Do you trust Alexa? Ever wonder where the traffic from your niche really is? If your competitors run Adsense then launching a Google Adwords campaign is a great way to find them — and get an inside picture of how they are doing.

Why spend the money when you could just look at the top rankers on the SERPs? Looking at search engine rankings is going to give you an inaccurate picture if competitors are a) drawing traffic from alternate sources (email, Myspace, other PPC) or b) involve lots of returning users.

Here are the steps you need to take to “discover” other sites in the niche:

First, set up a Google Adwords campaign with search disabled and content enabled. You do this by checking the tick box next to a campaign group, clicking the Edit Settings button, and under Networks uncheck Google search and ensure Content network is checked. Also take note that several days may pass before the campaign become fully syndicated across the content network.

You need to have a way of logging referall URLs. I do this with custom programmed software. If you are not a programmer, ask your programmer how to save the full referring URL strings to a database. The reason being is stats programs like Webalizer will just display “http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads.” You need the full string, which should look something like this:

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?client
=ca-pub-1234567890&dt=1234567890&lmt=1234567890&format
=728×90_as&output=html&channel=1234567890&url=http%3A%2F
%2Fwww.somedomain.com&color_bg=FFFFFF&color_text=1234
5&color_link=5ccc00&color_url=12345&color_border=FFFFFF&ref=
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.somedomain.com&u_h=768&u_w=1024&u_
ah=734&u_aw=1024&u_cd=32&u_tz=-240&u_his=1&u_java=true

If you are thinking this tip is worthless for newbies, you may be right. Running a test like this could cost you anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars, and you are going to have to pick through the data by hand (unless you can have a script written to do it.) On the other hand, knowing the most successful competitors that monetize their sites through PPC can give your valuable intelligence when executing your own internet publishing strategies.