If you have been following this blog, you probably know about my favorite premium tool in the world. I have written a bunch of reviews on SpyFu in the past, but to be frank it has been hard to keep up with all the new features these are introducing. These guys have done it again with the latest addition to the SpyFu tool-set.

SpyFu is a great competitive research tool. You can spy on your competitors and grab their keywords and ads using standard SpyFu and SpyFu Kombat. But now you will have your very own keyword generator as well. The new tool uses Google Gears to bring you speed and convenience while you search for keywords in your niche.

All you got to do is enter your keyword phrase(s) in the search box and let SpyFu do the keyword research for you. What I really like about this new feature is those precious filters. You can ask SpyFu to give you the keywords that are within your defined CPC range. You can also filter keywords based on the number times people have searched for them. And who could miss the negative keywords filter. You can also use Advanced settings to go beyond phrase match and find out about other keywords that your competitors have been buying.

Once you run the report, you get your keywords (which you can easily export to Excel or Google Adwords), CPC per keywords, # of searches per day, and KEI. So not only you get the keywords, SpyFu also makes it easy to get your ads live as soon as possible. Define your bids, destination URLs, matching type, and you are good to do.

The latest SpyFu tool makes it much easier to rely on SpyFu to get most of your keyword research done. You are now getting your keywords, their KEI, their CPC information, and export capability all in one package. And let’s not forget SpyFu Kombat that is still one of the best SEO/SEM tools on the market. If you haven’t checked out SpyFu by now, you should definitely give it a try. These guys are known for keeping their prices low but who knows when they decide to increase their prices to cover their development costs.

If you have been following this blog, you probably know how strongly I feel about the merits of SpyFu. SpyFu is a great competitive intelligence tool that gives you a lot of ammunition to chip away at your competitors’ strengths in your niche.

If you have used SpyFu before, you are probably familiar with the above search box. It is your portal to finding what’s working and what’s not for your rivals. But until now, SpyFu allowed you to figure out what your competitors were doing and try to figure out what you were not doing. SpyFu Kombat takes it to the next level by allowing you to figure out what you have in common with your competitors, and what they are doing differently from you. Take a look at the below diagram:

It just goes on to prove my assumption that John McCain is doing a better job in the paid search channel. John Mccain ads show up for almost anything you can search for. But the Obama campaign has done a magnificent job with their organic campaign. They have obviously been helped with bloggers and publishers linking to Obama’s web properties.

But that’s not all. You can also compare these figures on a graph to figure out any historical trends.

You can get down and dirty with these diagrams and figure out what keywords your competitors are using. Now, I don’t compete with SpyFu with my coupon site, but it’s interesting to see what I could have in common with SpyFu.com.

It turns out that I have nothing in common with SpyFu (too bad!). But that doesn’t mean I am hopeless. If I wanted to change my coupon site to compete with SpyFu, I would obviously need a similar or better service. But also, I can use the keywords that SpyFu Kombat brings to light to create content pages to compete with SpyFu. This is just an example and not a very good one. But you get the point. If you know what keywords your competitors are showing up for, it’s easier to customize your pages and create new content to target keywords that your sites are not optimized for.

SpyFu is now charging $50 for this super bad @$$ service. But you get more than SpyFu Kombat. You also get the standard SpyFu service. I personally do recommend signing up for the annual subscription as it helps you save money and protect yourself against any increase in fees. But my experience with SpyFu folks has been great. These guys are in it not for the money but to provide value to us marketers. If you compare SpyFu with any of their competitors, there is no question that SpyFu provides the best bang for the buck by a big margin.

Who Shouldn’t get SpyFu Kombat:

SpyFu Kombat is not for everyone. If you are lazy to get down and dirty with your SEO and paid campaigns, SpyFu Kombat is not for you. If you have money to burn, you are more than welcome to spend it on SpyFu. SpyFu is for serious marketers (emphasis on serious). You don’t have to be a guru to take advantage of SpyFu & Kombat, but you need to have the spirit and the backbone to get down and do some great things. The sky is the limit with SpyFu, but like a powerful machine gun, if you don’t use it, it’s not worth the money. But if you are ready to challenge your competitors head on and make some cash in the process, SpyFu should definitely be a part of your arsenal.

Is economy getting to you? Are you obsessed with the politics these days? Well, here is what you should really be obsessed about: SpyFu Kombat! I don’t know if you guys followed my conversation with SpyFu’s Sidra, but she was kind enough to let me know about SpyFu Kombat’s release. I’ve got to say, I am very impressed by it. Now, I am not going to ruin the surprise and am right now writing a more detailed review of SpyFu Kombat for tomorrow. But here is what you should do: Subscribe! I don’t know much about SpyFu’s plans for SpyFu Kombat but I’ll get it as long as it’s affordable.

P.S. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s coverage of SpyFU Kombat!

So I decided to take my new SpyFu subscription for a ride and figure out what other interesting features it really has to offer. One interesting set of data that you can get from SpyFu is the list of largest budget changes among online advertisers. It basically shows you the biggest jumps or drops in budget among advertisers (see below).

Geico has been the most surprising drop among the list above. They have been consistently one of the best spenders on the Internet and the drop may be as a result of financial strain on them. Dodge has also scaled back its advertising operations as they focus on TV and other forms of advertisement. Needless to say, these days are not great for car dealers either.

DadsandDaughters.org is an interesting case. They seem to have stopped advertising online completely. I am not sure why they were advertising that hard online, but I guess the campaign hasn’t been successful. So as you see, there are tons of things you can get from SpyFu. Not everything can help you with your own business, but it’s still very interesting to watch the developments in the search industry.