tako-web-traffic

name	tako-web-traffic
description	Website and app traffic via Tako (source: SimilarWeb). Monthly visits, app active users, traffic trends, and top-sites rankings for any domain as citation-backed charts. Use for competitive traffic analysis, share-of-attention, or any "how much traffic does <site> get" question.

Web & App Traffic (Tako)

Tako serves SimilarWeb traffic data as interactive, citation-backed charts. All tools below live on the Tako MCP server (server name tako).

What's in range

• Monthly Visits per domain — the core metric, with roughly a one-month lag.
• Head-to-head domain comparisons and ranked top-sites cards.
• App usage: "Spotify app monthly active users" returns a SimilarWeb "Monthly Active Users" card keyed by the bare app name (spotify), not a domain.
• Coverage reaches well into the long tail: "kagi.com monthly visits" returns a real card (4.68M visits).

Query patterns (Critical)

• Query by DOMAIN, not brand: this is the single highest-leverage rule here, and getting it wrong produces a confident wrong answer rather than an obvious failure. Use the bare domain: "netflix.com monthly visits", "youtube.com", "chatgpt.com". For app usage, use the app name plus the metric.
• What a brand-shaped query actually does, and why it is dangerous: "Netflix traffic" on data returns three Netflix subscriber cards (84.0M average streaming subscribers), plausible-looking numbers that are not web traffic at all — while on web it returns CDN and BGP network-engineering articles about Netflix Open Connect. "Netflix website traffic" returns no card either way. None of these is the answer; only the bare domain produces a Visits card. If a traffic answer isn't backed by a card whose title is <domain> Monthly Visits, you do not have the traffic number yet.
• Comparisons: "youtube.com vs netflix.com monthly visits" returns a real 2-series card. Rankings: "top websites by visits" returns a ranked card (google.com 84.9B, youtube.com 28.8B, …).
• sources: default to BOTH ["data", "web"] (also the tool's default when omitted). The SimilarWeb card grounds the number and web results add context (competitive write-ups, ranking roundups) that turn a figure into analysis. Price is identical either way, and web does not degrade card selection on a well-formed domain query. Narrow to ["data"] when you only want the number for a domain you know is covered, or in a parallel fan-out.
• Empty result (zero cards): do NOT reword and retry blind; every search is billed. The #1 cause is a brand-name query: if the query wasn't a bare DOMAIN, fix it to one ("Netflix traffic" → "netflix.com monthly visits") and retry ONCE. That is the recovery. If a domain-shaped query still comes back empty, stop searching Tako and answer from the web results already in the response, labelling the figure web-sourced.
• Do NOT use tako_available_data to rule a domain out. Its graph is entity-based and misses long-tail domains SimilarWeb covers: it reports found: false for kagi.com while the search returns a real card. It is still useful for resolving a brand to its entity node_id (tako_available_data {"q": "Netflix"} → ent::netflix_inc::…; note the arg is q), though pinning an entity node_id alone does not steer retrieval: only a METRIC node_id with strict: true does.
• Empty also means "not covered in Tako," NOT that the domain has no traffic — don't infer a fact from silence.

Pick the tool

• tako_answer: the default for "how much traffic does get". Returns the number in prose with its cited chart attached. This matters more here than anywhere: SimilarWeb is licensed, so a search card carries NO rows. The figure lives in the card's description or comes from here.
• tako_search: reach for it when you want breadth or a chart, e.g. the ranked top-sites card, a head-to-head embed, or scanning several domains to see which are covered. Its cards are captions, never rows.
• tako_available_data: FREE brand→entity resolver, and the right tool when the question is what Tako covers. Do NOT use it to rule a domain out (see the empty-result bullet).
• SimilarWeb is a protected source, so EVERY traffic card is read-only: not exportable, no inline preview rows, and tako_contents cannot export the CSV. This is a licensing wall, not an error, so never call tako_contents on a traffic card. The numbers live in the card's description (latest value + % change over the period) and the chart; for one specific figure use tako_answer. (Web-result urls remain fetchable.)
• Cohort/growth asks ("top 5 streaming domains by visits, and which is growing fastest") → get the ranked card with tako_search (breadth is its job), then one tako_answer per domain in parallel and compute growth from the figures.

Reading a result

Every card carries a title, a description holding the headline value, and retrieval facts: whether it is exportable, its relevance, its card type, its as-of date, its nodes (the graph entities and metrics it was built from), its source name, and its chart/embed URLs.

Field names depend on the response format, so the checks below name the concept and you read whichever your response carries. A markdown response prints them on a facts line (exportable · relevance · type · freshness · nodes · source · chart · embed); a JSON response uses exportable, relevance, card_type, data_freshness.data_as_of, nodes, sources[].source_name, webpage_url and embed_url.

Pick the right card (Critical)

• Verify by title, not by nodes. Traffic cards list only the metric in nodes (Visits); the domain never appears there, so the entity check that works elsewhere in Tako is useless here. Confirm the domain in the card's title.
• Comparison vs. single-series. On a "A vs B" card the description reports each series as a % change over the period, not absolute visits (the youtube/netflix card leads with -0.95%). For absolute monthly visits, read the per-domain single-series card, which the same search usually also returns at #1 and #2.
• A comparison card's as-of date is the QUERY date, not the data date: the youtube/netflix comparison reported the day it was run while the single-domain cards correctly report the June 2026 data month. Cite the month from the single-series card or its description.
• Watch for a different metric family. SimilarWeb app "Monthly Active Users" and a company's own reported MAU are different numbers from different sources: "Spotify app monthly active users" returns SimilarWeb at 338.0M alongside Visible Alpha company-reported MAU at 479.5M. Say which one you're quoting.

Rendering

• The top result renders inline automatically: an interactive widget on ChatGPT, a chart image on other hosts. Reference it in prose; do NOT re-post the card's image URL as a markdown image — that double-renders it.
• Cite SimilarWeb + the as-of month (read it from the single-series card).
• Point at any extra cards by linking their titles to their chart URLs — embed only the top card.

Examples

• Single domain (the common case) → tako_answer {"query": "How many monthly visits does netflix.com get?", "sources": ["data", "web"]} — the figure plus its cited SimilarWeb chart
• Head-to-head → tako_answer {"query": "How do youtube.com and netflix.com compare on monthly visits?", "sources": ["data", "web"]} → absolute visits come from the per-domain figures, not a comparison card's % change
• Chart or ranking is the deliverable → tako_search {"query": "top websites by visits", "sources": ["data", "web"]} → embed the ranked card
• App usage → tako_answer {"query": "How many monthly active users does the Spotify app have?", "sources": ["data", "web"]} → say whether you quoted SimilarWeb or company-reported MAU
• Cohort fan-out → tako_search with "sources": ["data"] to see which domains are covered, then one tako_answer per domain for the figures
• Brand-shaped ask ("how much traffic does Netflix get?") → resolve to the domain yourself and ask about netflix.com; never answer from a subscriber card

Output (tight and structured)

1. A 1–2 line read of the traffic, referencing the inline chart
2. SimilarWeb — as-of month, and say so plainly when a figure came from the web rather than a card
3. A single [Open in Tako] link built from the card's embed URL, for the top card