SpyFu
Encyclopedia
SpyFu, originally GoogSpy, is a search analytics
Search Analytics
Search analytics is the analysis and aggregation of search engine statistics for use in search engine marketing and search engine optimization . In other words, search analytics helps website owners understand and improve their performance on search engines...

 company based out of Scottsdale, AZ. Started in April 2005, SpyFu shows the keywords that websites buy on Google Adwords as well as the keywords that websites are showing up for within search 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. Historical advertising budgets offered by SpyFu also help advertisers project what an advertising campaign will cost in the future. The main value proposition is to see or to "spy on" the keywords that competitors use and improve SEM
Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing, , is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion...

 and SEO
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results...

 strategies based on those. SpyFu's data was also used in the Washington Post during the 2008 Presidential election
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...

 to disclose various keywords that candidates were advertising on. SpyFu can also uncover emerging or niche markets. SpyFu has been mentioned in The 4-Hour Work Week, Oreilly's Complete Web Monitoring, and SEO Warrior.

SpyFu's data is obtained via web scraping
Web scraping
Web scraping is a computer software technique of extracting information from websites...

, 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. 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.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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