A new feature on Google Analytics was just announced: it allows you to compare your web analytics metrics against other sites’s ones. Here’s what Benchmarking does exactly:

Benchmarking is an optional Google Analytics service that shows how your website’s statistics compare against other industry verticals. In the beta version of this service, you are able to compare your site’s Visits, Pageviews, Pages per Visit, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site, and New Visits data against benchmark data from categories of other participating websites. You can use this data to gain broader context for your site so you can identify additional opportunities to improve your site’s metrics.

Of course, this is done anonymously. To be able to use this feature, you need to accept to share yours 🙂 This is explained here.

That kind of metrics will help you measure your efforts, of course it won’t be 100% accurate since they aren’t 2 sites with the exact same profile, but you can adjust your strategy with these data, and see where you are as apposed to your competitors.