This article contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Competitor Traffic Analysis on Autopilot: Weekly Reports with Similarweb and n8n
Keeping tabs on competitor website traffic used to mean logging into multiple tools every Monday morning, copying numbers into a spreadsheet, and formatting a report before your first coffee had cooled. With Similarweb — which offers deep website traffic and competitor analysis — and a lightweight n8n workflow, you can have that report land in your inbox automatically every week, ready to act on.
This guide walks you through exactly how to connect these two tools, pull the metrics that matter, and deliver a clean weekly digest without touching the process again.
Why Automate Competitor Traffic Reporting?
Manual competitor monitoring has two failure modes: you do it inconsistently, or you spend so much time formatting data that you never have time to act on it. Automation solves both problems.
- Consistency: The report runs every Monday at 7 am whether or not you remember.
- Speed: Raw data becomes a formatted digest in seconds.
- Focus: Your team reads insights instead of copying cells.
- Scalability: Add ten more competitors without ten times more work.
What You Need Before You Start
- A Similarweb account with API access (available on Business plans and above)
- An n8n instance — self-hosted for free or via n8n Cloud, which gives you 400+ integrations and managed hosting
- A destination for your report: Slack, email, Google Sheets, or Notion all work well
- A list of competitor domains you want to track
Step 1: Get Your Similarweb API Key
Log in to your Similarweb account and navigate to Settings → API. Copy your API key and keep it safe — you'll paste it into n8n as a credential. The Similarweb API returns structured JSON data including total visits, traffic sources, bounce rate, pages per visit, and top referring domains.
Step 2: Build the n8n Workflow
2a. Schedule Trigger
Start every workflow with a Schedule Trigger node. Set it to run every Monday at your preferred time. In n8n, this looks like:
- Trigger type: Cron
- Expression: 0 7 * * 1 (every Monday at 07:00)
2b. Define Your Competitor List
Add a Set node directly after the trigger. Define a JSON array of competitor domains:
- competitors: ["competitor-a.com", "competitor-b.com", "competitor-c.com"]
This makes it easy to update your list later without touching the rest of the workflow.
2c. Loop Over Competitors
Use a SplitInBatches node (or the newer Loop Over Items node) to process each domain one at a time. This prevents API rate-limit errors and keeps your data clean and well-structured.
2d. HTTP Request Node — Similarweb API
Add an HTTP Request node with the following settings:
- Method: GET
- URL:
https://api.similarweb.com/v1/website/{{$json.domain}}/total-traffic-and-engagement/visits - Query parameters: api_key, start_date (4 weeks ago), end_date (today), granularity (weekly), main_domain_only (true)
- Authentication: paste your Similarweb API key into a Header Auth credential
Repeat this node (or branch the workflow) for additional endpoints such as traffic sources, top keywords, or referral data, depending on your Similarweb plan.
2e. Aggregate and Format Data
Use a Code node (JavaScript) to combine the results from each competitor into a single object. Calculate week-over-week changes, flag significant movements (e.g., more than 10% traffic change), and build a clean summary string or HTML block.
Example logic:
- If this week's visits > last week's visits by more than 10%, label it ↑ Growing
- If visits dropped more than 10%, label it ↓ Declining
- Otherwise, label it → Stable
2f. Send the Report
Route the formatted output to your preferred destination:
- Email (Gmail / SMTP): Use the Gmail node or Send Email node. Format the body as HTML for a clean table.
- Slack: Use the Slack node to post a message to your #marketing or #growth channel.
- Google Sheets: Append a row per competitor per week for historical tracking.
- Notion: Create a new database entry with a summary block.
Step 3: Add Error Handling
No automation is complete without error handling. In n8n, connect an Error Trigger node and route failures to a Slack message or email alert. This way, if the Similarweb API is temporarily unavailable or rate-limits your key, you'll know immediately rather than discovering a gap in your data two weeks later.
Metrics Worth Tracking Each Week
- Total visits: The headline number — are competitors growing or shrinking?
- Traffic sources split: Are they investing in paid search? Is organic growing?
- Bounce rate trend: A rising bounce rate may signal content or UX problems on their end.
- Top referring domains: Spot new backlink opportunities or partnership moves.
- Top organic keywords: Identify content gaps you can close.
Pro Tips for Better Reports
- Keep the list focused: Track three to five direct competitors rather than twenty. Signal-to-noise ratio matters.
- Add context automatically: Include a brief Code node that checks whether the reporting week contains public holidays and adds a note — traffic dips during holiday weeks are normal.
- Version your workflow: Use n8n's built-in workflow history or export JSON backups to Git. This lets you roll back if a node change breaks something.
- Combine with your own data: Pull your own Google Analytics or Search Console data in the same workflow and compare side by side.
Extending the Workflow Further
Once the basic weekly report is running smoothly, consider adding:
- A Google Sheets dashboard that charts four weeks of rolling traffic for each competitor
- An AI summarisation step using the OpenAI node to write a one-paragraph narrative for each competitor based on the raw numbers
- A conditional alert that sends an immediate Slack ping if any competitor's traffic jumps more than 25% in a single week
These extensions add maybe thirty minutes of configuration and deliver significantly more strategic value from the same underlying data pipeline.
If you want to track competitor traffic without spending hours every week on manual research, you can get website traffic and competitor analysis data via Similarweb — including deep traffic source breakdowns and keyword data — to stay ahead of your market automatically.