How to track competitor sales daily
A practical method for watching what a competitor sells each day, by hand with catalogue snapshots or automatically with a sales tracker, and how to read the results without overreacting.
On this page
A store's best sellers change faster than its home page. A product can take off on Tuesday and be the main ad creative by Friday. If you only check a competitor once a month, you see the result, not the move. Daily tracking shows you which products are gaining, when new products launch and how a store reacts to its own winners. This guide explains a manual method you can run with a spreadsheet, then the faster version with RivalSonar's Sales tracker.
Key takeaways
- Public storefronts change in ways that hint at sales, such as stock levels, product order on collection pages and new product launches.
- A manual tracker compares snapshots of a store's catalogue taken at the same time each day.
- RivalSonar's Sales tracker checks tracked stores hourly and estimates orders and which products sold. The first report is ready after 24 hours.
- Tracking uses slots, not credits, so watching a store does not drain your monthly credits.
- Every daily figure is an estimate. Read trends over a week or more, not single days.
What public signals reveal
Shopify and most other platforms publish a lot of catalogue data on public pages. None of it is a sales report, but several signals move when products sell:
- Inventory changes. Some stores show stock counts, or a product that was available becomes sold out.
- Collection order. Many stores sort a "best sellers" collection by sales, so the order of products is itself a signal. The best-seller rank entry explains how this works.
- New products and variants. A new colour or size usually means the original sold well.
- Price changes. A product moving from a compare-at price sale back to full price can mean demand is strong enough to stop discounting.
- Updated dates. Product pages and sitemaps often show when a product was last changed.
The manual method
Step 1. Choose a small set of stores
Pick three to five direct competitors. More than that becomes a chore by hand. For each one, note the main collection URLs, especially any collection named best sellers, trending or most popular.
Step 2. Take a snapshot at the same time each day
Once a day, at a fixed time, record:
- the first 20 products in the best sellers collection, in order
- each product's price and compare-at price
- whether each product is in stock
- any product that was not there yesterday
A spreadsheet with one tab per store and one row per product per day is enough. The fixed time matters because stores in other time zones sell at different hours.
Step 3. Compare day to day
Add a column that shows each product's position change since yesterday. Products climbing several places for three or more days in a row are the ones to watch. A product that appears at the top on its first day is often being pushed by new ads, so check the ad libraries for that store. The ad library guide explains how.
Step 4. Review weekly
Every week, write two or three sentences per store. What moved up, what was added, what was dropped. That short note is what you will actually reread, and the raw sheet is the evidence behind it.
Limits of the manual method
It is slow, it misses changes between snapshots, and it only works for stores that publish a sorted best sellers collection. It also tells you rank, not volume. Being first in a small store and first in a large store are very different things.
Using RivalSonar's Sales tracker
The Sales tracker automates the same idea and adds an order estimate.
How it works
When you track a store, RivalSonar checks its public catalogue every hour. It compares each check with the last one and estimates how many orders came in and which products sold. Those hourly changes refine the store's baseline estimate, which is modelled from its estimated monthly visits, a conversion rate adjusted for price band and category, and an average order value. The sales estimate guide explains that model step by step.
Timing
Your first report is ready 24 hours after you start tracking, because the tracker needs a full day of hourly checks to compare. After that, the report updates through the day, and you can get it by email.
What you see
- estimated orders by hour and by day
- the products that sold, ranked by estimated orders
- new products added to the catalogue
- price and stock changes
Slots, not credits
Tracking uses slots. Each plan includes a number of tracking slots, and a tracked store uses one slot for as long as you track it. It does not spend credits, so you can leave a store tracked for months. When you stop tracking a store, its slot is free for another. Your plan's slot count is on the pricing page.
Pair it with the Ad tracker
Sales tell you what is selling. Ads often tell you why. The Ad tracker shows new ads from stores or advertisers you track across Meta, TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat. When a product jumps in the Sales tracker on the same day a new ad appears, you have a strong lead on what drove it. The ad longevity guide helps you judge whether that ad is still a test or already scaling.
Reading the results well
Look at weeks, not days
Daily estimates are noisy. Weekends, payday, holidays and a single viral post can swing one day a lot. Use a seven-day rolling average and compare week with week.
Compare a store with itself
Estimates are most useful for direction within one store. If a store's estimated orders doubled this month, that change is more reliable than the exact number. When you compare two stores, compare their trends, not their totals.
Separate product signals from store signals
If every product rises together, the store probably increased ad spend or ran a sale. If one product rises while others stay flat, that product is the story.
Check before you copy
A rising product at a competitor is a lead, not a verdict. Run it through the product validation checklist before you spend on ads.
A simple daily routine
- Open the Sales tracker report and note any product that moved up sharply.
- Check the Ad tracker for new ads from the same store.
- Open the product page and look at price, reviews and offer.
- Add one line to your weekly notes.
Ten minutes a day is enough to know what your competitors are selling right now.
RivalSonar only reads public storefront pages and never logs into stores or collects shopper data. Store owners can ask us to hide their store at /data-removal.
