Top pages finder

Why a site's top pages are worth studying

On most websites, a small number of pages bring most of the search traffic. Those pages are the clearest evidence of what Google rewards in a market: which topics, which formats and how much depth. Looking at a competitor's homepage tells you what they want to sell. Looking at their top pages tells you what actually brings them visitors.

You'll often find surprises. A software company's best page might be a free template, a calculator or a glossary entry rather than a product page. A shop's might be a buying guide. Those are the pages worth matching or beating, and they're rarely the ones a competitor promotes.

How to read the list

• Est. Google visits / month is worked out from the keywords each page ranks for, how many people search them, and the share of clicks each position usually gets. It's an estimate from rankings, not the site's analytics, and it covers Google's ordinary results in the US only.
• Keywords counts the searches the page ranks for anywhere in the top 100. A high count with little traffic means the page is relevant to lots of searches but rarely near the top.
• In top 3 and On page one count the keywords where the page sits in positions 1 to 3 and 1 to 10. That's where nearly all clicks happen.

A page with a few keywords and lots of traffic usually holds the top spot for one big search. A page with hundreds of keywords and steady traffic is usually a thorough guide that ranks for many related searches; that's often the more durable kind of win.

What to do with a competitor's top pages

Open each page in the list that's relevant to what you sell and ask three questions. What search is it answering? Is it a kind of page you don't have, like a comparison, a tool or a template? And could you make something clearly more useful, not just longer?

Then check whether you already have a page on that topic. If you do, the On-page check link runs our on-page SEO checker on their page so you can compare the basics side by side with yours. If you don't, the page's topic is a candidate for a new page. To see the individual keywords behind a competitor's traffic, run the site through keyword ideas from a website or the competitor keyword gap.

On your own site, the list shows which pages you can't afford to break. Keep them up to date, link to your newer pages from them, and be careful with redirects and redesigns that touch them.

What this tool can't see

It only knows pages that rank in Google's US top 100 for keywords in a large third-party ranking database. Pages that get their visits from social media, email, ads or other countries won't show up, or will look smaller than they are. Rankings are refreshed regularly rather than live, so a page published last week may not appear yet. For your own site, the Pages tab of Google Search Console's performance report shows real clicks per page.