Similarweb Mobile Proxies for Seeing US Competitor Sites Firsthand

Similarweb estimates a site's traffic, audience and channels from panel and partner data, and research teams use it to size competitors and markets. What it cannot show is the competitor's site as a US visitor actually experiences it: the US version, the dollar prices, the offers, the ads it runs on its own pages. A Stateside Proxies line in a US metro gives a research team abroad that firsthand view to set beside the estimates. This page explains how the two fit together and how to record what is seen.

What Similarweb estimates and what a visit shows

Similarweb reports visits, engagement, traffic sources, audience geography and keywords for a site, all estimated. A visit through a US line shows the site itself as an American phone user sees it: which version loads, which prices and offers appear, which promotions run, what the checkout asks for. The estimate says how big; the visit says what.

Similarweb's figures are modelled from a mix of sources, which makes them firmer for big sites and looser for small ones, so treat a small competitor's traffic number as a rough order of size. Most views split by country and by desktop or mobile web, so set the view to the United States and to mobile web when you place it beside a phone visit. One metro is one sample of a national picture, and a second metro is the simplest way of finding out whether the offer varies.

Who pairs the two

Market researchers sizing a US competitor and then seeing its US offer. Strategy teams comparing several US competitors' pricing and positioning side by side. Product teams studying US checkout flows. Content teams reviewing US competitors' landing pages. Each is a human visit from inside the US audience, at a human pace.

A single screenshot of a competitor's US home page beside the Similarweb traffic profile often tells a strategy team more than either alone: the estimate says how many people arrive and the screenshot says what they are offered on arrival. Repeat the visit quarterly from the same metro and the pair becomes a record of how the competitor's US offer moved.

Monthly figures are published after the month closes, so today's screenshot is always being compared with an earlier period. Write both dates on the record, along with the metro, the device and the address visited. Where a site guesses the visitor's state or nearest store, capture what it assumed before changing anything, because that first guess is what a local visitor meets.

Why a carrier line

Many US sites serve a different version, or no offer at all, to foreign or datacenter visitors. A US carrier address in a metro, with the browser set to match, receives the US version as an American phone user does, with the metro's prices, shipping and promotions.

Setting up the check

Rent a line in the metro that matters for the market, build a browser profile with the metro's time zone and US English, and visit the competitor sites as a shopper would. Screenshot home pages, pricing pages, offers and checkout steps with URL and local time. Compare with the Similarweb profile and record the findings. Keep visits to a human pace and public pages.

Use the report to decide where to look. Paid keywords and popular pages show which parts of a competitor's site it is sending people to, and typing one of those keywords by hand shows the advert and the page behind it. On US retail and service sites the details worth capturing are often set by ZIP code or state: delivery promises, store availability, sales tax added at checkout, and products or promotions not offered everywhere. Stop before any payment step and never place an order.

Staying inside the rules

Research is reading public pages as a visitor. It does not involve logging into others' accounts, bulk extraction or circumventing access controls. Keep it to that and the research is ordinary competitive intelligence.

Setting up a Similarweb proxy on Stateside Proxies

1. Rent a line in the metro relevant to the market.
2. Create a browser profile with the line's details, the metro's time zone and en-US; confirm the carrier on an IP lookup page.
3. Visit each competitor's site as a US shopper and screenshot home, pricing and offer pages with URL and local time.
4. Compare with the Similarweb profile and record findings.
5. Move the line to another metro, free, to compare regional offers.

Similarweb proxy questions