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SpyFu
What Is SpyFu?
SpyFu is a competitive intelligence software as a service that helps users optimize search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising campaigns. The platform analyzes over 100 million domains to uncover the search marketing strategies of competitors. It reveals the keywords, ads, and backlinks driving organic and paid traffic. SpyFu features tools for keyword research, rank tracking, backlink analysis, and website traffic insights. Users can group keywords, track rankings over time, generate reports, find influencers for outreach, and more.
Who Uses SpyFu?
Digital marketing agencies, advertisers, and SEO specialists.
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SpyFu
Reviews of SpyFu
One of the Better Keyword Tools I Make Regular Use Of
Comments: In terms of helping to give SEO clients an edge it's a great tool, and its lead gen capabilities are excellent as well. It's a 'stay in the toolbox' software when I have trialed and tried out many more that have long since been retired.
Pros:
The volume of information that can gathered. Not only can you track competitor keywords but it's an excellent prospecting tool for lead gen, which is a lesser known aspect of the software. The relative ease of use is another bonus, the reports and dashboards are a lot clearer and easier to use than many of the other SEO tools I use/have used.
Cons:
It's a bit pricey, but it has proved itself in terms of ROI from both improved SERPS positioning and lead generation. Customer service could be a little better too.
SpyFu Response
6 years ago
Thanks for taking time to share a review, Melanie! I hope we can wow you in the future should you need any customer support. We're available via live chat on our site and email, with Facebook messages, and Twitter giving an assist. We love to hear that you're getting a lot out of the tool. Right on!
SpyFu - Great for SEO's Slightly Less Great for PPC's.
Comments: Generally speaking, SpyFu has been great, it's a powerful tool, and often you'll run into clients who require this level of analysis both organically, and paid. I've come back time and time again over the last 10 years or so.
Pros:
The UI is easy to navigate, and lots of ways to continue your search via finding more competitors, and looking at their competitors and so on. On the SEO side, this software is fairly indespensible, though it has competitors which do similar things at different price points. SpyFu however has been my go-to for many years, and having tested many of the competing products, especially during darker times for SEO many years ago, SpyFu did a quick job of staying current, which is one of the most important things for software like this. When there's changes to algorithms, or how we gather data, who's the most reliable source to get you that info? SpyFu has been that for me.
Cons:
Generally the cost is prohibitive. More PPC level insights would be useful, but really they're working off whatever data they can get access to, and do a fairly good job of it. The only downside is many of the old Landing pages are not cached or visualized so when you click on the link to view the competitor's page, it doesnt exist more often than not. This feels like a huge waste of time.
It's meh
Comments: i think it's worth the free trial but I'd recommend trying out competition before buying
Pros:
It does a good job, just like everyone else, of helping you track SEM and SEO. It covers the basics at a cheap price.
Cons:
I don't have any friends with careers in SEM and SEO that actually use it which tells me that it works but not the way it's competitors do.
Full of actionable information for SEO!
Comments: Overall, this is a very good first-to-go-to tool when you start a project to see how the existing competitors are doing and then accordingly create the strategy. Though, not only for the starting project, but can also be used for existing project analysis. It helped with analyse to see the loopholes that were harming rankings lots of time.
Pros:
This is the best SEO analysis tool out there when it comes to watching what's the SEO market's current situation to understand how to start optimizing your website for the best possible start. Before launching any website or project, SpyFu is one of the first tools I go to to analyze the competitors, where they spend money, how are their currenty rankings, what keywords they use or rank for, etc. I sometimes even use its backlinks checker of the competitors with Ahrefs and while cross checking it always gives the reliable data. What's more, the reporting section or the reports itself are very good. They are intuitive and very easy to understand, which makes it easy to present to third-party who doesn't understand much of SEO. Makes life easier!
Cons:
A bit more flexibility on the data aggregation in reports would be good. Also, it would be awesome if the developers focused on the local research slightly more.
A Necessity for Competitor Analysis
Comments: Our experience with SpyFu has been great. It's given us great insight into a potential client when prospecting them as well as helped us figure out where our clients sit compared to their competitors as well as national brands.
Pros:
SpyFu is my go-to software for competitor analysis for my clients and myself. Sure other platforms have some similar abilities to SpyFu, but the way SpyFu outlines everything with graphs and figures makes determining the next course of action when it comes to keyword targeting.
Cons:
As a small agency (two people), it's still a little out of our price range. With that being said, the 5 keyword ideas it gives us for each type of analysis don't give us much to go off of so we rely on the larger metric numbers such as average rank and costs-per-click. It's not a big deal as I'm sure we would have a lot more information to go off of if we subscribed to the product. We just can't see that happening right now.
Best research tool for PPC out there!
Comments: Positive overall. My favorite tool is the PPC reasearch section and the organic keywords that are about to break onto the 1st page reports. I once reached out to support with a question and they noticed I was local to their office and invited me to come to a party they were hosting! Awesome company!
Pros:
This is my GO TO tool for PPC research and analytics on ourselves and our competitors. It even competes with SEMrush in other areas like organic and SEO analytics. Really cool company with a really powerful product.
Cons:
It can be a little pricey for the paid account, but it's totally worth it. Sometimes the PPC competitive data is substantially off - never have known why, but you just compensate for it and it's fine.
SpyFu Response
3 years ago
We're glad to be a part of your PPC research. We appreciate all of your feedback. It's helpful to hear from customers about what's working well and what can improve. Thank you for the kind words and for taking the time to write a review!
Must Use Tool for SEO & PPC
Comments: Must Use Tool for PPC & SEO work
Pros:
SpyFu provides great insight into keyword & competitor research, which are the building blocks of SEO & PPC. You can do keyword research for organic search - what is your competitor ranking for, what are their positions, how difficult is the keyword to rank for, etc. While on PPC keyword research you can figure out what keywords your competitors are targeting, what is the estimated ad spend, what is their ad copy, etc. This gives you a comprehensive idea of what the competition is doing & what their strategy is.
Cons:
The biggest drawback of SpyFu and its competitors as well is that the data is not fully accurate - they are estimates and therefore cannot be relied upon in entirety. The data is more of a directional or order magnitude use - which still is vary useful to know especially when researching for PPC. The data sources for PPC is limited - like it covers only AdWords and not Yahoo & Bing - although the search share of these platforms are way smaller than Google - is still a gap that can be filled in.
Some of the best marketing insights on competitors' websites out there!
Pros:
SpyFu is ridiculously easy to use... Just plug in a competitor's domain, hit go, and get access to a treasure trove of competitive insights on your competitor's PPC, SEO, and back-linking efforts. My favorite feature of SpyFu is building keyword lists for PPC campaigns based on the keywords SpyFu sees competitors bidding on in real-time. For businesses in hyper-competitive online industries, this information can mean the difference between growing or going out of business.
Cons:
Sometimes there isn't data available, which is frustrating. It seems like 20% of the time, SpyFu is making something up with organic keywords for competitor websites.
Amazing product, helps get valuable insights for a great price.
Pros:
I really love the ability to quickly find information for ad campaigns while both sitting with prospective buyers, and for my team to use to optimize campaigns.
Cons:
I have no cons about this product, does what it says it will do. Also the pricing is very reasonable for great campaigns & insights.
Excellent Tool for Competitor Analysis
Pros:
I love the accuracy with which it shows the list of organic and paid keywords of my competitors. I also love the ad history feature where I can see the ad copies of my competitors. AsWords Advisor feature that recommends new keywords to bid for is also quite handy. Overall, it's an excellent tool to see what competitors are doing. Even while bidding for new keywords, it helps to see other ad copies that are working.
Cons:
While the tool is great, it's not complete. I mean if you want to just sign up one tool for your marketing team, this won't be enough. You'll need another tool like SEMRush or ahrefs. Though their competitor research features are not as as good as SpyFu's, they have wider features like backlink audit, technical SEO audit etc.
Makes the basics accessible
Comments: Very positive experience. It got us where we needed to go. Only when we needed hyper-specific information for a large client did we turn to Semrush.
Pros:
SpyFu was our first foray into competitive analysis/tracking software. Setup and ongoing use are extremely simple. There's no tribal knowledge or tricks to the trade – what you see is what you get. There's huge equity there.
Cons:
The feature set and really deep analysis doesn't stand up to Semrush and Moz. Those are far more expensive, but you end up graduating to them at a certain level.
SpyFu Response
3 years ago
Thank you for your review! It's helpful to see experienced perspective. Thanks for sharing it.
Backlink Monitoring and Competitor Analysis with SpyFu
Pros:
SpyFu is really good at keyword tracking and performance metric dashboard. You can set your competitors to understand their performance. It is helpful to understand your organic performance with it's dashboard and helps you with reporting.
Cons:
Backlink monitoring and competitor analysis are good but they should improve their feature to have more customers and proper data.
SpyFu Response
2 years ago
Thank you for taking the time to share your review! We're glad to hear that SpyFu has been a helpful addition to your marketing tool set.
Love them (only using free version)
Comments: It helps me analyze our own site's SEO and PPC as well as our competitors super easily!
Pros:
I don't use them to spy on competition, I use them to also gauge how I'm doing too. I only use the free version but their dashboard and tools are so simple and insightful regardless!
Cons:
I only didn't like how costly it is, I won't be using this for the premium options, only the free options are good enough.
SpyFu Response
4 years ago
Thanks for the great review, Kevin! We're happy to hear that you're getting so much out of the free version. It's been helping thousands of search marketers for years--with no time cut off. Continued success to you!
Simply amazing competitor research tool
Comments: Spyfu has been been an important tool in setrting up and maintaining many client projects. We utilize the research tools on a weekly if not daily basis. Highly recommended for the price.
Pros:
Very easy to find out what keywords that my competitors are organically ranking for or paying for. Also a great tool for finding competitor backlinks. The shared keywords featur is also nice to see how I stand along with my competitors.
Cons:
I find that the competitors recommended by Spyfu are not always that accurate, it is best to do research against the competitors you have already identified. Local research is also a little bit light unless you are researching a major metropolitan.
best keyword research tool
Pros:
allows me to quickly access information about keywords and ppc history relevant to our clients. can print reports too!
Cons:
the information does not match reality about 50% of the time. i understand it's hard getting this data but i get disappointed
Best Value SEO and SEM Tool Available
Comments: Spyfu's best feature is its price. It's unbeatable! If I were to subscribe to only one SEO/SEM tool. It would be Spyfu.
Pros:
I like the ability to see my competitors paid search ads. It's usually my first stop when starting a new campaign. I go to SpyFu to spark ideas and to validate my own ideas.
Cons:
It's not my favorite link building tool. I think you need the resources of an Ahrefs or SEMrush to get the most accurate insights.
SpyFu Review for Advertising Agency
Comments: We use this tool for our Paid Search campaigns across our agency and has been a great experience overall!
Pros:
Amazing competitive tool for Search Engine Marketing. Have the ability to type in a competitor's site and gain useful insights into their Search campaigns.
Cons:
There are limits with the free version so typically go gain in-depth Search analysis information you have to use the paid plans.
See behind the current on your competitors
Comments: They are the leaders in competitor keyword analysis, very positive experience.
Pros:
SpyFu allows you to see behind the current on your competitors. If you aren't using SpyFu someone is using it against you.
Cons:
It is limited in terms of all its tools compared to SEMRush but it is still the best in terms of keyword analysis.
SpyFu Response
3 years ago
Thanks, Paolo, for sharing a review of SpyFu. Glad to hear you're getting great use out of the tools!
Nothing Like Being Able to Spy on the Competition
Comments: I have a wonderful experience with SpyFu. It changed my life for the better.
Pros:
With SpyFu I can see what my competition is doing and not have to recreate the wheel. SpyFu makes adding keywords and advertising campaigns a snap.
Cons:
I really love this software. There are some in the industry that try to compete but this one is by far the best.
Good Search Scraping Tool
Comments: I really like it as a competitor analysis tool and as a way to view general progress in terms of search presence.
Pros:
I primarily used SpyFu to look at my own search presence and my competitors'. For that, it's pretty good as they scrape search results for a ton of keywords/queries. It was good from a benchmarking perspective to see where my site stacks up against the competition.
Cons:
The challenge with these kinds of tools is that "keywords" are not search queries. It's impossible to really know what exactly people are searching for online and where your website will end up in the search results. There are a lot of assumptions built into the reporting.
Great way to compare your ads and keywords with competitors
Comments: With Spyfu, we are able to see how much our competitors are spending and the ads they're running, uncovering weak points that we were unaware of before.
Pros:
-Knowing how our competitors are dominating, whether it be organic or SEO -finding inspiration from competitors' keywords and ads
Cons:
It-Sometimes hard to understand and sparse through data -I wish they would narrow down the features to what is most important
SpyFu Response
3 years ago
We're happy to see how much you're getting out of competitive research. Thank you for sharing your feedback about understanding the data. We are working on continually improving the features so that they put out the most actionable info first. We're also loading tutorials onto the page to help speed up understanding. We appreciate hearing about whether or not we're on the right track. Thank you for taking the time to share a review of SpyFu!
Hack AdWords with this Software
Comments: SpyFu saves us so much time on SEO and research work...
Pros:
Honestly, I love SpyFu. They are so good at what they provide, which is a search and analysis of competitor's keywords and adwords/SEO patterns. I love this software because the charts are beautiful, it's easy to see what your competition is up to, and it helps us target our efforts and keep up with the big guys without the same budget.
Cons:
It's a little expensive for small, small companies.
SpyFu Response
5 years ago
Thank you for the kind words, Danielle! We love to hear that you're keeping up with the big guys so well. Keep at 'em!
It wont solve all your problems but give you some insight
Pros:
I have used it to pull competitor keyword reports and information. It does give you insight you can share with a team or client.
Cons:
What I like least is that it is not a geo specific if i would like so it is a national no regional report. for our local clients this provides no added value in keyword research
Great PPC Research
Comments: I was excited using this software. Alarmist made me want to focus on building PPC campaigns instead of websites.
Pros:
I couldn’t believe the amount of great keywords I was finding and ease of use inside of their system.
Cons:
I just couldn’t afford the $100/month although if I was a dedicated PPC management company it would be a no brainer.
SpyFu Response
3 years ago
Thank you for writing a review of SpyFu! I'm glad you were able to find so much during your time using the tool. If you'd like to come back, ask us about the $39/month basic plan that might help. Similarly, you can still use SpyFu for free anytime for as long as you'd like. Our free version has limited results but lets you continue to find some helpful keywords.
Good reference for beginner to intermediate users - just take with a grain of salt
Comments: Monitoring competitor SEO and PPC spend and keywords
Pros:
It's easy to start getting a high level overview of what competitors and other websites are doing from and SEO and PPC perspective. Detailed, longer reports can be obtained with the paid versions. It can help springboard ideas and monitor keyword opportunities.
Cons:
The big but here is accuracy: I know what my company spends and the numbers are always quite off. SpyFu doesn't factor in everything, and even what's there are estimated spend levels and not actual amounts taken from their AdWords accounts, so you have to play a little loose with the information presented to you. As long as you use it to ballpark things and not to fine tune/optimize your accounts, you should be ok.