SpyFu

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SpyFu (originally GoogSpy) is an American search analytics company based out of Scottsdale, Arizona. [1]

Contents

History

SpyFu was founded in April 2005. The online platform provides keywords that websites buy on Google Ads, [2] as well as keywords used for search engine results. The service also gives cost per click and search volume statistics on keywords and uses that data to approximate what websites are spending on advertising. [3] [4]

Historical advertising budgets offered by SpyFu also help advertisers project what an advertising campaign will cost in the future. [5] The main value proposition is to see or to "spy on" the keywords that competitors use and improve SEM and SEO strategies based on those. [6] SpyFu's data was also used in the Washington Post during the 2008 Presidential election to disclose various keywords that candidates were advertising on. [7] SpyFu can also uncover emerging or niche markets. [8] SpyFu has been mentioned in The 4-Hour Work Week , Oreilly's Complete Web Monitoring, and SEO Warrior.

Data

SpyFu's data is obtained via web scraping, based on technology developed by Velocityscape, a company that makes web scraping software. The accuracy of its data, especially advertising budgets, was found to be somewhat dependent on the size of the website in question. [9] SpyFu refreshes its data on a monthly basis, and as such is used as a guide to what's happening with larger trends in SEM/SEO rather than as a real time tracking engine. [10]

Related Research Articles

Spamdexing is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It involves a number of methods, such as link building and repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed, in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a website. This amount necessarily does not include the traffic generated by bots. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic. This result is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. There are many ways to monitor this traffic, and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth.

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.

Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. They can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta-tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering. In Q1 2014, Google earned US$3.4 billion, or 22% of total revenue, through Google AdSense. AdSense is a participant in the AdChoices program, so AdSense ads typically include the triangle-shaped AdChoices icon. This program also operates on HTTP cookies. In 2021, over 38.3 million websites use AdSense.

Google Ads Online advertising platform owned by Google

Google Ads is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the results of search engines like Google Search and on non-search websites, mobile apps, and videos. Services are offered under a pay-per-click (PPC) pricing model.

Click fraud is a type of fraud that occurs on the Internet in pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising. In this type of advertising, the owners of websites that post the ads are paid based on how many site visitors click on the ads. Fraud occurs when a person, automated script, computer program or an auto clicker imitates a legitimate user of a web browser, clicking on such an ad without having an actual interest in the target of the ad's link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.

Online advertising Form of advertising

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. Many consumers find online advertising disruptive and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.

The Sandbox effect is a name given to an observation of the way Google ranks web pages in its index. It is the subject of much debate—its existence has been written about since 2004 but not confirmed, with several statements to the contrary.

Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) are the pages displayed by search engines in response to a query by a user. The main component of the SERP is the listing of results that are returned by the search engine in response to a keyword query.

In Internet marketing, search advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on web pages that show results from search engine queries. Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published content.

Keyword research is a practice search engine optimization (SEO) professionals use to find and research search terms that users enter into search engines when looking for products, services or general information. Keywords are related to queries, which are asked by users in search engines. There are three types of queries : 1. Navigational Search Queries 2. Informational Search Queries 3. Transactional Search Queries. Search engine optimization professionals first research keywords, and then align web pages with these keywords to achieve better rankings in search engines. Once they find a niche keyword, they expand on it to find similar keywords. Keyword suggestion tools usually aid the process, like the Google Ads Keyword Planner, which offers a thesaurus and alternative keyword suggestions. Google's first party data also aids this research through the likes of Google autocomplete or People Also Ask.

Geotargeting

In geomarketing and internet marketing, geotargeting is the method of delivering different content to visitors based on their geolocation. This includes country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, IP address, ISP, or other criteria. A common usage of geo targeting is found in online advertising, as well as internet television with sites such as iPlayer and Hulu. In these circumstances, content is often restricted to users geolocated in specific countries; this approach serves as a means of implementing digital rights management. Use of proxy servers and virtual private networks may give a false location.

Quality Score is a metric used by Google, Yahoo!, and Bing that influences ad rank and cost per click (CPC) of ads.

Search analytics is the use of search data to investigate particular interactions among Web searchers, the search engine, or the content during searching episodes. The resulting analysis and aggregation of search engine statistics can be used in search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO). In other words, search analytics helps website owners understand and improve their performance on search engines based on the outcome, for example identifying highly valuable site visitors, or understanding user intent. Search analytics includes search volume trends and analysis, reverse searching, keyword monitoring, search result and advertisement history, advertisement spending statistics, website comparisons, affiliate marketing statistics, multivariate ad testing, et al.

Search syndication is a type of contextual advertising which allows online search advertisers to buy keyword-targeted traffic outside of search engine results pages. This is considered to be an alternative to advertising on search engines, since 43% of all searches occur outside of the top search engines.

Lead validation is the process by which sales leads generated by internet marketing campaigns are separated from other types of conversions. Lead validation is crucial for effective internet marketing management; without it, companies can neither accurately evaluate the results of, nor efficiently improve, their SEO, PPC, display advertising, email, content marketing and social media campaigns.

Search engine scraping is the process of harvesting URLs, descriptions, or other information from search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. This is a specific form of screen scraping or web scraping dedicated to search engines only.

References

  1. ↑ "Scottsdale's SpyFu Boosts Search Marketing Stats by Spying on Competitors" . Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  2. ↑ "Advanced Keyword Research Checklist: Using Multiple Datasets" . Retrieved December 28, 2009.
  3. ↑ "Using the Competition to Boost Your SEO Performance" . Retrieved December 28, 2009.
  4. ↑ "Top 11 Money-Wasting AdWords Mistakes" . Retrieved December 28, 2009.
  5. ↑ "Spying On Your Paid Search Competitors" . Retrieved December 28, 2009.
  6. ↑ Singel, Ryan (June 30, 2009). "Cool Search Engines That Are Not Google". Wired. Retrieved December 28, 2009.
  7. ↑ Whoriskey, Peter (October 16, 2008). "In Targeting Online Ads, Campaigns Ask: Who's Searching for What?". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 28, 2009.
  8. ↑ Lutze, Heather F. (2009). The Findability Formula. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN   978-0-470-42090-4 . Retrieved December 28, 2009.
  9. ↑ "The Small (but Great) SpyFu Experiment" . Retrieved December 28, 2009.
  10. ↑ Brown, Bruce C. (2007). The complete guide to Google advertising. Atlantic Publishing Company. ISBN   978-1-60138-045-6 . Retrieved December 28, 2009.
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