SpyFu More Information Overall Rating: Not Rated Pay Per Click Universe Recommends: AdWatcher - 100% Click Fraud Protection. Concerned about click fraud? Protect your online advertising dollars with the world's most trusted & accurate click fraud solution on the market today. AdWatcher will put a stop to competitors and fraudsters who are looking to drain your hard earned advertising budget. Test-Drive AdWatcher For FREE For 30 Days! SpyFu, formerly known as GoogSpy, is an intriguing tool from Velocityscape, the company responsible for WebScraper, software that can mine data to help you compete online. Advertisers can use the tool to research keywords that their competitors may be using, in order to not only find out the competition’s tactics, but also to help build your own keyword list competitively. As of July 1/08, SpyFu claimed to be indexing 508,274,289 results on 2,190,593 keywords across 9,591,801 domains. SpyFu lets you enter either a keyword or a domain into its search box to begin the process. You are then presented with results to help you decide whether a given keyword is a good choice for your ad campaigns or SEO endeavor and other keyword possibilities. For domain searches, you can check out your competitors and discover details of their organic and paid search campaigns. Even accessing just the free version, SpyFu returns a bundle of interesting info. For example, on a general search using “PPC advertising” as a keyword phrase, SpyFu shows stats (including cost/click, clicks/day, cost/day, number of advertisers, and number of search results), the actual ads that use the keyword, and the organic search results with links to help identify your competitors. In addition, a list of terms that competitors also bought is linked to SpyFu-generated pages with the details of those other keywords. Explanations of each statistic and possible uses of the data are included. For domain searches, you will see similar stats (daily ad budget, total clicks/day, average cost/click, average clicks/day, average ad position, average number of ad competitors, and average ad percentile) designed to tell you as much as possible about the domain’s advertising, including a chart showing the average budget and budget range with monthly data points. SpyFu also supplies a list of keywords and ranking in organic results, plus keywords used in ads and where those ads rank in the sponsored listings. The top organic competitors and top ad competitors are listed. Subdomains and other domains owned are also provided. Explanations and possible uses of the data are again included. Subscribing to SpyFu expands the capabilities and types of data you can access immensely. With a subscription, you have access to daily figures and a plethora of averaged data and trend analysis, including a great deal of industry info in addition to specific sites. SpyFu claims the free access only shows 5%-10% of what a subscriber can see. The cost of subscribing is about $40 per month for US info only ($70 for both US and UK), with some discounts for buying an annual subscription. They do offer a 3-day subscription for only $8.95 (US data), which is a great way to investigate the full power of the tool to decide if it will be useful for your campaigns. An advanced search feature lets you search by any of the metrics provided so you can focus in on what is most important for your needs. For example, you can use advanced search to discover which keyword gets the most clicks per day or which competitor spends the most. Reports from advanced search can be downloaded via Excel. SpyFu returns data only from Google. The recent addition of data from the UK is a nice step forward. The folks behind the tool are clearly working all the time to improve the tool and the results it brings back, and considering new ways to present data and new types of data to go after. SpyFu has a user forum that is well-maintained to answer questions and provide a place for suggestions and bug reports. User comments are generally positive, although there are some concerns about the accuracy of the data – mostly from those who have compared the data provided by SpyFu with the actual data from their own campaigns, and have found differences – sometimes minor and sometimes rather major. Like any tool of this nature, in reality it would be impossible for SpyFu to be 100% accurate, or even anywhere close. Don’t let such differences negate the usefulness of the tool – the user just needs to keep them in mind when assessing the information SpyFu returns. In sum, SpyFu is well worth a look. Its simple interface makes it easy to use and the information it provides will help fill out the competitive picture in your ad campaigns, and the low-priced 3-day subscription is a bargain. If used with caution and in combination with a solid understanding of how online advertising functions, it can make a fine addition to your arsenal of PPC tools. |
