In our dataset, we have separated the data points into two functions of search marketing: SEO and PPC. For our SEO dataset, we use the following data points:

• Domain Rating (ahrefs)
• Total Keywords (ahrefs)
• Total Traffic (ahrefs)
• Organic Traffic Value (SEMrush)
• Referring Domains (ahrefs)
• Backlinks (ahrefs)

We use the API’s of SEMrush and ahrefs to pull this data. For our PPC dataset, we use the following data points:

• Est. Ad Spend
• Paid Keywords
• Est. Monthly PPC Clicks

We use the SpyFu API to pull this data.
For both SEO and PPC data points, the data should be viewed as “relative” not “absolute”. What this means is that the data might not perfectly match reality, but because all the data is pulling from the same source it is accurate relative to the other companies in the data set.

Please use the data for relative benchmarking, comparison, and analysis, not absolute truth.

We have over 25,000 companies in our dataset and this number is constantly growing as users build out their own custom datasets.

To build this list, we identified revenue leaders in over 38 industries. Within these 38 industries, we give you data unavailable elsewhere by breaking these 38 industries into over 250+ sub-industries allowing you to dive into almost every niche vertical in the world.

If we do not have a category you can always suggest it via chat and we will look to add it to our dataset.

Lastly, you can always upgrade to a professional plan and build a completely custom dataset for any 10 companies you choose.

Total keywords is simply a metric that measures the total number of keywords your website ranks for anywhere between 1 to 100 on Google. This metric is pulled from SEMrush. SEMrush’s crawler scours the internet for over 14.9 billion keywords, and finds every keyword that you rank for in billions of locations in 142 different countries, and creates an average for where your website ranks for those keywords. They then report that average as a whole number and add it to your total keywords rankings. This metric is relative; however, it is a good way to measure your website against your competitors, and track changes and discoverability on the internet over time.

Organic Traffic Value is a metric pulled from SEMrush that estimates the average monthly cost to rank for the listed organic keywords in Google AdWords. Basically, it is the value of the keywords that you rank for if you had to pay for that position in Google Ads. This metric is a good way to put some context around total traffic and total keywords. You (or your competitor) may be ranking for a lot of keywords; however, if the organic traffic value is low, those keywords may have low search volume and less value. This is a good benchmark to determine relative SEO success between your website and your competitors’.

Total traffic is a metric pulled from SEMrush that estimates the total traffic that your website gets based on your keyword rankings. It is estimated based on the average keyword ranking position and the average click through rate (CTR) based on that search query. Although this is not an absolute metric, SEMrush’s estimations are consistent across all domains, and therefore can be a great comparison tool to analyze differences in traffic between your website and your competitors. It is also a great benchmark for discoverability, because as your estimated total traffic increases your discoverability on the internet increases and your top 20 keyword rankings most likely increased as well. With Pulse, you are able to track changes in total traffic over time, and benchmark these changes with your competitors.

Referring domains is a metric pulled from Ahrefs that lists the total number of unique websites that have one or more backlink pointing toward your website. According to Ahrefs, there is a direct correlation between organic search traffic and the number of referring domains. This metric gives you the opportunity to determine how many referring domains your website has compared to your competitors. Not only does it give you an absolute value of your link building, but it also gives you context to the domain rating that you can track over time. With Pulse, you get access to the information pulled from Ahrefs and allows you to track changes in total referring domains over time.

Backlinks are the number of hyperlinks that point from one website back to your website. This metric is also pulled from Ahrefs. This is another absolute metric that allows you to perform competitor analysis over the total number of backlink growth over time. With Pulse, you get access to the information pulled from Ahrefs and allows you to track changes in total backlinks over time.

Estimated Ad Spend is an estimation pulled from SpyFu that takes the search data from the previous month, all of the paid keywords for your website, and a click-through rate curve to estimate the total monthly ad spend budget for your website. This is not an absolute metric; however, since the method of calculation is consistent across all domains, it is a valuable comparison method for your website and your competitors’ websites. With Pulse, you are able to compare your monthly ad spend to your competitors and determine exactly what kinds of budgets they have in comparison to yours. We suggest utilizing this metric in unison with paid keywords and estimated monthly PPC clicks to pull insights on your competitors’ PPC performance.

Estimated Monthly PPC Clicks is an estimation pulled from SpyFu that creates a relative metric based on the number of clicks calculated from all of its paid keywords calculated off of its average ad position for each individual keyword for that month. The number of clicks is based on the click-through rate for each individual paid keyword. Because this is a relative metric, it gives you the opportunity to compare your estimated monthly PPC click performance with your competitors’. With Pulse, you are able to track Estimated Ad Spend, Paid Keywords, and Estimated Monthly PPC Clicks and create a full picture of your PPC performance compared to your competitors. It also gives you access to SpyFu data from their PPC Kombat tool.

Paid keywords is a metric pulled from SpyFu that gives you an absolute metric for the total number of unique paid keywords that have been seen for your domain. According to SpyFu, one of these keywords is searched on Google, and it shows your website’s ad in one of its top 22 paid results. This metric allows you to compare the total number of paid ads are being shown for a list of keywords and can be considered a metric of how discoverable your website is from Google’s paid channel. With Pulse, you are able to track the number of paid keywords your website is discoverable on in comparison to your competitors. Similar to that of ‘Estimated Ad Spend’, we suggest utilizing this metric in unison with estimated ad spend and estimated monthly PPC clicks to pull insights on your competitors’ PPC performance.

The Directive Score is a consolidated benchmarking score based on our algorithm developed to rank websites determined by domain ratings, total keywords, total traffic, organic traffic value, referring domains, backlinks, estimated ad spend, paid keywords, and estimated monthly PPC clicks. Directive Scores are broken down into 4 potential categories: Overall, SEO, PPC, and Customized. The Overall Directive Score is based on domain ratings, total keywords, total traffic, organic traffic value, estimated ad spend, paid keywords, and estimated monthly PPC clicks. These data points are pulled from SEMrush, Ahrefs, and SpyFu. The SEO Directive Score is based on domain ratings, total keywords, total traffic, organic traffic value, referring domains, and backlinks. These data points are pulled from SEMrush and Ahrefs. The PPC Directive Score is based on estimated ad spend, paid keywords, and estimated monthly PPC clicks. These data points are pulled from SpyFu. The Customized Directive Score allows you to pull the companies that you care about from all three sources and see the Directive score for each company.

Domain rating (DR) is a website ranking metric created by Ahrefs based on the strength of the backlink profile of a specific website. It is measured on a scale from 0 to 100. It is not an absolute ranking, rather it is based on a logarithmic scale, meaning as DR increases, the difficulty of increasing your DR by 1 is substantially greater. This is a valuable tool for competitive analysis because it gives companies a benchmark for how they size up to their competitors. In order to increase your domain rating, not only do you need to increases the number of unique backlinks to your website, but you also need to increase the number of quality backlinks to your website. With Pulse, you are able to use this metric to not only benchmark changes in DR, but can map exactly how many backlinks you need to gain in order to reach your competitors DR.