SpyFu |
If you are utilizing pay per click advertising for your brand you ought to be using SpyFu as a keyword research tool and more. Think of SpyFu as a competitive intelligence and keyword research tool that enables you to spy on your direct competitors Pay Per Click advertising, daily budget, PPC bid pricing, number of clicks per day generated and related keywords the web site/competitor are showing up for.
Enabling you to improve your overall search engine optimization and marketing processes. This powerful marketing platform can also be used to help a busy marketer or entrepreneur to research market niche sites and do deep dive keyword research. It has a fairly robust “free” version available via the site, with upgraded features and functionality based on a per month subscription rate.
SpyFu was founded in Scottsdale AZ in 2006 – the parent corporation was Velocityscape a web scraping company and SpyFu’s information is provided by scraping publicly available information on the internet, with an estimated 4.5 million web sites in its dataset.
It’s hard to estimate the number of users of this platform, the company is private. But, the company is well established and has been growing rapidly, which underscores the popularity in the market for small businesses, corporate entities and SEO and/or advertising agencies.
This marketing platform is most popular with search agencies as a keyword research tool and for providing another set of rich data that helps them substantiate their services for existing clients - while providing actionable competitive intelligence on the client’s direct competitors, market segment and related information.
Some marketers have found their “hard data” (PPC media spends) to be at odds with advertising campaigns. But, the SpyFu keyword research tool and platform has a significant amount of rich data which is valuable and provides ongoing insight. It should be noted the database is only update monthly, which means there are some inherent inaccuracies in the provided information. It’s not real time.
And, SpyFu only cover the US and UK markets. It should be noted, the SpyFu interface is complex and sophisticate – it takes on average 2-4 hours to get to some level of proficiency. But, this is again a great keyword research tool and platform and your investment in time should pay off in the end with much greater insight about competitors, keyword rankings and market analysis data.
We like this tool and have found significant value for the monthly (detailed below) subscription rates that range from $89-139. for an individual or a small business with corporate pricing that can run up to $10K per month for up to 1 million results per month. Direct competitors include:
Keyword Universe, SEOMoz, Compet.com, KeywordSpy, WordTracker, Google Tools, Microsoft Ad Center and MarketSamurai.
SpyFu has five primary modules, each with different functionality that complement each other, with the keyword research tool at the center of all. The learning curve can be significant if you are trying to use all five modules.
But, you get a deep dive into significant amounts of actionable data that can give you real insight into a direct competitor’s: PPC AD Campaigns, Domain Keyword history and also providing significant amounts of detailed information about related datasets.
SpyFu Kombat: Enables you to compare and contrast (“combat”) keywords research for up to three websites. The PPC version also shows a chart that goes back 1-2 years, with bid history for all three web sites, PPC budgets for the respective sites and organic keywords ranking in the top 50 results for each keyword. This is a superb keyword research tool that we have used for years on multiple campaigns for clients.
SpyFu Classic: This module is the core module for SpyFu – enter a single domain (free and paid version) to get comprehensive information.
- The Daily AdWords Pay per Click Budget
- Connection to SpyFu Kombat
- The average position of each ad and the number of advertisers listed
- Comparison of paid traffic versus organic traffic estimates
- Estimated value of organic traffic
- Listing of subdomains
- Total Paid Keywords
- Total Organic Keywords
- PPC Competitors (with a link to overlapping keywords)
- Organic Competitors (with a link to overlapping keywords)
Keyword Ad History: This provides good insight, showing you how frequently a keyword appeared in a web site or domain’s keyword showed up in a pay per click ad campaign, with all changes to the ad copy (export to Excel enabled), with a year dataset going back to 2006.
Domain Ad History: This is great for getting a snapshot of how frequently a keyword appeared in a domain’s background – good for competitive analysis and understanding what keywords have been well ranked for a specific keyword.
Keyword Smart Search: This is a sophisticated keyword research tool, using semantic analysis, keyword data that can be scarped on the public web, and pay per click campaign data
SpyFu has a limited free edition that can be used via the web site as a keyword research tool. It’s worthwhile and will give you a snapshot of some of the power of their keyword research tools. SpyFu also offer paid monthly subscription rates for $89-139. per month, depending on usage. They also offer annual plans that will give you about a 40% discount for both of these plans.
They have agency and enterprise pricing, with $999. per month (five accounts) and up to $10K a month for enterprise types of accounts where up to 1M keyword searches are being done per month. We highly recommend SpyFu’s keyword research tool!