How to Find Out Any Website's Traffic, Visitors and Hits

1. If you are the owner of the website, you should install visitor tracking code on your website, such as Google Analytics which is free (see link in Resources at the bottom). It will track how many hits, pages views and unique visitors your website receives daily, weekly and monthly. If you have an e-commerce website, it can also track the conversions and sales amounts. Many other handy charts, graphs and tools are also included. This information is private and only available to you, the account owner. It is best to install the tracking code as soon as possible to start building history. If you are using Google Adwords (you pay to advertise your website) or Google Adsense (you place advertising on your website for profit) then you may already have access to Google Analytics.
2. If you are the owner of the website, another popular website analyzer tool is WebTrends (see link in Resources at the bottom). It goes beyond basic analytics and measures all aspects of the online experience and helps you find ways to improve usability and optimize conversions for page views, paths and scenarios. However, it is not free and instead comes with a hefty price tag.

3. If you are the owner of the website and you would like to share the traffic stats with the public then you can install tracking code on your website, such as StatCounter which is free (see link in Resources at the bottom). It allows you to set the traffic stats to public or private, and it gives you the option to show or hide the hit counter on your website. Finally, your website will be assigned an ID number and a public link that can be given out to certain people which allows them to view your website traffic stats without having to login. Or, you can display the stats right on your webpage for everyone to see. This is useful if you want to prove how well your website is doing, in the case of selling advertising on the website or selling off the entire website. Again, it is important to install tracking code promptly to begin building historical data.
4. There are many cases where you may not be the website owner but want to find out how well another website performs. However, since you do not own the site then you will not be able to see the full-blown traffic stats displayed by Google Analytics. And if you do not know the website owner then you will not know what the public link to their Stat Counter is either. Now it is time to do some investigation.
5. You may be curious about how much traffic any website generates, or you want to find out how well your competitor's website is performing. The first place to go is TrafficEstimate which is free (see link in Resources at the bottom). Search for a website address to see the estimated number of visitors to the site in the last 30 days, along with a simple graph. For example, Markus Frind, currently the biggest individual Google Adsense publisher, makes over $10,000 a day from his free dating website, Plenty of Fish. If you type in www.plentyoffish.com into the Traffic Estimate tool then you can see the website gets over 4.7 million hits per month. Keep in mind that the estimator tool is just that, an estimate. You may need to divide the number by three, or multiply the number by three to estimate the true traffic. At least you can get a ballpark figure.
6. Now for the fun stuff. Alexa is the top web information authority which is free (see link in Resources at the bottom). Search for a website address and see how a website ranks compared to all other websites in the world. For example, search for Yahoo.com or Google.com and click site info/overview then traffic details. You will see their current traffic rank is #1 and #2 in the world, and each consumes an estimated 30% of global traffic. You can search for any website address that you are interested in finding its traffic rank. Alexa also provides other neat graphs and handy info. Although it does not show you the exact number of visitors, you can get a general idea of the website's performance. By comparing the traffic rank of your website to your competitor's website, you can estimate who gets more traffic. For example, YouTube.com ranks higher than Weather.com.
7. Finally, if you want to see a wide variety of stats for any website then you can visit dnScoop for free (see link in Resources at the bottom). Search for any website address and you will see the website's age, page rank, inbound links (referring sites), Alexa traffic rank, and even the estimated monetary value of the website if it were for sale.