Ever since Compete came along with its free Web traffic estimates, my work life has been much improved. Now, every time I review a startup or financial company, I check out their website traffic from Compete’s free service to give me a sense of how big the company is and how fast they are growing.
But I’d also always coveted the Pro version, which unlocks a bunch more detail on each website, including two years of historical traffic data. So I took the plunge today and upgraded to Pro.
One of the first things I did with my newfound data trove was to highlight the financial institutions, insurance, and investment companies on the list of the 1,000 busiest websites (based on U.S. traffic). There were 29 FI websites, representing 26 unique companies.
PayPal was the top financial company with 30 million unique visitors, making it the 25th most visited site on the Internet. Chase was the largest commercial bank, just 2 million higher than Bank of America.
| FI Rank | All Rank | Name | Unique U.S. Visitors (Aug. 2010) |
| 1 | 25 | PayPal | 30 mil |
| 2 | 35 | Chase | 25 mil |
| 3 | 36 | Bank of America | 23 mil |
| 4 | 57 | Wells Fargo | 14 mil |
| 5 | 71 | Citibank | 13 mil |
| 6 | 81 | Capital One | 12 mil |
| 7 | 146 | American Express | 7.8 mil |
| 8 | 154 | Discover Card | 7.6 mil |
| 9 | 187 | Wachovia (Wells) | 6.7 mil |
| 10 | 243 | Citicards (Citi) | 5.4 mil |
| 11 | 252 | Geico | 5.3 mil |
| 12 | 256 | US Bank | 5.2 mil |
| 13 | 279 | HSBC Credit Card | 4.9 mil |
| 15 | 298 | Fidelity | 4.7 mil |
| 15 | 329 | Netteller (Jack Henry) | 4.3 mil |
| 16 | 353 | PNC Bank | 4.0 mil |
| 17 | 387 | Progressive | 3.8 mil |
| 18 | 402 | USAA | 3.6 mil |
| 19 | 601 | ING Direct | 2.7 mil |
| 20 | 625 | Orchard Bank | 2.6 mil |
| 21 | 640 | HSRAccount (HSBC) | 2.5 mil |
| 22 | 693 | State Farm | 2.4 mil |
| 23 | 737 | SunTrust | 2.2 mil |
| 24 | 757 | AllState | 2.2 mil |
| 25 | 791 | BB&T | 2.1 mil |
| 26 | 816 | TD Bank | 2.0 mil |
| 27 | 853 | Vanguard | 2.0 mil |
| 28 | 854 | Regions Bank | 2.0 mil |
| 29 | 925 | Fifth Third Bank | 1.8 mil |
Source: Compete, 27 Sep. 2010
FI Rank = Rank among financial institutions (includes card issuers and investment companies)
All Rank = Rank among all websites