Absolute Gold Dust for Competitor Research - So Exciting

byJonLake

2.8K followers

Updated 5 years ago

If you want to spy on your competitions ads Read This

I came across this today and it is absolute gold dust.

It is not long enough to put into a training so I thought I would put it in a blog post.

Now, no doubt most of you have heard of bit.ly the url shortener?

Well what I didn't know was that if you take your competitors bit.ly link and add an + to it in the browser you can see their stats for that link!

Let me show you what I mean:

Here is a Facebook post, the kind you see all over the platform at the moment.

Now, don't take any notice of the post/ad itself it is just to show you what I mean.

Take the bit.ly link and put it in your browser followed by a +

Press enter and voila - you get this:

How awesome is that?

Not only can you see whether it is a new ad or not but also whether it is working for them. It shows where in the world and on what platforms it is working for them too.

Here is another one on a Twitter Ad

Now from the engagement, you might think it's doing OK but nothing special!

Think again - just look at the clicks the link is getting in just 2 days

And guess what?

It works for goo.gl links too!

This with an + added becomes

If you want to take this even further, why not take a screenshot of the stats, add it to a spreadsheet then come back in a couple of weeks and check the link with the + again. This will show you whether the ad is working for them, as nobody runs an ad for several weeks if it is not working for them!

I have also tried Tiny.cc links but they do not work.

So, how amazing is this?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.