I built a chrome extension that tracks the traffic of any website

I manage a few websites and I wanted to get a quick overview of the traffic of each one without having to open Google Analytics or google search console every time.

I also wanted to see how the traffic has changed over time. I thought it could be interesting to see how many keywords a website ranks for, and which place it has in the search results.

I came across this website Dataforseo which provides an API to get this information. The API is not free, but it I did not mind paying for it for now since I was only going to experiment.

Besides I have never built a chrome extension before so I saw it as a learning opportunity.

Once I got access to it I built a chrome extension that uses utilizes the API in order to get the information I wanted displayed in a popup format.

How to install

You can install the extension from the chrome web store.

How it works

The information shown in the extension is split between three main parts - general, traffic and keywords.

First thing you will see when you open the extension is a block with the website name and the URL. This is the website your tab is currently on.

The country is set to Denmark by default since that is where I currently live. This is also the country that the API uses to get the information.

The data would look different if you were in another country. For example, if you were in the US, the numbers would be much higher.

General

The general part shows four things - organic keywords, monthly traffic, visibility trend and paid traffic cost. Let's break down what each of those things mean.

Organic keywords

This is the number of keywords that the website ranks for in the search results.

Monthly traffic

This is the number of visitors that the website gets every month.

Visibility trend

This shows how many people have seen your website in the search results based on paid traffic.

Paid traffic cost

This is the cost of the paid traffic for the website in the last month.

Traffic

The traffic part shows the traffic for the past six months. The idea is to get a quick overview of how the it has changed over a certain period of time.

Keywords

The keywords part shows the keywords that the website ranks for. It also shows which page in the search results it is placed in.

I split where the keywords are placed into five parts - page 1-3, page 4-10, page 11-20, page 31-40 and page 51+.

The number indicates the page number in the search results. For example, if the keyword is on page 3, it means that it is on the third page of the search results.

How to use

To use the extension is very simple. You just need go to the website you want to get the information for and click on the extension icon.

It takes a few seconds to get the information from the API and display it in the extension. If you want to get the information for another website, you just need to go to that website and click on the extension icon again.

The information is saved locally in the browser, so you do not need to get the information again if you go to the same website again.

It goes without saying but if the website is brand new, it will not have any information to show since it has not been indexed by Google yet.

Limitations

The extension is still in beta and there are a few limitations. The main limitation is that I have to put a limit on the number of requests that can be made to the API since I don't own the it.

This means that you can only get the information for 5 websites per day. If you want to get the informatxion for more websites, you would have to wait until the next day which will reset the limit.

Bugs

There are a few bugs that I am aware of. The main one is that when the limit is reached for the day and you try again the next day, the extension will show the same "The amount of requests has been exceeded for today. Please try again tomorrow." message.

That is just the old message from yesterday. If you close the extension by clicking on the icon and then open it again, it will work as expected.

Demo

You can see a demo of the extension in the video below.

Ghost traffic

Closing thoughts

I am happy with how the extension turned out. It is not perfect, but it is a good start.

Building the extension was fun but also quit challenging since I had to learn a lot of new things.

I am planning to add more features to the extension in the future since I think it has a lot of potential and I barely scratched the surface of what else the API can offer.

If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to reach out. I'm currios to hear what peoples thoughts are.