Which Tool do You Recommend?

Which tool gives the best, most accurate competitive insight?

[beetricks]

I'm looking for a tool to assess the lay of the PPC/SEO land in my industry. For example, what is our coverage like versus a competitors. I'm evaluating Adgooroo at the moment, and looking for similar tools. I found another tool called The Search Monitor. Does anyone have positive/negative experience they can share about either of these, or similar tools?

[netmeg]

I have never once found a tool that gave a truly accurate vision of any of the niches in which I participate. Believe me, I wish I could. It would save a ton of time and effort. You might get a whiff of a scent of a trend, but that's about it.

[smallcompany]

There is another one called Spy something, they even released a plug-in for Firefox that automatically does something with ads and so on, but I was "frightened" by having such installed and being logged into my account.

Simply don't trust such tools. Plus, as netmeg said, accuracy is in question. Data derived from such tools may take you to the wrong avenue.

Finally, with sneaking into other people's stuff, you'll never get good rest needed for your own stuff.

As it has always been on SEO side, importance of being different, not copying other folks, that may be the case in this part about advertising.
Just thinking...

But yeah, some of those tools are tempting... The one I mentioned even lists IDs of affiliates to tell you what they do online. Something I totally dislike from human's perspective. Sneaking into pal's Linkshare or CJ ID. Uuuu....

[PayMePerClick]

SpyFu is a decent service. Similar to SEMRush. It's insightful to see what keywords your competitors are bidding on but all the results should be taken w/ a grain of salt, especially when it comes to dollars spent and CPCs because they use algorithms based on assumptions and some guesswork.

[Baylow]

Agreed with Netmeg and SmallCompany.

these tools always provide results that are questionable at best. Run your own domain against any of them and you'll see how far off they are.

[beetricks]

Interesting - thanks everybody!