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How to measure your Market Share with AWR
How to measure your Market Share with AWR
Iulia Z. Lacriceanu avatar
Written by Iulia Z. Lacriceanu
Updated over a week ago

Imagine that organic traffic opportunity is a pie, shared between you and your competitors. The bigger the slice you own, the more visits you are expected to receive from your high ranking positions. 

To see exactly how much your slice represents from the total traffic opportunity, and how that performance compares to your top competitors, pop over to the Competitive Intel > Market Share section.

Top KPIs explained

Let's take a quick look at how AWR computes the market share and other KPIs for this view: 

  • Market Share is the percentage of your Estimated Visits, from the total Estimated Visits that top 20 keywords in your project can generate.

  • URLs shows the number of pages that your website is ranking with in the top 20 positions.

  • Keywords shows the number of terms that your website is ranking for in the top 20.

  • Click Share is the estimated percentage of clicks that your website receives from organic search, based on its top 20 positions and their related CTR.

  • Estimated Visits represents the traffic opportunity, expressed as the estimated number of visits that your website may receive from organic search. This number is calculated by multiplying the Click Share for your top 20 keywords with their related search volume.

  • Visibility Percent is a performance metric calculated from your Top 30 ranking keywords. More details can be found here.

The values displayed for each KPI are calculated for the latest update date selected in the time interval, compared to those from the previous date selected. 


Note: If there are multiple URLs from the same domain ranking in top 20, each of them will be assigned a Click Share percentage and the related number of Estimated Visits and Market Share. 


Evolution in time

Understanding your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in comparison to your own is critical to your website’s best SEO interests.

AWR made this easier by allowing you to visualize the Market Share and other key performance indicators simultaneously. By default, the chart will display the Market Share and the Visibility Percent, but you can switch to a different KPI combination at any time by clicking the tabs above the chart:

To look at the evolution of a KPI across the applied date range, you can change the display mode by simply using the dedicated switch button in the upper right corner of the chart:

Comparison matrix

To find whose domain is strongest and where to dig deeper the Market Share table has 2 display modes with metrics focused on competitor discovery and keyword opportunity as follows:

  1. Top Domains

This display mode shows:

  • the overall visibility metrics of the top 20 domains.

  • the dropped and newly entered competitors in the top 20, by Market Share, when comparing two project updates.

The domains and URLs in the Market Share report are selected automatically by the AWR algo, based on their ranking performance for the search engines and keywords in your project. The selection may include competitors that you are already track in the project, but also new competitors which were found ranking in top 20 for your keywords.

AWR highlights the main website with a yellow row while the competitors that are tracked in the project settings with a green line. If you would like to add new competitors from those suggested, just check the box of the ones you want to add, then click on Add to Project.


Note: You can monitor up to 50 competitors in a project, without any additional costs.


Top Domains metrics explained

  • Market Share is the percentage of a competitor's Estimated Visits from the total Estimated Visits that top 20 keywords can generate.

  • URLs show the number of URLs that each competitor website is ranking with in the top 20 positions, for all the keywords in your project.

  • Keywords shows the number of terms that each competitor website is ranking for in the top 20 positions.

  • Click Share represents the estimated percentage of clicks that each competitor website receives from organic search, based on its top 20 positions and their related CTR.

  • Estimated Visits represents the estimated number of visits that each competitor website receives from organic search. This number is calculated by multiplying the Click Share for your top 20 keywords with their related search volume.

  • Visibility Percent is a performance metric calculated from the keywords each competitor is ranking in top 30.

2. Target Keywords

By using this display mode one can see:

  • the total number of top 20 ranking keywords for each domain.

  • the number of unique and common keywords the main domain competes for.

  • the total search volume generated by all keywords ranking in top 20 for each domain.

Target Keywords metrics explained

  • Total Searches represents the total search volume for all keywords ranking in top 20 for each domain.

  • Competitor Unique Keywords shows the number of keywords that your competitor is ranking for in top 20, but your website isn't.

  • Common Keywords shows the number of keywords that both your website and your competitor are ranking for in top 20.

  • My Unique Keywords helps you find the number of keywords that your website is ranking for in top 20, but your competitor isn’t.

  • Intersection shows the percentage of your competitor's unique keywords (yellow), common keywords (green) and your website's unique keywords (blue).

For each competitor listed in the Target Keywords table, you have the possibility to see the list of common or unique keywords.

For example, you can see the keywords for which your top competitor is ranking in top 20, and you don't. Simply click on the related total number of keywords in the related column - Competitor Unique Keywords - and you will be redirected to the Comparison > Websites view, where the search volume and also the ranking trend for each of these terms are displayed.

To share the stats with your customers or with co-workers, you can Export the Market Share report in PDF, CSV or XLSX format.

Exclude Irrelevant Competitors from the Market Share report

Not interested in those big competitor domains such as Wikipedia, Facebook or YouTube which dominate the SERPs due to their popularity? You can Ignore domains from your Market Share report and keep only those directly related to your business niche.

Once excluded, those domains will not only be removed from the top 20 competitors list but will also be excluded when computing the Market Share value.

After a new ranking update will be completed, the next in line competitors will be automatically added to the Market Share report to fill in the list of websites occupying the top 20 positions.

The ignored domains can be added back to the project at anytime using the dedicated wizard.

Do you have any other questions? Don’t hesitate to get in touch and we will keep building the FAQ.

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