Period over Period Comparison

Period over period comparison measures changes in website traffic and engagement to help you identify growth and trends in website traffic. 

Analyze period over period (PoP) or year over year (YoY) comparisons for your website, your competitors' websites, and websites in an industry or market.

What is the Value?

By comparing traffic patterns and engagement metrics of websites across different time periods, you can:

  • Identify trends and patterns over time to help inform your marketing and content strategies
  • Highlight quarterly growth (PoP), yearly growth (YoY)
  • Understand how your business is performing over time in the context of your competitive landscape to help identify areas for improvement

How to Use in Website Analysis

When analyzing website traffic, the period comparison option is available within the date-picker, found in the filter bar.

  1. Within the Website Analysis module, go to the Traffic and Engagement page.

  2. Using the filters in the upper right, set the time period to be analyzed.

    Click the Compare to filter. Select previous year or previous period.

    Compare to a previous period button on Similarweb's platform

Total Visits Growth

The Total Traffic Growth graph will be presented above the Traffic and Engagement Growth graph. 

View PoP or YoY growth in two different ways:

  • View by website: View PoP growth per competitor to analyze the growth of a particular website compared to their competitive set over time. Easily identify the players who are growing the most and the fastest.
    Below we see that all visits to all the fast fashion sites in the set declined YOY in Q2 2019. However, visits to forever 21.com decreased the most YOY, -27.25%, and visits to hm.com decreased the least YOY, -8.6%.

    Period over period analysis of travel websites
  • View by period: View PoP growth by time period to analyze the growth trajectory of a set of websites over time. Evaluate whether traffic to the group is growing, stagnating, or decreasing.

    Period over period analysis of a set of websites

  Note: The average change is displayed in the top left of the graph, in both website and period views. It shows the weighted average growth of the sum of all visits across the group of websites in period 1 versus period 2.

Traffic and Engagement Over Time

Traffic and Engagement over time is presented in the form of a line graph and provides more granularity on trends over time. This feature allows you to easily understand if a website is growing in monthly visits, monthly unique visitors, average visit duration, pages per visit, and bounce rate - compared to its main competitors.

Monthly visits comparison over a period of time

  Tip: The default graph shown is monthly visits, but you can easily switch tabs to view the growth of the other engagement metrics.

 

How to Use in Market Analysis

When using the Market Analysis module, you will find the time period picker to the right, nestled between the date range and the country filter.

  1. Go to Market Analysis and select your pre-defined or custom industry. 

  2. Using the filters in the upper right, set the time period to be analyzed, and then click on the YoY toggle.

The Market Size Reports

These are the initial modules in Market Analysis where you will immediately see the period over period implementations.

  • Key Sizing Indicators: The traffic bar graph compares the two selected time periods with the percentage change.

  • Traffic Trend: Get a month over month breakout of traffic which compares the to the same month previous year, or the period period's aligning month. 
  • Top Players: A traffic bar graph of the top sites in the selected industry, including a percentage change over the time periods selected.

 

The Players Reports

Clicking on Players takes you to a new set of insights that focus on the websites within the selected market or industry. Learn more about this report and the metrics in contains here.

 

  • Market Shares: Get a period over period traffic comparison of the top sites by default, however other sites can be selected from the menu to the right.

  • Market Quadrant Analysis: Select from four metrics to understand who is gaining or losing traction in the period over period comparison. Other sites can be selected from the menu to the right.

 

Feature Locations

The feature is located either within the Website Analysis module > Traffic and Engagement or the Market Analysis module in the Overview and the Players pages.

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