointing to a website, including information about the domains, anchor text, and authority of the linking pages.
Website SEO	Analyzing the on-page SEO factors of a website, such as meta tags, headings, page speed, and site structure. This helps to identify areas that need optimization.
Data Reporting	Generating reports and providing visualizations of data related to keyword rankings, backlinks, and other SEO metrics to monitor progress and measure performance.

Pricing 

Rank Signals has 4 pricing plans, namely: 

• Startup: $1999: 8 links per month
• Business: $3999: 16 links per month 
• Growth: $7999: 32 links per month
• Enterprise: $14999: 64 links per month

Mention is a monitoring and brand management tool that assists enterprises in tracking social media brand mentions, competitors, products, and other keywords in real-time. The Software offers a range of highly impressive features for gaining insights into brand reputation. 

Key Features and Use Cases 

Here’s an overview of Mention and its key features:

Key Features	Use Cases
Brand Reputation Management	Mention lets you track and analyze brand sentiment and reputation.  It uses AI and ML to identify negative and positive mentions, helping businesses categorize it to understand customer sentiments.
Reporting and Analytics	Mentions help generate customizable reports and visualization to gain insights into trends, share findings with clients, and compare performance.
Influencer Tracking	Mention helps businesses identify the key individuals talking about topics in their niche. Businesses can then approach influencers to expand their brand reach.
Integration and collaboration	It integrates multiple platforms and tools for accessibility in the software’s dashboard.

Pricing 

• Solo: $41: 2 alerts, 5,000 mentions, 1 user. 
• Pro: $83: 5 alerts, 10,000 mentions, 10 users
• ProPlus: $149: 7 alerts, 20,000 mentions, Unlimited users
• Company: company: Based on corporate needs

Price2Spy is a competitive price monitoring and intelligence tool designed to help businesses track and analyze online product prices and curate new pricing strategies. 

It provides comprehensive features and functionalities to monitor prices across multiple e-commerce platforms. It also detects price violations and suggests the perfect equilibrium to maximize profit and attract consumers.  

Key Features and Use Cases 

Key Features	Use Cases
Price Monitoring	It allows businesses to track and monitor the prices of products from numerous online platforms, including marketplaces, e-commerce sites, and comparison shopping engines.
Price Alerts	It notifies the user about changes in competitor prices, thereby, helping businesses stay proactive in responding to pricing changes.
MAP monitoring	Minimum Advertised Price is a tool that helps manufacturers track pricing violations. It automatically alerts the user in the case of a violation.
Multi-currency support	This feature helps to track prices in multiple currencies. It’s a particularly useful tool for businesses operating in international markets.

Pricing 

Basic

• L: $134: 2000 URLs
• XL: $337: 10000 URLs
• 50K: $674: 50000 URLs 

Premium

• L: $337: 2000 URLs 
• XL: $674: 10000
• 50K: $1348: 50000

Prisync is a competitor intelligence and analysis tracking software for e-commerce companies. It helps track stock availability and competitor prices automatically, then reports the information via API, email alerts, or the user dashboard. 

It also notifies users of changes in the availability of products. Additionally, it allows companies to do other benchmarking by having an apt understanding of market demands. 

Key Features and Use Cases 

This tool has noteworthy patronage due to the following: 

Features	User Cases
Worldwide site/currency coverage	Prisync monitors pricing around the world through its auto-currency converter.
Pricing Analytics	It provides graphical insight into the price history, ranges, and medium prices of a specific product.
Advanced filtering	This feature helps to track competitors based on location, time, and company size.
Stock availability monitoring	It is the process of tracking and monitoring the availability of products in inventory.  Stock availability monitoring involves regularly checking and updating the stock levels of products to ensure that they are adequately stocked and available for purchase.

Pricing 

• Professional pricing Up to 100 Products 49 USD/month
• Premium pricing Up to 1000 Products 119 USD/month
• Platinum pricing Up to 5000 Products 209 USD/month

Competitor tracking tools are software that captures and analyzes competitors’ information from the internet. They provide insights into your competitors’ web traffic growth, price changes, mentions, consumer sentiments, etc.

In this article, we’ve discussed how to use competitive intelligence metrics tools, what they mean, and a summary of the top competitors’ tools to use.