Google Ads vs. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Ads
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.N/A
Screaming Frog
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$149
per year
Pricing
Google AdsScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Paid Version
$149.00
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google AdsScreaming Frog
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google AdsScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Considered Both Products
Google Ads
Chose Google Ads
We have observed that the Bing Ads performs better than the Google Ads when we target the older audience. The cost per conversion is also better than the Google Ads on Bing because of low competition possibly. However, Google Ads is preferred by us mostly because of the …
Screaming Frog
Chose Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Please note that, while Screaming Frog is a great tool for scanning the website all it is, is a tool that scans the website. For deeper analysis or for keyword analysis, please take a look at tools like Semrush and Ahrefs for your medium size business, or Conductor for a …
Chose Screaming Frog SEO Spider
We tried also Netpeak Spider. Good alternative to Screaming Frog. Right now we are comparing these two because Spider can do almost everything that Screaming Frog does. A huge plus for Screaming Spider is that it's very stable; we work with very big projects with it (10-20 …
Chose Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog SEO Spider can provide immediate site results on meta title length, meta description length, image size, missing pages, crawled pages, etc. For us, Screaming Frog SEO Spider does not help us compare data across competition, rank keywords, offer keyword analysis, …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Google AdsScreaming Frog SEO Spider
SEO
Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
-
Ratings
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
8.0
50 Ratings
3% above category average
Keyword analysis00 Ratings7.419 Ratings
Backlink management00 Ratings6.022 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking00 Ratings8.08 Ratings
Page grader00 Ratings7.020 Ratings
Competitive analysis00 Ratings8.025 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics00 Ratings9.750 Ratings
Site recommendations00 Ratings10.022 Ratings
Task management00 Ratings8.08 Ratings
SEO Channels
Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
-
Ratings
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
7.9
35 Ratings
4% above category average
Local SEO00 Ratings8.116 Ratings
Social SEO00 Ratings6.510 Ratings
Mobile SEO00 Ratings8.021 Ratings
Global SEO00 Ratings9.127 Ratings
SEO Platform & Account Management
Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Ads
-
Ratings
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
10.0
39 Ratings
17% above category average
Multi-domain support00 Ratings10.028 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools00 Ratings10.032 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google AdsScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Small Businesses
WordStream Advisor
WordStream Advisor
Score 7.0 out of 10
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WordStream Advisor
WordStream Advisor
Score 7.0 out of 10
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google AdsScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Likelihood to Recommend
7.2
(115 ratings)
9.6
(52 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(21 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
7.4
(7 ratings)
6.2
(2 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(8 ratings)
7.9
(18 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google AdsScreaming Frog SEO Spider
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.
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Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is well suited to auditing brand new websites, when you need a quick, holistic view of the websites technical issues. Its great for providing a top line view of a websites architecture, perhaps for a new business approach where you need to assess the scale of work to maintain a website. Its also a useful tool in situations where you might need to see whether a large scale change in the website has taken place, you can see word counts, pages and their https response codes. Screaming Frog may be less useful if you need an idea of the customer experience on a website, it doesn't really provide information that helps assess how fast a website loads, what issues might come up when trying to convert or faults with the payment process. Screaming Frog is largely a technical SEO focused tool, it also can't assess the quality of a websites, layout or the quality of the content used on the website. As mentioned, its niche, but very useful within that niche.
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Pros
Google
  • Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
  • Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
  • Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).
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Screaming Frog
  • Crawling client sites of up to thousands of pages. Gives you almost every tool that you need to do a proper SEO audit.
  • Custom extractions using CSSpath, Xpath, or Regex. I'm not even a techy, but their support section here is a huge help with the provided examples.
  • Customer service and support - Dan is ALWAYS very prompt to respond with helpful answers on Twitter if needed.
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Cons
Google
  • If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that.
  • There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span.
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Screaming Frog
  • Requires Java. This isn't a huge deal as many computers already have it installed, but it's yet another 3rd party component.
  • The free version has a crawl limit of 500 pages per site. This is fine for smaller sites, but if you're running a big e-commerce site then you'll need to pay for Pro version.
  • The user interface isn't very pretty. This is an analytics tool so it doesn't really have to be, but it might be helpful for improving the overall user experience.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.
Read full review
Screaming Frog
The tool has become integrated into our teams daily workings and I have yet to find a tool other than scremaing frog to replicate all of our use cases for it. It's a great tool and we're sticking with it
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Usability
Google
I suspect that Google Ads is not for the novice user. I told my 'Ad Specialist' that I was not the best on computers and apprehensive about my ability to maneuver the website. He told me on more than one occasion that "I work for you...I'm your sherpa...call me any time or send me an email"!
The sales and service representatives for Google Ads are very well trained, though not much integrity. Despite that I told my Google Ad Specialist that my website was incomplete the ad was published live anyway! Beware that the 'talk' is good, but it ain't cheap!
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Screaming Frog
Easy for me to use because I have using the product for a long time and understand the ins and outs of it. If I was a newbie, I would be completely lost. It does take some prior knowledge to operate this software and understanding of what a crawl means
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Support Rating
Google
We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with
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Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a relatively primitive system, and doesn't need to be supported by devs or other software. Screaming Frog does interface directly with some programs that are most needed (Google Analytics, Search Console, Page Speed Insights), so that's convenient. It isn't widely supported by other programs, but it also doesn't need to be.
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Online Training
Google
Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.
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Screaming Frog
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Google
No answers on this topic
Screaming Frog
If the software was a little easier to use for beginners, there really wouldn't be an issue
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Alternatives Considered
Google
Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.
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Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is probably the best non-client facing SEO audit tool in terms of technical SEO. There are other tools on the market that do a more complete job of keyword tracking, competitive analysis, and backlink profiles...however, for analyzing the technical SEO health of any website, Screaming Frog is the best
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Return on Investment
Google
  • Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads.
  • Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap.
  • If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account.
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Screaming Frog
  • Increased employee efficiency - We spend many less hours tracking down and reporting simple meta tags.
  • Better Client Servicing - We are able to ensure we have a total look at a client's site before we recommend anything.
  • True Pricing Structure - We are able to more accurately predict how much help a client may need based on factors such as size of site, number of redirects, proper use of meta tags, etc.
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ScreenShots