Find out what marketing tools a website uses

Kite can tell you what analytics, A/B testing, ad tracking, and email tools a company's homepage loads from nothing more than its domain. It fetches the live homepage and looks for the specific code each tool leaves behind, sorted into four groups:

• Analytics: Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Segment, and PostHog.
• A/B testing: Optimizely, VWO, and LaunchDarkly.
• Ad tracking: the Meta Pixel, the LinkedIn Insight Tag, and the TikTok Pixel.
• Email and chat: HubSpot forms, Klaviyo, and Intercom.

Say you ask Kite what your three closest competitors run. It might come back with Segment and the LinkedIn Insight Tag on the first, Google Analytics and VWO on the second, and the Meta Pixel and Klaviyo on the third. Each result names the page Kite read and when it read it, so you know exactly what the finding rests on.

This check is built into Kite and works on any public website that loads over HTTPS. You don't need an account with any of these tools or with a lookup service.

A tool that doesn't show up on the homepage might still be in use, and Kite treats it that way. It reports each group as found, not detected, or unknown, and it keeps those three apart.

There are good reasons a real tool can go unseen. Google Tag Manager often loads other tools after the page opens, so a homepage that loads Tag Manager may be running more than the check can see. A company might put its A/B testing tool only on its pricing page or run its email signup on a separate landing page. And when a homepage is so large that Kite reads only the first part of it, Kite marks any group with no match as unknown instead of reporting the tool as missing.

That distinction matters when you act on the answer. "Your competitor has no ad pixels on its homepage" is a useful clue that they may not be retargeting. "Your competitor doesn't advertise" is a claim the homepage alone can't support. Kite keeps sourced facts separate from its inferences and states how confident it is, so you can tell which is which.

Kite fills in the rest of a company's stack with two other sources: Crustdata, which is built in, and BuiltWith, which you connect yourself.

Crustdata keeps its own record of the technology companies use. Kite uses it to add tools that a single homepage reading would miss, and to see the company's size, funding, and hiring alongside its stack.

BuiltWith goes furthest. Once you connect your BuiltWith account, Kite can read a site's full technology profile across categories such as ecommerce, analytics, advertising, email, chat, and payments. It can also see when each tool first appeared and when it was last seen. That history turns a snapshot into a story. A competitor that added VWO last month has just started testing its pages. A prospect whose Mailchimp code disappeared around the time Klaviyo showed up has switched email platforms, and it may still be settling in.

Kite reads the stack against the goal you gave it and tells you what it means for your next move. The same list of tools leads to different work depending on whether you're watching a competitor or courting a prospect.

For a competitor, the stack shows how they run their marketing. Ad pixels show which networks they can retarget on, and Kite can check that against the ads they're actually running through its built-in ad research, including the copy, creative, landing pages, and run dates. A testing tool suggests their pages are changing on purpose, so Kite pays closer attention to their headlines and pricing. Kite folds these findings into its wider competitor analysis and advertising research.

For a prospect, the stack is a reason to reach out and something specific to say. If you sell a reviews app that works with Klaviyo, a store running Klaviyo is a better fit than one that isn't, and your email can mention the integration they'd actually use. Kite can also run the search in reverse and find every company that runs a given tool, then score each one against your ideal customer profile to build a qualified lead list.

A competitor's stack changes when its marketing changes, so Kite can repeat the check on a schedule and tell you what moved. You might ask for a monthly check on your five closest competitors. Each run compares the new results with the last ones and reports what was added or dropped, such as a new TikTok Pixel or a switch from one email tool to another.

If your team uses Slack, the results go to the channel you choose. Otherwise Kite emails them from your team's Kite address to the person who set up the check, or keeps each run as its own conversation in the Kite web app.