I ran a test on compete.com and their unique visitors to my site varied by almost 10k that what Google Analytics said. Anyone else have similar results?
compete.com claims that they get their data directly from ISPs unlike Alexa.com (and others) which i think get theirs from toolbars. So while their approach is better, i think that would restrict them to a certain target area of their contacts, so that may be the reason for it.
I wouldnt trust them its not as varried as others unless they doing all the majyor isps around the world. wich i doubt it.
It must be fairly accurate or it wouldn't be so popular but I don't believe there is a surefire way to really track every single website's traffic. You must take it all with a grain of salt.
If you use 5 types of tools so, you got 5types Results........... But you got free result only at GOOGLE webmaster tool
Any free tool to measure traffic is not accurate and only provides estimates. Nothing can replace the accuracy of tracking codes. Getting traffic details of other websites (either using free or paid sources) is useful but the level of accuracy would vary with each service provider and the method used to assemble the data.