I’m not a big PPC advertiser – ( I actually do very little anymore as I prefer FREE traffic whenever possible..:-) but have experimented over the years with a bunch of the keyword spying tools that are on the market, mostly without a ton of success.
I started using Spyfu WAY back before it became popular – and when it was in it’s beta, sort of underground phase I thought it would turn out to be a revolutionary tool for stealing PPC intelligence, and push button, elegant and effortless PPC optimization. ( along being a boon for organic competitive intelligence to boot)
I remember doing client work a year plus ago - where having this data was like being a kid in a candy store - you literally felt like having a push button, birds eye view of the competitive landscape was a little bit like playing god – as you could quickly, easily and effortlessly glean buckets of info about ANY of your clients comptitiors campaigns in an afternoon – and modify/optimize and philosophize that info into a real advantage.
Unfortunately – the glitches that came with this info 18 months ago, that you sort of thought would quickly improve with time and maturity – never did.
Ispionage may be the best solution for Advanced PPC competitive intelligence data that is timely I’ve seen to date
The data sets were typically old - 90 days out – and the proverbial promise of 30 day data never arrived….which ultimately, made this sort of info – in some respects – a pirates booty of fools gold.
Simply stated – in the dynamic world of PPC in particular – having access to keyword lists/ad copy and the like being used by your competors that are 90 days out – is just too old to be worth investing in. (especially in more competitve markets)
Anyway – I’m starting to work on some newer PPC campaigns, and just for shits and giggles started looking to see if the market for this sort of stuff has improved, and low and behold, I came across this tool here –> ispionage....which, while I’ve only looked at for one night – looks to TRULY be as close to a real time intelligence gathering tool as you are going to find for PPC domination – ESPECIALLY going into markets you know nothing about. ( ie – new affiiate opportunities)
It’s really cheap ( multiple price points starting at 40 bucks a month) and the data is 24 -72 hours old. ( if you’ve ever tried using some of the more well known tools you know the data sets are WIDELY inaccurate – often a few months stale as above)
As an example of this – before I started playing with isponage last night- I downloaded a VERY popular program that one of the well known PPC “gurus” I am friendly with TOLD me was the tool he uses for competitive intelligence gathering.
I plugged in some of my own sites – and the ads and keywords being offered were things I haven’t run in 2 and 3 months – yet were showing as relevant for these domains. Unfortunately – this is the primary problem with most of these tools – old info like these ads are actually more COUNTER intelligence, than authentically valuable info..:-)
(as MY ads for these domains were not only old – but they were LOSERS to boot!)
Ispionage gives you ALMOST real time data – (and I believe at the higher price point – about 80 bucks a month – WILL be 24 hours or less) as doing the same searches for my own domains revealed ONLY the ads that I have run over the last few days – with variations in copy, landing pages and keyword list intact and accurate.
Very impressive stuff, and while I only signed up for the free trial – I will definitely be signing up.
( Long Overdue Update – I use and pay for Ispionage – and they’ve made too many improvements to it since this post to list. Check it out – and if you buy with my link- shoot me an email and I’d be happy to share some killer strategies for super simple PPC that WILL make you real money) (
Good information. I will try it.