Comments on: 10 Ways to Spy on Your Competitors

By: Mary Rabalais

Mary Rabalais — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:02:06 +0000

Does anyone know the website URL of the tool that checks to see if your competitors are using your company name in their title or meta tags or website copy? Thank you! I can’t find it!!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:27:34 +0000

This undermines everything web 2.0 stands for which is sharing and utilizing information for the better good. If you spend too much time focusing on your competitors you are missing the big picture

By: linkin99

linkin99 — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:03:47 +0000

“Watch: Their Web Site”

What could be easier?

By: a good sitepointer

a good sitepointer — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:07:11 +0000

Too much time on the activities of your competitors and not enough time to cover building strategic alliances, and positioning yourself for future sales?

By: Czaries

Czaries — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:14:43 +0000

A really great place for valuable information about potential future customers is on the support forums of existing competitors. Just lurk and browse around a while, and you will usually eventually begin to see some of the “problem areas” your competitors are having, and the features that are requested most often by their (sometimes really frustrated) users. If you can solve some of those frustrations for those users with your own competing application, then you will probably be off to a good start.

By: http://twitter.com/mgco

http://twitter.com/mgco — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:19:24 +0000

i guess this is where RSS comes in handy – one other reason I suppose. thanks for the list jc.

By: lerxtjr

lerxtjr — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 06:53:03 +0000

I prefer keywordspy.com as opposed to spyfu.com. Just more current, costs a bit more, but is definitely on the high-end of the “delivery” scale.

By: henshaw

henshaw — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:50:42 +0000

Nice list Josh. You can spy on your competition on Twitter using TweetStalk ;)

By: xhtml

xhtml — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:39:33 +0000

Excellent article. Competitive benchmarking is key to any business’ success!

By: roosevelt

roosevelt — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:41:11 +0000

It’s something I learned from Bob (Godaddy founder), “Pay attention to your competitors but pay more attention to yourself.”

Thanks for sharing those useful sites.

By: Erik Abele

Erik Abele — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:43:27 +0000

How about also using Google Alerts? While the above list is very thoughtfully compiled I’d consider Google Alerts one of the most basic services to be able to stay up2date in terms of competition etc.

By: dansergiu

dansergiu — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:35:42 +0000

Yes, I agree with Indranil. Listen to your customer needs, that’s what counts most, not what the competition is doing. If the competition outsells you because they have a feature you don’t have that’s not because you haven’t spied enough, but because you didn’t listen to what the customer wants, while the competition did so.

By: Indranil

Indranil — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 04:16:03 +0000

Or, you can just stop obsessing about your competitors and spend the time improving your own range of products. ;)