By Mark Brooks

YNOT – Quantcast is a web analytics service that competes with the likes of Compete.com, Hitwise and to some extent comScore. We like Hitwise and comScore. But Compete’s and Quantcast’s freemium services are sweet, and both companies pull data from comprehensive, million-person panels based in the U.S.

Quantcast also allows sites to volunteer to have their data pulled directly. So sites can elect to give Quantcast the keys to their server metrics. Great! You can check in on your competition. There are a few dating sites that are “quantified.” We went through the top 25 dating sites and found data for Speeddate, OkCupid, eHarmony and Zoosk. How many of your competitors does Quantcast track?

Quantcast offers the following reports:

Traffic – Graphs indicating how many people have visited a site. Quantcast also measures cookies, impressions and page views, among other stats, in daily and monthly views.

Traffic Frequency – Quantcast has broken down visitor traffic into three categories: Passers By, users who visit a site once per month; Regulars, those who visit a site more than once but less than 30 times per month; Addicts, those who interact with a site 30 or more times per month.

Demographics – Quantcast can tell you the gender, age, children per household, education status and income levels.

Audience Also Likes – Find out who your audience really is and see what other properties they also engage with.

Business Data – Does your audience visit from home or work? If they access your site from work, what size company employs them?

We looked at eHarmony’s Quantcast reports, and based on that data we can say that 57 percent of U.S. eHarmony visitors are female. Most eHarmony users are 35 or older, mainly Caucasian, with no kids in the household. One percent of eHarmony’s audience visits the site daily and accounts for 35 percent of all visits. Thirty-seven percent are regulars and account for 48 percent of all eHarmony visits.

How does your website stack up against its competition?

After starting and then selling several successful matchmaking and social networks beginning in 1998, Mark Brooks founded Courtland Brooks Agency, a consultancy providing electronic dating services with media relations, business development and product and marketing strategy assistance. He is a popular keynote speaker at conferences worldwide and serves as the president of the Internet Dating Executive Alliance. For more of his perspective about white-label dating sites, visit OnlinePersonalsWatch.com or email him.