Traffic Estimation

Calculation of the traffic estimate

The traffic estimate is calculated exclusively on the basis of publicly available data on all websites that have a significant number of Google rankings in the countries we monitor. The calculation of the estimation follows these three steps:

1. We retrieve all keywords where the domain in question currently ranks in the top 100 from the country database. In addition, the associated search volumes of the keywords are fetched.
2. For these keywords and their respective ranking position, we determine the click-through rates (CTR) for all ranking keywords.
3. In third and final step, we add up these values and thus calculate the traffic estimate. To calculate the traffic value we use public Google CPC (click price) rates.

Strengths and limits of the traffic estimation

The traffic estimate is, as it suggests, an estimate based on public data. Much of the data we include can lead to inaccuracies and deviations, meaning that the final value cannot be guaranteed correct. The following limits have to be taken into consideration when using the traffic estimation:

• The traffic estimation refers only to organic Google rankings. This includes classic rankings, as well as Featured Snippets (“SEO-Traffic”), but not vertical integrations like Google News, Video and similar boxes.
• When estimating traffic, we calculate the monthly expected organic Google traffic based on the annual average. This means that the seasonality of the search terms is not reflected, but on an annual average the estimate is in line with expectations.
• Short-term and strong changes in search volume (as happened for specific topics during the Corona Pandemic) are not represented as strongly as the monthly search volumes show, as we use annual averages for the search volume.
• The level of inaccuracy is higher for pages which gain the majority of their traffic from only very few keywords, than for pages where many keywords contribute to the traffic. In this case we point out the increased inaccuracy in the traffic estimation.

So much for the main limitations of the traffic estimation in SISTRIX. You should also take into consideration also the following points:

• We usually tend to underestimate the traffic, instead of overestimating it. This means that it’s much more probable that the traffic shown is higher than lower than our estimation. The traffic estimation can therefore be considered conservative.
• The error rate is similar for comparable pages. The main use of the traffic estimation is not checking your own traffic (Google Analytics and Google Search Console are more accurate for this purpose), but estimating the organic traffic of your competitors. The deviation of the estimation for similar pages (comparable keyword environment, comparable size, etc) is also similar. This means that, if you know your exact traffic and your traffic estimation, you can calculate a comparable deviation for your direct SERP-competitors.

What does the confidence interval say?

If we see that the traffic estimation doesn’t fall within the confidence interval, we’ll warn you with a notice above the traffic estimation.

Click estimation for specific keywords and rankings

Devices

Distribution