Adwords Spying Sites

Has anyone tried these keyword sniffer sites?

[peermedia]

There's quite a few of these services around, the type of sites where you can provide a domain name and they have archives of keywords that they're actively bidding on.

I wanted to see if anyone had used these sites and found the service worthwhile? I obviously would love to have my competitors keywords and was wondering if you've used any of these sites and recommended any of them? I won't post urls here, but I'd love to know some opinions.

Thank you

[NatronZero]

Can you provide some more information about this industry? Is this legal, consisting of leaks, or simply a database? Pay - free?
n.

[peermedia]

Its a large commercial database that stores millions of keywords and associated domains of who's bidding on those keywords. It seems to be updated monthly and its a commercial pay site. They do have a trial for 10 results per page and its great (in a scary way). I don't know if I'm allowed to post links on this board, but you can search for them, do a few queries for "Adwords spy" and you'll find a few sites that offer it.

[NatronZero]

I notice spyfu.com comes up as an top organic result. I've used this site in the past for cpc estimates, but find it to be rather inaccurate - thought it's apparently blend. Information is where the money is after all & free services can only be a taste to entice. I don't think I'll be paying for such a service, but I'll certainly investigate further & let readers know of any developments on my end.
n.

[peermedia]

Natron,

Thats exactly the site I was looking at, I just wasn't sure if linking was permitted here. The information for my three top competitors seemed incredible, some really obscure keywords that I would have never found, although they're reporting only 2000 keywords in their database for the domains I'm targetting, but I know for sure my competition is targetting a much wider base.

I was wondering if people had experience with these types of sites and could recommend one that potentially has the widest reach of keywords.

[StephenST]

Hi, I tend to use the following when it comes to this kind of research
trellian.com
spyfu.com
keycompete.com

Spyfu does provide bid information but it's accuracy is way out in my own opinion. Either it's outdated or it's method was to use the yahoo bid checking tool which is now extinct. However it's keyword output in relation to site relevance is normally quite good. Keycompete.com though, does not provide bid prices but bid strength and it's output is next to perfection. Trellian, depending on which tool you subscribe to is good for misspellings and such but does not, as far as I'm aware, do a site specific scrape for adwords keywords.

All in all, they are handy tools but you can get next to reliable data from simply using the Adwords keyword tool. So why pay?

[peermedia]

Between SpyFu and Keycompete which do you recommend (bid prices aren't important to me). The main reason I have an interest in these types of sites is because there's a specific competitor who I want to capture as many of their keywords as possible.

Thanks

[koncept]

I would be very wary of the accuracy of sites such as these. I checked some out and I put in my own domain to see my own results. It came up with all sorts of keywords that I don't bid on and have never bid on.

With spyfu.com, rather than showing keywords that I actively bid on, it showed keywords that trigger my ads. Not the same thing at all, especially since I use a lot of broad match. Also, the ad budget was way off.

[peermedia]

Its not very accurate but I have to admit, its certainly advantageous to getting my competitors keywords. I opted for a month membership and was able to harvest nearly 9000 keywords in total. I'm trying to find the best way to filter which of these keywords are actually being used. Out of 100 i tried, i'd say about 35 or so were in fact bid by the competitor I searched on. Not very precise but certainly does give an edge.

I'm guessing these types of sites work by having huge keyword lists and just doing automated searches and capturing the domains that are bidding on those keywords. Like you said, it's not the exact keyword, but close enough to get a good indication.