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A Review of Spy Tools

There are quite a few spy tools on the market currently, some more heavily promoted than others. They come in a variety of flavors such as SEO spy tools, PPC spy tools, and some which do both. Spy tools can be useful in an SEO and/or a PPC campaign. However, many of these tools essentially try to extrapolate scraped results which can lead to some fairly inaccurate results. Also, these tools occasionally...

Compete.com Review

Compete takes pricing to a different level but has some unique features as well. They have a few different pricing levels but to get all the features you need to dial it up at $499 per month. Although, some of their lower price points may provide good value depending on what you might use them for. Compete Site Profiles Here is how compete gets their data. Here is a screen shot of their site profile...

ISpionage Review

iSpionage is a newer player in the spy tool market. They are much more PPC oriented than organic SEO oriented. They offer 3 tool sets: Keyword and Domain Research Keyword Monitor PPC Campaign Builder Keyword and Domain Research They index the top ten results in Google, Yahoo, and Bing (although I only saw G and Y). They give you breakdowns of common spy tool elements such as: Competitors and Overlapping...

Keyword Spy Review

Keyword Spy offers 3 different accounts. Research Tracking Professional The countries available within a Keyword Spy account are: No other competitor really comes close to the breadth of their country offerings. Keyword Spy Research Account Keyword Spy’s Research account gives you access to the following data PPC Ads (ad copy, the keyword, estimated search volume, estimated CPC, the position...

SpyFu Review

SpyFu is one of the more feature rich tools, but probably has the least attractive interface out there. SpyFu offers SEO and PPC spy tool options along with their own keyword research tool. The SpyFu toolset covers US and UK markets. SpyFu’s toolset includes: SpyFu Kombat SpyFu Classic Keyword Ad History Domain Ad History Keyword Smart Search A Variety of Top 100 Lists SpyFu Kombat With SpyFu...

Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: March 19, 2010

In this week’s recap I thank Rhea and the others who helped save the term “SEO” from being trademarked. Matt Cutts was interviewed by Eric Enge and he uncovered a nice amount of information, including PageRank information. A poll we published show only 13% felt Google PageRank was “very important.” Some are speculating that the Caffeine index is now live. Google has...

Marketing Like Bing: The Farmville Example

There are many ways to market your business through Facebook. Some are obvious, and others not so much. One thing you can pretty much count on is that there are incredible masses of people on the social network that you can potentially reach, and in ways that will allow them not only to engage with your brand in a comfortable setting, but with other Facebook ecosystems they are already engaging with....

Nielsen: Time Spent On Social Networks Up ~60% YOY

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other such sites are – in general, anyway – doing quite well on a global basis, according to new stats from Nielsen.  Nielsen revealed this afternoon that people all over the world are dedicating a lot more time to social networks. A report stated, "On average, global web users across 10 countries spent roughly five and a half hours on...

March Madness On Demand Player Sets Record

CBS and the NCAA said Friday their March Madness on Demand (MMOD) live-streaming video player attracted record traffic for the first day of the men’s basketball tournament. In total, there were 3.4 million hours of live streaming video and audio consumed, over 20 percent growth compared to 2009, with 3 million more unique visitors to the MMOD video player. Both figures represent the largest single...

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 19, 2010

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. linkscolor = "000000"; highlightscolor = "888888"; backgroundcolor = "FFFFFF"; channel = "none";

Yahoo’s Chief Technologist Starts New Gig

It may sound painfully dumb to point out that Yahoo’s technology is important to the company, but there you have it.  Unfortunately for the organization, that connection also makes it seem somewhat problematic that Yahoo’s Chief Technologist has moved on. Benchmark Capital announced today that Sam Pullara, who was Yahoo’s Chief Technologist, has joined it as an Entrepreneur in...

OneRiot Launches Real-Time Ads Based On Trending Topics

Real-time search engine OneRiot has launched RiotWise Trending Ad Units, which automatically refresh based on what’s trending on the social web. Previously, OneRiot’s Trending Ads were available only via OneRiot’s API, meaning developers had to create a customized user interface for their ads. RiotWise Trending Ads link the latest published and relevant content from OneRiot’s...

Kentucky Supreme Court Favors State In Online Gambling Case

The Kentucky Supreme court issued a ruling Thursday that it will not lift the freeze by registrars of 141 Internet gambling domain names unless an owner of the names comes forward. The ruling by the Court is not final, but the decision is being viewed as a temporary setback by the affected parties. Joe Brennan Jr. IMEGA’s chairman "In the written decision, the Court clearly indicates they...

Facebook Users Favor Online News Sites

Internet users who click on links posted on Facebook that lead to news and media websites are more loyal to those portals than those coming from Google News, according to new data from Hitwise. Among the most popular top 5 print media websites for the week ending March 6, 78 percent of Facebook users were returning visitors compared to 67 percent from Google news. The same was true for broadcast media,...

A Look Back at SXSW 2010

As usual, this year’s South by Southwest Interactive conference was a blur. Between the people, the parties, and purveyors of all things bacon, it was a twenty ring circus of the sublime and bizarre. There was no shatteringly impactful takeaway from SXSW 2010, as it seems we’ve entered a (sure to be brief) innovation lull. But, I absorbed many smaller lessons that will help guide my thinking...