Today I’ll be reviewing paid tools for a change (just because they have no free alternatives), so before I start let me give a short disclaimer: I am not affiliated with either of them and encourage you to honestly share your experience and thoughts.
1. Spying on your competitors’ AdSense tactics: AdsSpy – a tool that has no alternatives so far: it will show you more sites under same Google AdSense account. This will enable you:
- to identify (MFA) site networks;
- to learn your competitors’ monetizing and promotion strategies;
- to spy on your competitors’ other niches and revenue streams.
Drawback:
- the tool is paid (subscription based).
2. Spying on your competitors AdWords campaign: SpyFu that will show you:
- your direct competitor’s ad budget (use it to estimate your ad budget):
- your competitors’ PPC keywords (use it to brainstorm for niche-related keywords):
- your competitors’ organic search rankings (estimate your organic search competition, find more keywords for your business):
- top organic and PPC competitors.
Drawbacks:
- paid (subscription based);
- doesn’t appear to work for many domains;
- some data is inaccurate and outdated;
- US-only oriented.
Alternative: KeywordSpy that is reported to have a larger database and a more user-friendly interface but I guess SpyFu still offers more information on competitors.
We’ve heard great things about SpyFu but have yet to check out AdsSpy…thanks for the run down !
For any major PPC advertiser or search arbitrager, I can definitely see the advantage in this. In that respect, I can sympathize with the paid subscription model — their target demographic likely dumps a lot into their PPC campaign as is.
I got an email from one of their biz dev guys inviting me to check it out, but did have time to blog it with adequate screenshots. Nice work.
“doesn’t appear to work for many domains;”
I am wondering if this has to deal with their snoopy bot performance in somebody’s site too? I blocked their silly bot UAs, IP ranges and other related stuff.
Hey Ann, thanks!
Did you get a subscription to adsspy and try it? Their info is pretty thin, no FAQ, only one screenshot? Not enough for me to buy… too bad.
Brian, yes, I’ve got one month subscription, and it worked fine with me… if you need more info on the tool, please contact me seosmarty [at] gmail.com
You should also check out SEO SpyGlass. It’s also a licensed product. But the free demo should give you quite a good idea of how it works. It seems quite effective.
AddSpy look dangerous tool. Eveybody can ban adsense account for competitor. Google should to hide publisher id from JS code!
Reading this got me thinking. Before I never need this analysis, but now I’m not so sure.
Wow! Ann these tools are neat! I will also consider trying them out myself..^^ thanks a lot for sharing this one.
Never heard of AdsSpy before. You can search for a publisher IDand see all related site.
The guys over a Black Hat SEO recommend having multiple Adsense counts (in fact one per website). That means multiple PublisherIDs. They recommend it in case Google shuts down one account. If you have multiple accounts it won’t kill all of your revenue
There are now another site like AdsSpy.
This site is free to use. You will find it here http://www.limse.com
KeywordSpy also does a good job. And is rated even better than Spyfu in some forums. But it got both, a free/trial and paid sub