When I went over to this site, it allows you to enter any domain and, as long as they have an ad campaign running, it extracts a list of the keywords that domain is using and it shows their ad placement positions versus the competition. It's designed to extract the information that is enabling your competitor's success.
When I entered my own domain, it did indeed bring up the actual keywords that I have entered on my Google AdWords Account Campaigns, as well as showing my actual ad position ratings as compared with the rest. Whilst I can hardly worry about the more obvious keywords (anyone with any common sense could choose them), there are some more 'creative' variations that I have used that successfully trigger my ads.
I must admit that I'm a bit cheesed off that information that is used exclusively within my AdWords account is being made available for public consumption. Some of these keywords do not even appear anywhere on my own pages (and yes, I can still get them to trigger ads), so they must have been fished for via Adwords somehow?
I guess, in some perverse way, it's flattering that some competitor/s has found me to be more successful in my AdWords campain than they'd like me to be, but is there any way I can stop them accessing my information? All I've tried so far is adding keywordspy.com to my ip deny list. In fact, I'm not even sure what it was up to on my site - as I said, the keywords are apparently being taken from my Adwords campaign, not lifted from my site coding.
Comments anyone?
capercaillie
[edited by: skibum at 1:23 am (utc) on Mar. 7, 2008]
[edit reason] there are a bunch of these, removed name of this specific one [/edit]
Beyond curiosity, I don't know why anybody would waste much time with it. If you're smart enough to create you're own keywords, you don't need it... and if you're dumb enough to need it, you probably wouldn't ever find it anyway.
The program keeps track of the search queries used, and also keeps track of the websites that show an ad for such a query. Then when you enter a website, it simply remembers all the search queries that triggered an ad.
I tried my website...only about half the number of keywords showed, and it showed A LOT of keywords that I am not bidding on.
This supports my theory of how KeywordSpy gets their info - only about half of my keywords actually trigger ads. As for the keywords I'm not bidding on, well, those are there because Google in its "wise" broad match showed my ads for ridiculous searches.
As previously stated, anyone with brains can do the same with a WordTracker account, and some old-fashioned hard work.
AWA2
But if you are dumb enough to just ignore your competitors then probably you can't see the usefulness of this tool.
I have tried it and I really did track my competitors’ keywords and how successful their AdWords campaigns are. I am using this for my own site and so far it has positive response...
You're dumb if you fall for this - the oldest and lamest attempt to spam a legitimate forum. The only thing that this site may be good at - is separating a fool from his money.
Personally, I don't think so. Software like Spy Fu has been used accross the industry for a good length of time now. I personally know people that look forward to their monthly updates, so ignore it at your peril would be my advice!
So far, it’s bringing me the targeted website traffic I need for my e-book business. Less hassle on my marketing staff for we can easily figure out the competitors move and can come up with better keyword strategy.
I also noticed that KeywordSpy is similar to the now defunct Google Sandbox, which is a welcome concept for any webmaster, but I guess even better than the latter for I recently found out that it has regional domains for UK and Australia.
I just hope that my adversaries won’t find out KeywordSpy soon. (*crossed fingers*)
The results on the site were 50% accurate at best. Tons of keywords that we never used.
Ultimately the serious PPC manager shouldn't care what information some tool is gathering.
If your understand PPC and know why and what your doing. Then you will always be one step ahead of your competition that uses this tool. You already have an advantage because you don't have the expense of the tool.
Anyone that really wanted to get this data could find it without spending a dime.
By the way, the data used on this site is gathered from ISP log files.
E.g. if you type in "chicago hotels" you get adwords relevant to "chicago hotels" appearing. However if you immediately do a second search just for "hotels" say, Google will still display a few adverts for "Chicago Hotels" mixed in with the normal "Hotels" adwords (ads which don't appear if you open the browser afresh and search for "hotels") - or at least this is what we see happening here.
(I hope its okay giving a random example here? - I couldn't get it to work for 'foo' and 'bar'!)
Google seems to slightly adjust adverts (in some cases) based on your previous search - perhaps assuming that some users will be attempting to refine their first search.
The effect of this on KeywordSpy.com however could mean that it lists adwords appearing for some search terms when in fact they don't actually appear for those terms (rather they appeared for a users unknown previous search term).
[edited by: TravelSite at 10:05 am (utc) on Feb. 27, 2008]
Also, if you actually spent time understanding the value of this you could save your account hundreds of thousands of dolllar a year(at least i did). Not to mention you can gain insight in to the way your competitors segment their acccounts and so on.
To say it does not work or it is a scam is not true and I would suggest the people that think that its a lie should spend some time thinking about ways to take advantage of competitive intelligence when it is presented to them.
its not much different than spyfu, less the pricing info.
You can go to wordtracker and buy one of their huge keywords lists (they sell one containing 20 million keywords), setup the system to scrape the search results for reach query and the data starts pouring in.
As for showing words you never bid on, do you use broad match? Because if you do your ad will show up for tons and tons of keywords you didn't specifically bid on, throw expanded broad match into the mix and you have even more keywords you dind't bid on.
I bet if you run a Search Query Report and compared that list of keywords to the spy tool lists you would see more matches than just comparing to your list of bidded keywords .
Ever wonder what keywords show up in the "Other Search Queries" section? :-)
If you know how to use competitive intelligence tools and techniques AND use the data you uncover correctly you can drastically cut the time needed to launch new campaigns in new markets.
C'mon peers, timeslice contributors to launch (and beyond) go well beyond keyword discovery, which is one of the skinniest parts of launching.
You're way over-rating what these things are capable of doing. Which, like I said, is very good news for those of us that see it's plainly a shortcut to nowhere.
Does the tool create segmented, themed, cohesive ad groupings? Does it tell me how to build out the site and create the best landing page strategy for those groups?C'mon peers, timeslice contributors to launch (and beyond) go well beyond keyword discovery, which is one of the skinniest parts of launching.
You're way over-rating what these things are capable of doing. Which, like I said, is very good news for those of us that see it's plainly a shortcut to nowhere.
And competitive intelligence goes way beyond keyword research.
I agree using one's own intelligence, common sense, and personal experiences can never be replicated by a tool or script but it's also very unlikely you are going to launch a new campaign for yourself or a client without studying the marketplace and those already competing in it.
I look at it like a sports team studying tape of their next competitor's plays, tendencies strengths and weaknesses.
It doesn't give you the other teams actual playbook or guarantee you will win the game but it will help you exploit mistakes and weaknesses and also get you thinking in new ways to position your team for a better chance of winning.
Then the chaos of the actual game unfolds and this thread strays farther and farther from the original post :-)
I raised questions like these:
Does the tool create segmented, themed, cohesive ad groupings? Does it tell me how to build out the site and create the best landing page strategy for those groups?
My point being, how do you do those other necessary and important tasks well, if your keywords lists are scraped data from your competition... a question you've failed to address.
To me, I see you stuffing keywords like competitive intelligence into every post and quotes like "could save your account hundreds of thousands of dollar a year" and my best guess is that you're a plant.
In any case, plant, tool or simply duped newbie, I look forward to competing with you in the marketplace.
And to drive a point home, some of us here may actually deal in multi million dolllar accounts, so it would not be unreasonable to see saving in that area. Also, I do not think I said anyhting about basing my keyword list from scraped keywords. I did say that the keywords in the list they provide are broad matched results and it makes little sense to bid on all of them.
No keyword stuffung intended, if you took it that way, sorry. However, i am not going to hear someone call it cheating, dispicable and everything else because they do not persoanlly like it. I think both sodes of a situation should be provided, that makes the whole issue look less biased.
There must be some merit to this process because i sat in on a few sessions at pubcon with a couple of hundred other people disussing the right way to approach competitive intelligence.
Calling me a plant? That is comical. Why would you even say that, because it differs from your opinion? What you are doing is no different than calling a 10 year old kid a cheater at a video game because he understands a certain aspect that you currently do not.
So i am pleased that you call me a plant, thanks.
"What you are doing is no different than calling a 10 year old kid a cheater at a video game because he understands a certain aspect that you currently do not."
Are you saying you're a 10 year old kid? That would explain the defensive posturing, avoiding substance, poor analogies, loyalty to scrapeware and more...
:-)
One last warning, and I mean a very friendly warning, nothing personal... these services also put at risk your relationship and standing with G, for the very little "intelligence" they provide, you are risking quite a lot of your professional, multi-million dollar portfolio management career. On risk/reward basis, you're nuts to be using this stuff.
Good luck with it.
I find this statement very hard to believe. I've never come across this particular vendor, but I have used several others over the years and can vouch for their usefulness. Google does state in their Webmaster Guidelines that they may penalize a site that pings their search engine for any reason, whether it be to monitor rankings or to scrape advertisers. However, I think the idea of Google expanding that penalty to the *users* of such a site is poppycock.
As far as the idea that using this tool is cheating, or shows a lack of creativity, honesty, or hard work...I say rubbish. Expanding your keyword list is a part (albeit often a small part) of any successful PPC campaign. There are lots of ways to go about this, but a tool that can deliver a competitor's keywords can also open your eyes to all sorts of holes in your keyword-building strategy that you would never see otherwise.
Maybe you should give one of the free versions a try sometime, just to make sure you don't get ripped off.
