Are they worth investing in when your account starts getting larger? Do they add anything of value on top of Google's tools? Any thoughts?
I use Keyword Spy, but very rarely, it may not actually be worth the subscription - the only time I use it when I have to do my 6 monthly competitor report for the directors.
As far as day to day running of your account goes though I've never found a tool that is really of much use
The research tools come in handy when building out a campaign and if you are working with clients who are obsesssed with what their competitors are doing and would rather focus on that and try to emulate it than think for themselves and figure out what works for their own company based on looking at their own internal analytics.
The management tools have never seemed to be very useful. Maybe 20% of your keywords really need to be managed actively. The rest often just need to be turned on and off when inventory stock in or out. The most helpful thing, IMHO is or would be a tool that simply streamlines the upload process for adding new keywords and ads, has accurate sales/ROI info, facilitates rapid download of campaigns, ad group, match types and performance metrics and then facilitates quick uploading of the changes you make in Excel or whatever you use to make changes (including bids, budgets, day parts pausing and starting keywords, etc...).
Most of them have a bunch of bid rules that don't help much that you may override most of the time anyway.
You need something that streamlines the process stuff so you can actually use the brain to make the campaigns work and understand why they do or don't.
I've recently came across a service - SEMRush.
ok to mention this tool?
Professional AdWords Management Tools
Before you even ask (yourself or other people), you should be clear about what do you need it for.
You said "analysis", but for what? Selling your thing or of others?
Google AdWords already offers some tools - not sure how useful they are as I don't use them (conversion - I'm in affiliate world).
For my business, the best option is to connect keywords from AdWords and sales in the reporting of affiliate networks. There are some offers out there, but I'm still under the break.
If you're selling your stuff - you're in full control - I believe there are some tools that are designed just for that. You put their code onto your thank you page, and you're able to analyze the performance of each keyword - in theory at least - based on what other people say here - not so bright, though.
Finally Excel - that beautiful tool that always reminds me onto Einstein - how many brains have been employed for the development of this software that only does not fry eggs?
I've been lazy for all these years - and nothing else - otherwise I would do export/import and have all of my analytic and reporting wishes fulfilled - I'm sure.
Sorry for not giving any concrete solution - I just shared how I feel it for all these years with many AdWords accounts.
Cheers!
I've been saying the same thing for years.
Skibum's point about people obsessed with what their competitors are doing is bang on. I never understood why you would want to know what keywords they are using for example. That won't help you improve your own campaign. If you don't know what kind of keywords you should be using for your own campaign, you are in big trouble. Besides, these "tools" don't know, it's impossible unless they have access to those accounts.
I've used Wordtracker in the past for keyword research. Not anymore since I find Adword's own keyword tool sufficient. The search query report is another that all advertisers should use to refine their keywords.
I don't use spreadsheets because, as a database programmer, I've developed my own analysis tools. I just download the data and run whatever query I want. Much more powerful than spreadsheets. I'm sure there are commercial tools that may do similar things but I don't know of them.
I find the new AdWords interface graphs to be slightly skewed since they use the minimum value as the base line. I feel this distorts the graph making it difficult to see what is actually happening.
AdWordsReporter is not bid management or keyword research software but it does help with identifying what is working and what is not working.
My one comment is this: when you look at Google's top 2000 customers - the ones that Google said on their earnings call are the first to be coming out of the downward trend the economy brought on 2H08, what you see are that the vast majority of those firms have invested in SEM management tools, both for competitive research and for active campaign management. It does seem, IMHO, to be the case that there is not even a question in the minds of the majority of large SEM advertisers as to whether or not they should be using SEM tools to help them do their job.
the vast majority of those firms have invested in SEM management tools
While not arguing with the fact that many of these tools really help - the top 2000 have to spend their budget - they will not get it next year otherwise.
Where do you think my bonuses come from? ;)
When you work for a big company with big budgets - you buy the best (read most expensive).
While not arguing with the fact that many of these tools really help - the top 2000 have to spend their budget - they will not get it next year otherwise.
There's a common misconception that large companies mean large budgets that must be spent, or that are spent on 'branding' and not ROI.
This is by means not always true (in some cases, there is some truth).
While there are about 6-8 large commonly evaluated SEM vendors for large budgets, not all buy the largest, some buy what's necessary for them.
Sometimes with larger budgets the success metrics are different. How many people are buying banner ads and measuring success not just by clicks, but by the change in search CTR or by increased conversion rates (regardless of the banner getting the click). It's easy to go on and on about attribution management (TV, radio, print, 1st click, last click, etc); however, they are larger challenges for bigger budgets.
Now, sometimes it is true; and big budget just means more spend and attribution management is not well taken care of; but that's also what separates those just doing the work vs those doing it well.
