TrustRadius
SpyFu is the eponymous SEO and PPC research platform from the company in Scottsdale, Arizona focused on "spying" on competitors, or basically using their behaviors to refine your own through keyword and content analysis, and backlink poaching. This positional search engine optimization and paid listings management platform touts the ability to lower costs and raise rankings via a Kombat-oriented approach... basically a cute way of saying "it makes comparisons" of how well your site does in niche keyword areas vis-a-vis rival actors in the same or contiguous marketing space. Published pricing starts at $79 per month with the Basic plan, for Google, Yahoo & Bing research, 6 years of historical access, unlimited access to SpyFu's tools, but somewhat limited access to leads and domain contacts keyword rank tracking. The $139 Professional plan gives full access to UK data and doubles the rank tracking of keywords from 400 to 800, and provides custom branded (white label) reports and API access. the $999 Agency plan gives team access (10 user logins) and unlimited tracking and reporting capabilities.https://media.trustradius.com/product-logos/LR/0K/Q72D4I0M5F6E.pngDiscover profitable keywordsI use Spyfu to discover new profitable keywords for Google Ads and for SEO. It is also great to look at competitors' keywords and ads.,Discover profitable keywords. Review competitor's well-performing ads. Track your status on Google search results. The best feature of Spyfu is called "Kombat," where you compare the keywords used by you and your competitors and can see which ones generate a lot of results for them, and which you're not currently using.,It is overwhelming first to navigate through all the available reports, but it's great that you can have a live orientation with one of their team members.,5,I highly recommend learning everything you can about how to use the platform to your advantage. Otherwise, it will be become an expensive tool.,Infusionsoft, Google AnalyticsSpyFu is the spy that You Need.Spyfu is one of the most useful tools for digital marketers out in the market right now. We use it for the obvious PPC keyword research, but the real value is at looking at competitors and figuring out their digital marketing strategy by looking at the keywords and budgets they have (or don't have).,The best tool for keyword research based on close competitors. The best tool for discovering what PPC strategy and budget your competitors are using. You can also use it for ad copy ideas.,It would be great if it expanded to Facebook.,10,Spyfu helps us understand our PPC budget vs competitors. You may want to use the budget outside of Adwords if the competition is too great, or you may want to find niche keywords.,Frictionless, affordable, and badass competitor intelligence you can act on right now!I use it to provide competitive analysis for clients, specifically when I am performing a marketing and brand audit. This helps me to establish a baseline with the client on what they are up against, so we can attack with intention. :),The domain overview is extremely helpful - for CEOs, this dashboard is exactly the kind of quick hit, at-a-glance experience they want to see. Worst performing and top performing keywords for paid search - this is an invaluable tool to determine how to approach paid against a competitor. To adwords to buy - this is obviously a wonderful bit of intelligence for testing, and for the most part, holds up in battle testing.,Reporting is terrible - meaning, the PDF feature does not lay out correctly.,8,It's been positive for my business because I've used it as a selling feature of my business.,Serpstat,Slack, Skype for Business (formerly Lync), Adobe Advertising CloudSpyFu is a must-have for businesses!SpyFu is a great tool to get an overview of your competitors' keywords they are ranking for, estimated ad spend on Google Ad words, samples of their ad copy and allows you create projects to help you track your SEO and marketing efforts. My main use for SpyFu is to gain insight on keywords and links that my competitors and my clients' competitors are using.,Easy to navigate. The user interface is pretty straightforward and easy to use. Projects: Create projects for your own company or for clients you are managing to track your efforts. Insights on ad spend, keywords and impression share.,Price - I was a user for several years and trying out another platform, I canceled and was quickly offered the same platform I had used for years at half the price. I know the ad spend for Google Adwords is estimated - It would be helpful if it was a little more accurate - maybe not a doable feature of SpyFu, but would be helpful.,9,My subscription is less than $40/month and I would say there is a good ROI since I am able to utilize the data from the insights for my business There are no real negatives, the platform does what it says it will do!,SEMRush, Sendible, Google AnalyticsI like SpyFu. You will too.The marketing department at ClientHub uses SpyFu to research keywords and ad campaigns for our paid search initiatives. There are many tools out there to do this, but SpyFu is pretty straightforward. In addition, you can see what your competition is doing for keywords and ads. Without proper keyword research, a company can find themselves spending quite a bit on ineffective ad campaigns.,Educational resources Competitor information Intuitive interface Affordable price,I can't think of anything in particular that needs room for improvement.,10,SpyFu has helped me reduce wasted Google Ads spend by narrowing my focus to more appropriate keywords SpyFu has allowed me to be more creative with keywords by giving me ideas SpyFu has enabled me to more effectively use keywords in my content,SEMRush and Moz,HubSpot,1,,Research key words for paid search Research key words for SEO for content See what competitors are doing,10SpyFu makes a great resource for competitor keyword researchWe use SpyFu to help our customers gain insight into their competitor's most important keywords and what they are spending money on. It also gave us valuable keyword research for new markets and looking for new niches our customers require.,Great for keyword research. Gain insights into what competitors are doing and ranking for.,Allow multiple profiles for customers so I can have a client website and then it's competitors on a dashboard.,10,I have been able to secure clients on long term contracts based on competitor research and by beating the ranking of the keywords they want to go after based on this research.,KeywordSpyGet competitive data easily with SpyFuThe Marketing and Sales team of my company find SpyFu very helpful to check on our clients' websites, their competitors', and potential new customers.,Compare ranking versus competitor sites Look up keywords relevant to site See PPC ads Get traffic data on competitor sites without needed their Google Analytics access,Would be nice to do more customization to the competitive ranking graph,8,Positive: Saves time vs sourcing this data via multiple websites Positive: Allows the salespeople to have a warmer first meeting with the client having knowledge in advance,Google Analytics,Slack, Avaza, HarvestSpyfu Usage BenefitsSpyFu is an excellent tool for getting a baseline of a client's web presence as well as their status vs their competition. It allows us to reveal some underpinnings of why or why not to make certain changes to their marketing strategy. It is also good for audits of web links, SEM, & industry trends.,Excellent at KW usage, costs, & recommendations. Traffic estimates are helpful for showing how effective a general marketing plan pushes traffic in relation to competition. Backlink tracking is nice to use for third-party proof of link sharing.,Estimates could be more accurate. KW groupings could be broken down further in the SEM overview with costs & click frequency. Sometimes data does not transfer from one tab to another when reviewing a particular domain.,10,It allows us an edge with info we would not have otherwise. We find things that even clients don't know about their marketing campaigns. We are more trustworthy & transparent based on our sharing of data.,BuzzBoardA Comprehensive Competitive Analysis in One PlaceAs a primarily entrepreneur company, we are constantly looking to optimize our own campaigns—but in optimization comes beating out our competitors. We use SpyFu currently to look into exactly what our competitors are doing. Based on what they are doing we are able to tweet our own campaigns so that we can maintain competitiveness in the market.,Showing exactly what keywords our competitors are targeting, shows which ones we should target ourselves. When determining a marketing budget for a new project, we are able to project how much SEO would cost based on what our competitors are doing. Looking at what the competitors have in their backlinks helps us with optimizing our own website and landing pages.,Some of the smaller websites that don't receive much traffic are often hard to complete competitive analyses for.,9,Assisted in bringing more traffic along with decreasing the CPA on campaigns. It helped to launch a new project off the ground within the past month.,SimilarWeb PRO,Google Analytics, MailChimp, Pivotal TrackerSpyFu for Competitive IntelligenceWe use SpyFu to help us formulate our initial SEO and PPC keyword strategy for our clients by looking at their competitor's websites. Instead of starting from scratch, we find it useful to look at the keywords that are already performing for the competition to identify opportunities and as well as areas that have been ignored.,SEO Keywords PPC Keywords Look-a-Like Audience Development,Accuracy Breadth of Research,10,SpyFu has helped us avoid mistakes in our SEO and PPC strategy.,SEMRush,Google Ads (formerly AdWords), Google Search Console, Google AnalyticsAn SEO competitive analysis tool that drives actionWe use SpyFu in the marketing department. This tool is being used to help us in our content creation and looking at gaining competitor insights regarding our content direction. This gives us keyword insights not only for organic search but for paid search as well. The typical process we go through takes on 2 forms. The first is reviewing a keyword and looking for variations and then reviewing the landscape for that keyword. The second direction we take is inputting a competitor and see where they are dedicating their efforts for content creation outside brand names.,Extensive amounts of competitor data Touches on both paid and organic search opportunities Easy graphs to help illustrate competitive landscape,Since this tool scrapes millions of keywords listings it does take some manual filtering via Excel to get to what is truly going on. It would be nice if they expanded into social as well to be able to have an all-in-one tool A themes breakdown would help to eliminate the need for manual sorting and filtering,10,This tool has saved us efficiency and guess work regarding content creation. As a small team being able to direct content efforts in the right direction the first time really helps with time restraints. There has been some loss of time due to needing to filter results and better understand the landscape but those time losses are offset by the smart content creation efficiencies. The charts that can be exported to give a quick executive level buy-in help move the approval process through quicker and for us to be more nimble with our efforts.,Moz, Ahrefs Site Explorer and Majestic SEO,Moz, BrightEdge, Google AnalyticsGood SEM Competitor ToolThe ad agencies I've worked at have used SpyFu to gain competitive intelligence. This is something SEM vendors partially provide and SpyFu helps fill in the gaps to work on a holistic SEM strategy.,Estimated cost per clicks by competitor. SpyFu provides deeper intel than the engines b/c the data is segmented by domain and is not masked Estimated monthly traffic volume & costs associated with higher spending competitors. SpyFu provides deeper intel than the engines b/c the data is segmented by domain and is not masked,The cost per click information is not terribly accurate but can usually be used directionally. Obviously, with a paid product, people want exact data The free tool has limited data that mainly show vague feedback on your competitors. Def need paid version for any useful info.,8,Positively impacts business objectives due to utilizing the competitive data SpyFu supplies to lower media costs. Positively impacts business objectives due to utilizing the competitive data SpyFu supplies to purchase media in profitable areas your program doesn't already cover.,Google Ads (formerly AdWords), Bing Ads, SEMRush, AdGooroo and Google AnalyticsSpyFu is great for keyword researchMy main use for SpyFu has been for advanced competitive keyword research. It is very easy to pull thousands of keywords for myself, and my competitors using SpyFu. Another big use of it is the reporting they provide. They auto-generate excellent SEO reports every month or so. They are a vital tool to our SEO success.,Keyword research Reporting Online ad research,Links are not as comprehensive as I would like More tools than I use, which really isn't a bad thing,10,Positive impact with our keyword strategy Positive impact with SEO reporting Positive impact with online advertising strategy,Ahrefs Site Explorer,Buzzsumo, Ahrefs Site Explorer, BrightLocalSpyFu the best on competitor analysis.SpyFu was used for me to do competition analysis on our direct competitors regarding Adwords. It gave me ideas about the Adwords Keywords our main competitors were buying and what their most successful Adwords ads were. SpyFu also estimates how much your competitors spend on Adwords monthly which is valuable information when you are in a very competitive field.,Gives you the most popular Ads for each month. Shows you the keywords your competitors are using.,Spyfu will show you an estimate of what they believe your competitor is spending and this number is always low. They should evaluate the keyword prices more to give a more relevant estimate. Free version only gives you around 20 keywords for each competitor. I wish it was larger. Must sign in to see any SpyFu information even for the free version. This is a new thing and I liked it better when it was anonymous for free.,10,SpyFu has only has a positive impact because it gives me a behind the scenes look at exactly what my competitors are doing. It tells me how much my competitors are paying for keywords so I know what to expect as well.,SEMRush,Screaming Frog SEO Spider, SEMRushPerfect SEM/SEO/PPC Tool - No Agency RequiredWIth an effort to organize all of our digital marketing effort, across SEO, SEM, PPC and competitive analysis, we found SpyFu as a perfect tool to organize and review all these disparate items in one place.,Comparison tool of how our website compares to similar websites is helpful to understand where we are strong and where we have room to improve. Identifying backlinks Reviewing and recommendations for keywords,None,10,SpyFu will ultimately replace the other tools we use (Linkody) once we have fully implemented those features of the application. There is so much capability within SpyFu, that it will take us a bit of time to learn how to use and implement them effectively. This may be considered a negative in the short term but a positive in the long term.,SEMRush and LinkodySpyFu Is A Great Organic SEO & PPC Analysis/Research ToolOur marketing team has been using SpyFu for their keyword research tools, competitor analysis tools, and webpage traffic tools to better analyze how our organic website and PPC ads stack up against our competitors. SpyFu also allows us to research new keywords to use for our PPC campaigns inside of Bing and Adwords.,SpyFu's competitor analysis tool is unparalleled. A detailed, strategic breakdown of how competitors do or don't spend their advertising budgets, and how organic SEO plays into their overall traffic. Researching new keywords has always been an important step when improving our organic SEO rank and SpyFu allows us to research keywords directly from the console.,SpyFu's overall platform is wide-reaching, but could be better optimized by allowing customers to see the data broken down across the various web browser paltforms, e.g, Google, Bing, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.,8,SpyFu has helped us gain market share, thus giving us a greater return on investment, especially for how little we have to spend on a monthly subscription for SpyFu.,Adobe Photoshop, WordStream, CamtasiaGreat Resource for Competitive IntelligenceI use SpyFu to analyze competitors' most successful keywords and advertising copy for my clients. It is easy to use and provides incredibly valuable information. The reports are excellent and easy to use. SpyFu helps you save a ton of money by avoiding the mistakes your competitors have already made. I also like the competitive spending estimates.,Easy to use Comprehensive Incredible Drill Down,I have no complaints.,9,AdWords,AdWordsSpyFu Helps To Make Spying Online Much EasierSpyFu is primarily used by us to do competitor research. We use it to look at what our clients' competitors are doing with PPC efforts as well as baseline SEO analysis. It provides us with the opportunity to look at the big picture with a bunch of different players, not just our client.,PPC reports for competition. SpyFu allows you to gain insight into possible budget spend as well as what their ads look like. The keyword tool within SpyFu is great for seeing what your web sites biggest hitters are as well as what your competition keywords stack against yours. If you share certain keywords, it ranks who has better traction.,Reporting is a weakness with the platform. It is not the easiest process to implement and the information can be better organized. There are inaccuracies with the PPC reporting, especially for competitors. To our knowledge, the only way that PPC budgets are estimated is through ads that have already been clicked on the search network. This means that display, programmatic and other ad formats are not counted.,6,Assisted in increasing our new client acquisition by around 50%. Is one of our agencies go to tools in competitor research.,SEMRush,SEMRush, Facebook for Business,No,8,NoKung Fu kick your KWs into shape with SpyFu[We used SpyFu for] PPC keyword discovery and utilization. Also PPC diagnostics for improvement of existing domestic campaigns. Helps us target the right KW sets. Used exclusively by the Marketing department..,International KW targeting Competitive intelligence / identifies competitors KWs and campaign spends Organic and paid search overall campaign health,No API integrations with marketing automation platforms (that I am aware of) Reporting is a bit wonky Usability can use some improvements,9,Positive: Helps us focus on the right KW sets at the right place at the right time(s). KWs for organic and paid have helped me pull in some highly qualified leads.,SEM Rush, Mangools and Authority LabsSpyfu is our go-to product for Competitive IntelWe use Spyfu for competitive recon for PPC clients. Some of our clients need a more comprehensive competitor list. Some clients know who they consider to be competitors. Spyfu provides the data we need to target the appropriate (apples to apples) competitors. At the point where we can identify the precise competitors, we use Spyfu to get detailed keywords, adgroups and budget/bid data to be able to ferret out advertising opportunities.,This product links competitor data quite easily in the dashboard, from one domain to the next. The overviews for each domain are clear and comprehensive, making the birds-eye-view complete. The PPC vs. SEO views are clearly defined and easy to navigate.,Some of the competitor results seem unrelated to the primary domain. Much more manual research is required to get the best possible data. Some keywords are completely unrelated. Again, manual research is required to get the best data. Exporting to a CSV/PDF does not include manually added information. This is particularly disappointing.,10,Spyfu has allowed us to be more aggressive in promoting competitive intel in our service offerings. The investment is completely worth every penny, for what we can offer our clients.Great Competitive AnalysisWe use SpyFu for competitive research for all clients. We also utilize it for PPC competition analysis including keyword research and spend.,Competitor analysis PPC competition information PPC Ad copy research,Better list of keywords when doing research More information on ppc spend of competition,9,Return on Investment Better competitive analysis,IgnitionOne Digital Marketing Suite,MerlinOneFu, SpyFuSpyFu is a great tool for seeing how your website compares to others. It drills down into keywords, spend and presence in the market.,Keyword Research AdWords History and Performance Inside look into the SEO/PPC performance of other sites,Unable to get local data Can only see root domain stats No data on CPC or CTR for PPC,9,Great for showing prospective clients exactly what their website needs. Insight into how to make improvements on current campaigns. Tons of information - statistics and tutorials.,Moz,Moz, AdWords, Google Search ConsoleSpyfool (In a Good Way)In the advertising industry, it is important to have an idea of what a potential client is doing, advertising wise, before we call on them. If they have ran PPC in the past, it is a good in to come and talk to them about successes/failures. If they have not, it is a good in to see if they would be interested in speaking about opportunities PPC might create for their business. Also, figuring out keywords associated with their business helps when we transition to AdWords and run budgets.,Ease of use Ability to see what advertising has been done in the past Ability to target keywords and see previous ads,Some portions are not well explained as to what they are for Many keywords have no relevance to the selected business Graphs can be difficult to work with at times,9,Better equipped to set appointments with potential clients Better understanding of the digital advertising world Great insight into what businesses are running paid and organic advertising campaigns,,8Sneak through your competition's...historyWe used SpyFu for competitive research for any campaign involving paid advertising. It was a great tool to get a basic understanding of what the competition was doing, and how to start to build your strategy.,Spyfu provides a very detailed snapshot of ad history for any competitor. The competitor discovery ability is great. Some of the graphs used to present data help to identify targets of opportunity.,The backlink tool provides some pretty off topic links. The database doesn't seem to be as effective as others.,9,Spyfu pays for itself weekly.,SEMRushWhy SpyFu needs to be a part of your SEM Arsenal.It is currently being used by the Online Marketing Division to restructure PPC accounts, audit competition, create strategies for organic and paid search initiatives and generate leads. We also use SpyFu for independent consulting along with a few other tools. Spy Fu's interface is fantastic and their growing catalog of advantages continues to meet my teams needs as we grow our current accounts and look for new opportunities.,The Organic SEO dashboard provides insight into how your site is doing in search across all variables and suggests competitors to keep an eye on. I use the SEO dashboard to bring to attention what clients should focus their efforts on. The low hanging fruit that SpyFu brings to light is a breath of fresh air. The Kombat Tool in Spyfu is worth the price of admission as it helps me view keywords and ad copy that competitors use to get the best bang for their buck. By viewing what ad copy competition has been using for the longest along with what keywords they keep high bids on is a great launching point for any new adwords campaign When taking over Adwords or SEO accounts, failed vendors get bitter. Being able to download all Adwords and organic keywords allows you to focus on pushing the plan forward..,Cover Binga nd Yahoo PPC Cover Ad networks (Display Placements!) like Ad GooRoo or Ad Spy and other such services Allow users to host a white label SpyFu dashboard on their domain using API or some such technique Give users a place to edit Adwords campaigns right in SpyFU!,9,Great Sales tool for PPC Management Great Sales Tool for SEO management Great place to plug up holes and get negative keyword suggestions for existing campaigns.,SEM Rush,Compete,follow.net,keyword spy,8
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SpyFu
74 Ratings
Score 8.7 out of 101
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SpyFu Reviews

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SpyFu
74 Ratings
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Score 8.7 out of 101

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Atilla Vekony profile photo
February 04, 2019

Discover profitable keywords

Atilla Vekony
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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I use Spyfu to discover new profitable keywords for Google Ads and for SEO. It is also great to look at competitors' keywords and ads.
  • Discover profitable keywords.
  • Review competitor's well-performing ads.
  • Track your status on Google search results.
  • The best feature of Spyfu is called "Kombat," where you compare the keywords used by you and your competitors and can see which ones generate a lot of results for them, and which you're not currently using.
  • It is overwhelming first to navigate through all the available reports, but it's great that you can have a live orientation with one of their team members.
It is well suited for SEO firms and agencies serving other businesses. If it's just for your own business, it's probably overkill.
Read Atilla Vekony's full review
Max Milano profile photo
January 29, 2019

SpyFu is the spy that You Need.

Max Milano
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Spyfu is one of the most useful tools for digital marketers out in the market right now. We use it for the obvious PPC keyword research, but the real value is at looking at competitors and figuring out their digital marketing strategy by looking at the keywords and budgets they have (or don't have).
  • The best tool for keyword research based on close competitors.
  • The best tool for discovering what PPC strategy and budget your competitors are using.
  • You can also use it for ad copy ideas.
  • It would be great if it expanded to Facebook.
Spyfu is a must before starting any AdWords campaign. If you didn't use it you would be in the dark about your competitors and it would waste a lot of your budget. Not really needed if you don't plan on running an Adwords campaign. It's still good to see what competitors are doing though.
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Sylvia Flores profile photo
December 21, 2018

Frictionless, affordable, and badass competitor intelligence you can act on right now!

Sylvia Flores
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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I use it to provide competitive analysis for clients, specifically when I am performing a marketing and brand audit. This helps me to establish a baseline with the client on what they are up against, so we can attack with intention. :)
  • The domain overview is extremely helpful - for CEOs, this dashboard is exactly the kind of quick hit, at-a-glance experience they want to see.
  • Worst performing and top performing keywords for paid search - this is an invaluable tool to determine how to approach paid against a competitor.
  • To adwords to buy - this is obviously a wonderful bit of intelligence for testing, and for the most part, holds up in battle testing.
  • Reporting is terrible - meaning, the PDF feature does not lay out correctly.
I think it's an excellent tool for marketers to keep a consistent eye on their competitive landscape so they can pivot as required. But the reporting feature is not great and creates an additional layer of hands-on manual work.
Read Sylvia Flores's full review
Lee'Ann Burgess profile photo
December 17, 2018

SpyFu is a must-have for businesses!

Lee'Ann Burgess
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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SpyFu is a great tool to get an overview of your competitors' keywords they are ranking for, estimated ad spend on Google Ad words, samples of their ad copy and allows you create projects to help you track your SEO and marketing efforts. My main use for SpyFu is to gain insight on keywords and links that my competitors and my clients' competitors are using.
  • Easy to navigate. The user interface is pretty straightforward and easy to use.
  • Projects: Create projects for your own company or for clients you are managing to track your efforts.
  • Insights on ad spend, keywords and impression share.
  • Price - I was a user for several years and trying out another platform, I canceled and was quickly offered the same platform I had used for years at half the price.
  • I know the ad spend for Google Adwords is estimated - It would be helpful if it was a little more accurate - maybe not a doable feature of SpyFu, but would be helpful.
If you own your company and have any involvement with tracking your marketing efforts as well as keeping tabs on what your competitors are doing and how they are ranking, I would recommend using SpyFu and at the very least, try it out for free to see if it is a good fit for you and your organization. It's a helpful tool and I have been using it for several years for my company.
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Angela Lyons, MBA profile photo
November 26, 2018

I like SpyFu. You will too.

Angela Lyons, MBA
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
The marketing department at ClientHub uses SpyFu to research keywords and ad campaigns for our paid search initiatives. There are many tools out there to do this, but SpyFu is pretty straightforward. In addition, you can see what your competition is doing for keywords and ads. Without proper keyword research, a company can find themselves spending quite a bit on ineffective ad campaigns.
  • Educational resources
  • Competitor information
  • Intuitive interface
  • Affordable price
  • I can't think of anything in particular that needs room for improvement.
Spyfu is great for both PPC and SEO keyword research. You can also see what your competitors are doing which can give you ideas for your own company.

I really like the feature that allows me to see ads that competitors are using.

Kombat is fun because you can compare yourself with competitors and see where there are similarities and differences.
Read Angela Lyons, MBA's full review
Kiar Olson profile photo
January 08, 2019

SpyFu makes a great resource for competitor keyword research

Kiar Olson
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use SpyFu to help our customers gain insight into their competitor's most important keywords and what they are spending money on. It also gave us valuable keyword research for new markets and looking for new niches our customers require.
  • Great for keyword research.
  • Gain insights into what competitors are doing and ranking for.
  • Allow multiple profiles for customers so I can have a client website and then it's competitors on a dashboard.
For someone in the website marketing and SEO business, it's a great tool to help find the best keywords that work for competitors.
Read Kiar Olson's full review
Sharon A. Dawson, DTM profile photo
December 27, 2018

Get competitive data easily with SpyFu

Sharon A. Dawson, DTM
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
The Marketing and Sales team of my company find SpyFu very helpful to check on our clients' websites, their competitors', and potential new customers.
  • Compare ranking versus competitor sites
  • Look up keywords relevant to site
  • See PPC ads
  • Get traffic data on competitor sites without needed their Google Analytics access
  • Would be nice to do more customization to the competitive ranking graph
Great for determining a strategy for digital marketing and SEO updates for a website, and to see how changes you made to the site help it improve over time.
Read Sharon A. Dawson, DTM's full review
Johnny Norris profile photo
December 21, 2018

Spyfu Usage Benefits

Johnny Norris
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
SpyFu is an excellent tool for getting a baseline of a client's web presence as well as their status vs their competition. It allows us to reveal some underpinnings of why or why not to make certain changes to their marketing strategy. It is also good for audits of web links, SEM, & industry trends.
  • Excellent at KW usage, costs, & recommendations.
  • Traffic estimates are helpful for showing how effective a general marketing plan pushes traffic in relation to competition.
  • Backlink tracking is nice to use for third-party proof of link sharing.
  • Estimates could be more accurate.
  • KW groupings could be broken down further in the SEM overview with costs & click frequency.
  • Sometimes data does not transfer from one tab to another when reviewing a particular domain.
SpyFu, in general, is a great every day tool for finding talking points for meetings, tracking general trends with competition, & for building KW sets.
Read Johnny Norris's full review
No photo available
December 21, 2018

A Comprehensive Competitive Analysis in One Place

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
As a primarily entrepreneur company, we are constantly looking to optimize our own campaigns—but in optimization comes beating out our competitors. We use SpyFu currently to look into exactly what our competitors are doing. Based on what they are doing we are able to tweet our own campaigns so that we can maintain competitiveness in the market.
  • Showing exactly what keywords our competitors are targeting, shows which ones we should target ourselves.
  • When determining a marketing budget for a new project, we are able to project how much SEO would cost based on what our competitors are doing.
  • Looking at what the competitors have in their backlinks helps us with optimizing our own website and landing pages.
  • Some of the smaller websites that don't receive much traffic are often hard to complete competitive analyses for.
Whenever a teammate has to complete a competitive analysis or asks about what the "others" are doing - I always will recommend that they use SpyFu to answer those questions. "what keywords should we target?" are also able to be answered using SpyFu. This helps when setting up a Bing or Google Adwords campaign.
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No photo available
December 18, 2018

SpyFu for Competitive Intelligence

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use SpyFu to help us formulate our initial SEO and PPC keyword strategy for our clients by looking at their competitor's websites. Instead of starting from scratch, we find it useful to look at the keywords that are already performing for the competition to identify opportunities and as well as areas that have been ignored.
  • SEO Keywords
  • PPC Keywords
  • Look-a-Like Audience Development
  • Accuracy
  • Breadth of Research
SpyFu is an essential source of information that can be used to set the initial assumptions guiding a digital marketing campaign. However, because the data is not a primary source it would be a mistake to continue to guide campaign decisions in the long haul using this tool. Google Analytics and primary source advertising data is ultimately the key.
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November 29, 2018

An SEO competitive analysis tool that drives action

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use SpyFu in the marketing department. This tool is being used to help us in our content creation and looking at gaining competitor insights regarding our content direction. This gives us keyword insights not only for organic search but for paid search as well. The typical process we go through takes on 2 forms. The first is reviewing a keyword and looking for variations and then reviewing the landscape for that keyword. The second direction we take is inputting a competitor and see where they are dedicating their efforts for content creation outside brand names.
  • Extensive amounts of competitor data
  • Touches on both paid and organic search opportunities
  • Easy graphs to help illustrate competitive landscape
  • Since this tool scrapes millions of keywords listings it does take some manual filtering via Excel to get to what is truly going on.
  • It would be nice if they expanded into social as well to be able to have an all-in-one tool
  • A themes breakdown would help to eliminate the need for manual sorting and filtering
SpyFu is meant to be a competitive analysis tool and give you an idea where your competitors are with their content. This is not a standalone keyword research tool. I highly recommend utilizing at least one other service to back up keyword opportunities that are uncovered using SpyFu. The same goes in the opposite direction I would not suggest diving into a keyword theme without knowing how the competition is ranking and using that theme.
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September 27, 2018

Good SEM Competitor Tool

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
The ad agencies I've worked at have used SpyFu to gain competitive intelligence. This is something SEM vendors partially provide and SpyFu helps fill in the gaps to work on a holistic SEM strategy.
  • Estimated cost per clicks by competitor. SpyFu provides deeper intel than the engines b/c the data is segmented by domain and is not masked
  • Estimated monthly traffic volume & costs associated with higher spending competitors. SpyFu provides deeper intel than the engines b/c the data is segmented by domain and is not masked
  • The cost per click information is not terribly accurate but can usually be used directionally. Obviously, with a paid product, people want exact data
  • The free tool has limited data that mainly show vague feedback on your competitors. Def need paid version for any useful info.
It is a directionally useful tool for providing full service SEM strategy. It is a must have in an agency's toolkit, since it's one of the most progressive competitive intelligence database out there that isnt from a vendor.
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August 20, 2018

SpyFu is great for keyword research

Jordan Comstock
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
My main use for SpyFu has been for advanced competitive keyword research. It is very easy to pull thousands of keywords for myself, and my competitors using SpyFu. Another big use of it is the reporting they provide. They auto-generate excellent SEO reports every month or so. They are a vital tool to our SEO success.
  • Keyword research
  • Reporting
  • Online ad research
  • Links are not as comprehensive as I would like
  • More tools than I use, which really isn't a bad thing
SpyFu is my favorite tool to gather mass keywords. So if you were looking to do competitive keyword research for your long term SEO strategy, it would be important to get as many keywords as possible. They don't charge by the row or anything, so you can grab many many keywords from as many competitors as you would like.
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Rachel Hensley profile photo
June 04, 2018

SpyFu the best on competitor analysis.

Rachel Hensley
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
SpyFu was used for me to do competition analysis on our direct competitors regarding Adwords. It gave me ideas about the Adwords Keywords our main competitors were buying and what their most successful Adwords ads were. SpyFu also estimates how much your competitors spend on Adwords monthly which is valuable information when you are in a very competitive field.
  • Gives you the most popular Ads for each month.
  • Shows you the keywords your competitors are using.
  • Spyfu will show you an estimate of what they believe your competitor is spending and this number is always low. They should evaluate the keyword prices more to give a more relevant estimate.
  • Free version only gives you around 20 keywords for each competitor. I wish it was larger.
  • Must sign in to see any SpyFu information even for the free version. This is a new thing and I liked it better when it was anonymous for free.
If you are just developing an AdWords campaign, SpyFu is one of the first places to start to see what the most successful businesses are doing with their Adwords strategy. It is also good to continually watch so you can always stay ahead of the industry you are in.
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Jack Pennuto profile photo
April 16, 2018

Perfect SEM/SEO/PPC Tool - No Agency Required

Jack Pennuto
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
WIth an effort to organize all of our digital marketing effort, across SEO, SEM, PPC and competitive analysis, we found SpyFu as a perfect tool to organize and review all these disparate items in one place.
  • Comparison tool of how our website compares to similar websites is helpful to understand where we are strong and where we have room to improve.
  • Identifying backlinks
  • Reviewing and recommendations for keywords
  • None
SpyFu is a full featured tool for reviewing all of our digital marketing needs, such as SEO, SEM, ppc and competitive analysis of websites.
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February 28, 2018

SpyFu Is A Great Organic SEO & PPC Analysis/Research Tool

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Our marketing team has been using SpyFu for their keyword research tools, competitor analysis tools, and webpage traffic tools to better analyze how our organic website and PPC ads stack up against our competitors. SpyFu also allows us to research new keywords to use for our PPC campaigns inside of Bing and Adwords.
  • SpyFu's competitor analysis tool is unparalleled. A detailed, strategic breakdown of how competitors do or don't spend their advertising budgets, and how organic SEO plays into their overall traffic.
  • Researching new keywords has always been an important step when improving our organic SEO rank and SpyFu allows us to research keywords directly from the console.
  • SpyFu's overall platform is wide-reaching, but could be better optimized by allowing customers to see the data broken down across the various web browser paltforms, e.g, Google, Bing, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.
SpyFu is excellent for both advertising and marketing teams looking to improve their paid and organic SEO ranks across Bing and Google. SpyFu can help you retain and gain market share on all web platforms with many different, unique SEO & PPC tools that provide you with detailed analyses via downloadable reports.
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August 25, 2017

Great Resource for Competitive Intelligence

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
I use SpyFu to analyze competitors' most successful keywords and advertising copy for my clients. It is easy to use and provides incredibly valuable information. The reports are excellent and easy to use. SpyFu helps you save a ton of money by avoiding the mistakes your competitors have already made. I also like the competitive spending estimates.
  • Easy to use
  • Comprehensive
  • Incredible Drill Down
  • I have no complaints.
Well-suited for online advertisers and SEO content developers.
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Chandler Elmore profile photo
March 14, 2017

SpyFu Helps To Make Spying Online Much Easier

Chandler Elmore
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
SpyFu is primarily used by us to do competitor research. We use it to look at what our clients' competitors are doing with PPC efforts as well as baseline SEO analysis. It provides us with the opportunity to look at the big picture with a bunch of different players, not just our client.
  • PPC reports for competition. SpyFu allows you to gain insight into possible budget spend as well as what their ads look like.
  • The keyword tool within SpyFu is great for seeing what your web sites biggest hitters are as well as what your competition keywords stack against yours. If you share certain keywords, it ranks who has better traction.
  • Reporting is a weakness with the platform. It is not the easiest process to implement and the information can be better organized.
  • There are inaccuracies with the PPC reporting, especially for competitors. To our knowledge, the only way that PPC budgets are estimated is through ads that have already been clicked on the search network. This means that display, programmatic and other ad formats are not counted.
SpyFu is great if you need a quick, broad overview of your online efforts compared to the online efforts of your competition. It is a great tool to use when you are needing to estimate or come up with a new PPC spend for a client. It also is good in looking at the effectiveness of your website's keywords as compared with your competitors.
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Brett Doucette, ABC, MBA profile photo
March 28, 2017

Kung Fu kick your KWs into shape with SpyFu

Brett Doucette, ABC, MBA
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
[We used SpyFu for] PPC keyword discovery and utilization. Also PPC diagnostics for improvement of existing domestic campaigns. Helps us target the right KW sets. Used exclusively by the Marketing department..
  • International KW targeting
  • Competitive intelligence / identifies competitors KWs and campaign spends
  • Organic and paid search overall campaign health
  • No API integrations with marketing automation platforms (that I am aware of)
  • Reporting is a bit wonky
  • Usability can use some improvements
A great KW research and competitive intelligence tool. Well worth the monthly/yearly investment. Less appropriate for hands on daily campaign management.
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Gwendolyn Guarino profile photo
June 07, 2016

Spyfu is our go-to product for Competitive Intel

Gwendolyn Guarino
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Spyfu for competitive recon for PPC clients. Some of our clients need a more comprehensive competitor list. Some clients know who they consider to be competitors. Spyfu provides the data we need to target the appropriate (apples to apples) competitors. At the point where we can identify the precise competitors, we use Spyfu to get detailed keywords, adgroups and budget/bid data to be able to ferret out advertising opportunities.
  • This product links competitor data quite easily in the dashboard, from one domain to the next.
  • The overviews for each domain are clear and comprehensive, making the birds-eye-view complete.
  • The PPC vs. SEO views are clearly defined and easy to navigate.
  • Some of the competitor results seem unrelated to the primary domain. Much more manual research is required to get the best possible data.
  • Some keywords are completely unrelated. Again, manual research is required to get the best data.
  • Exporting to a CSV/PDF does not include manually added information. This is particularly disappointing.
I think Spyfu is the most effective when you have very little core data - seeking out a competitor list, gathering a comprehensive keyword or ad group list, building out new campaigns, and the like. If you already have a lot of intel, Spyfu will regurgitate the same information.
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Kara Toedtli profile photo
May 03, 2016

Great Competitive Analysis

Kara Toedtli
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use SpyFu for competitive research for all clients. We also utilize it for PPC competition analysis including keyword research and spend.
  • Competitor analysis
  • PPC competition information
  • PPC Ad copy research
  • Better list of keywords when doing research
  • More information on ppc spend of competition
SpyFu is well suited for competitive analysis.
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Amber Stanley-Kruth profile photo
March 04, 2016

Fu, SpyFu

Amber Stanley-Kruth
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
SpyFu is a great tool for seeing how your website compares to others. It drills down into keywords, spend and presence in the market.
  • Keyword Research
  • AdWords History and Performance
  • Inside look into the SEO/PPC performance of other sites
  • Unable to get local data
  • Can only see root domain stats
  • No data on CPC or CTR for PPC
Great for new clients and gaining insight to prospective clients. Very useful to have a tool that compares one site to another and provides suggestions about most valued keywords.
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Josh Heintschel profile photo
February 14, 2014

Spyfool (In a Good Way)

Josh Heintschel
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
In the advertising industry, it is important to have an idea of what a potential client is doing, advertising wise, before we call on them. If they have ran PPC in the past, it is a good in to come and talk to them about successes/failures. If they have not, it is a good in to see if they would be interested in speaking about opportunities PPC might create for their business. Also, figuring out keywords associated with their business helps when we transition to AdWords and run budgets.
  • Ease of use
  • Ability to see what advertising has been done in the past
  • Ability to target keywords and see previous ads
  • Some portions are not well explained as to what they are for
  • Many keywords have no relevance to the selected business
  • Graphs can be difficult to work with at times
I would say if you are using it for advertising sales its a great tool. If you own your own business and want to see what the competition is doing it is also a great too. If you did not have a great need for assessing marketing/advertising budgets and campaigns then it would probably be less important.
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June 28, 2017

Sneak through your competition's...history

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We used SpyFu for competitive research for any campaign involving paid advertising. It was a great tool to get a basic understanding of what the competition was doing, and how to start to build your strategy.
  • Spyfu provides a very detailed snapshot of ad history for any competitor.
  • The competitor discovery ability is great.
  • Some of the graphs used to present data help to identify targets of opportunity.
  • The backlink tool provides some pretty off topic links.
  • The database doesn't seem to be as effective as others.
Great tool for someone learning how to navigate keyword research. As for all in one platforms, it's one of the best.
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Chris Romero profile photo
March 19, 2014

Why SpyFu needs to be a part of your SEM Arsenal.

Chris Romero
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
It is currently being used by the Online Marketing Division to restructure PPC accounts, audit competition, create strategies for organic and paid search initiatives and generate leads. We also use SpyFu for independent consulting along with a few other tools. Spy Fu's interface is fantastic and their growing catalog of advantages continues to meet my teams needs as we grow our current accounts and look for new opportunities.
  • The Organic SEO dashboard provides insight into how your site is doing in search across all variables and suggests competitors to keep an eye on. I use the SEO dashboard to bring to attention what clients should focus their efforts on. The low hanging fruit that SpyFu brings to light is a breath of fresh air.
  • The Kombat Tool in Spyfu is worth the price of admission as it helps me view keywords and ad copy that competitors use to get the best bang for their buck. By viewing what ad copy competition has been using for the longest along with what keywords they keep high bids on is a great launching point for any new adwords campaign
  • When taking over Adwords or SEO accounts, failed vendors get bitter. Being able to download all Adwords and organic keywords allows you to focus on pushing the plan forward..
  • Cover Binga nd Yahoo PPC
  • Cover Ad networks (Display Placements!) like Ad GooRoo or Ad Spy and other such services
  • Allow users to host a white label SpyFu dashboard on their domain using API or some such technique
  • Give users a place to edit Adwords campaigns right in SpyFU!
New Niches are someties hard to find data on. Also the interface is so robust that it would be nice to guide users into which part of the site they should be utilizing...
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SpyFu Scorecard Summary

Likelihood to Recommend (74)
8.7
Likelihood to Renew (10)
10.0
Support (1)
8.0

Feature Scorecard Summary

Keyword analysis (24)
8.6
Backlink management (20)
7.3
SERP ranking tracking (17)
7.2
Page grader (12)
6.4
Competitive analysis (23)
9.7
Site audit / diagnostics (15)
6.8
Site recommendations (12)
6.4
Task management (8)
5.3
Local SEO (15)
7.2
Social SEO (14)
6.2
Mobile SEO (14)
6.4
Global SEO (15)
8.0
Multi-domain support (11)
8.2
Integration with web analytics tools (7)
8.2

About SpyFu

SpyFu is the eponymous SEO and PPC research platform from the company in Scottsdale, Arizona focused on "spying" on competitors, or basically using their behaviors to refine your own through keyword and content analysis, and backlink poaching. This positional search engine optimization and paid listings management platform touts the ability to lower costs and raise rankings via a Kombat-oriented approach... basically a cute way of saying "it makes comparisons" of how well your site does in niche keyword areas vis-a-vis rival actors in the same or contiguous marketing space.

Published pricing starts at $79 per month with the Basic plan, for Google, Yahoo & Bing research, 6 years of historical access, unlimited access to SpyFu's tools, but somewhat limited access to leads and domain contacts keyword rank tracking. The $139 Professional plan gives full access to UK data and doubles the rank tracking of keywords from 400 to 800, and provides custom branded (white label) reports and API access. the $999 Agency plan gives team access (10 user logins) and unlimited tracking and reporting capabilities.

Categories:  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SpyFu Competitors

SpyFu Technical Details

Operating Systems: Unspecified
Mobile Application:No