iSpionage Review
Functionality
Utility
iSpionage is a set of tools covering 3 main areas of search marketing:
- Keyword and Domain Research
- Keyword Monitoring
- PPC Campaign Building
Their tools are available for the US and UK markets.
Inside of the keyword and domain research module you can enter a domain and get the following information:
- Ad copy, ad budget, and keywords being bid on by a domain
- For PPC keywords you’ll see CPC, broad Google volume, average position, as well as total days seen by iSpionage and date first/last seen within the last year
- Organic keyword volumes and rankings. Volume is based off of Google’s broad match as well as the CPC. Rankings are in Bing/Yahoo and Google, respectively. A related keyword tool showing competition data and broad monthly search volume from Google
- A list of competitors in PPC and SEO along with overlapping keywords, total keywords found for each competitor, SEO traffic value (CPC x Estimated Traffic), and PPC monthly budget
- Twitter and Facebook mentions of a domain & Whois information on the domain you entered
- A 3 domain comparison chart showing the top 10 keywords of each domain (PPC and SEO) in Google and Bing/Yahoo. This chart also shows top ads for each domain
- The comparsion chart doesn’t offer deeper data and the stats are limited to the stats mentioned above for their PPC keyword tools
When comparing 3 sites under the SEO option you can see Google, Bing/Yahoo first page keywords for each domain and the top 20 keywords for each domain in Google.
When you research a keyword you’ll get:
- Top PPC advertisers in Google and Bing/Yahoo
- Related keywords with broad match volume and competition estimates
- Top ads for the keyword in Google and Bing/Yahoo
- Top SEO competitors in Google and Bing/Yahoo along with current rank for the keyword and back link counts from Google, PageRank, indexed page count, and total keyword count
You can click through on all of the above “top” lists and get deeper information for each category as well as the ability to export the data. Social metions are also available for the keyword you enter.
They also have a couple tools that do deduplication of keywords in addition to combining keywords with modifiers you put in to help generate longer tail keywords on the fly. These do not integrate with their other tools but are helpful in managing keyword lists.
Unique Features
Campaign Builder
One of the unique features inside of iSpionage is the ability to create paid search campaigns for Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Inside of this tool you can paste in lists of keywords and clean them up with various keyword cleaning tools. They also offer a grouping feature where you can set up and name campaigns along with groups within those campaigns.
In the Campaign Building piece you can:
- Set prices at the ad group level and choose to apply that to exact, phrase, or broad match types of the keywords in your selected ad group
- Write ads for the ad group with options to copy the ad or parts of an ad to other ad groups as well (this can be a big time saver if you have similar ad groups)
- Output your campaign, ad groups, ads, and pricing selections to Google, Yahoo, and/or Bing’s format for campaign uploads
One cool feature inside of the Campaign Builder is that you can preview ads for a keyword as of yesterday’s data from iSpionage. This feature is helpful when you are stuck for PPC ad copy strategies and ideas.
Competitor Alerts
Another feature inside of iSpionage that is unique to most tools in its market, is the competitor alerts tool. You can add multiple competitors and each month you’ll be able to see:
- New ad copy
- New PPC keywords
- New organic keywords
These are refreshed monthly and the tool keeps an archive of 6 months worth of reports.
Keyword Monitor
You can monitor (US only) organic and PPC keywords inside of this tool. The maximum you can track (at the highest membership tier) is 250 so it’s likely not going to be a replacement for your day to day rank checking services.
The features here are:
- Tracking in Google, Bing, and Yahoo! for the top 100 results
- Add alerts if a site that is advertising on your tracked keyword(s) show up on any or all of the 3 search engines mentioned above
Usability
iSpionage is pleasant to look at and navigating around is pretty simple. However, the site tends to load slow at times (at least during my review) and its reliance on flash charts for some of its data timed out occasionally or was just slow to load.
When I tried it again the next day is was somewhat quicker, but overall it does not feel as snappy as some of the other competitive research tools on the market.
It is very easy to export the data and the data exports with up to one filter applied (in this case filter means 1 sorting option).
Overall, the site provides a good but not great user experience while allowing easy, clear access to tools and exporting capabilities.
Screenshots
Review Video
Data
Source
iSpionage gets its data from the following sources:
- Google, Yahoo!, and Bing for their SEO, Competition, and PPC tool data points
- Twitter and Facebook for their Social Mention feature
- Whois.Net for its domain ownership information
Size
Current size includes the top 10 results for close to 90 million keywords spread over 30+ million domains in Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
Freshness
iSpionage updates their product monthly.
Usage Strategies
Tips & Ideas
On the SEO side of things you can do all your traditional research on competitors and specific keywords. You’ll get all the data you normally get with other tools, such as volume, CPC, competition, and related keywords.
One slick feature in the SEO tracking tool is the ability to historically track keywords over a period of time along with competition data as it becomes available in real time via their competition alerts feature. This feature can help you quickly spot any increase in competition and new competitors for the keywords you are tracking. You can use this in conjunction with your rank tracker of choice to augment your competition analysis and real-time competition alerts.
On the PPC side of the house you can use the tracking features to compare your efforts with the competition’s efforts across all 3 major search engines in the areas of total keyword coverage, ad text, landing page strategies, and so on. This is a solid way to leverage a more successful site’s PPC strategy against your own efforts while being able to track the data for your site and their site.
You can also use these reports to help sell a prospect on your expertise in a PPC/SEO campaign if your prospect seems to be lagging behind the competition based on your research.
Notes
When using any competitive research tool you should take caution in storing your most important terms inside your account. Storing your information there gives the tool direct access to data they otherwise wouldn’t have access too.
Many competitive research tools simply use Google’s data but iSpionage also incorporates Yahoo! and Bing organically and on the PPC side. This might be important to you if you are looking for action outside of just Google.
Just about all of the data is obtained by scraping the search engines so take the data as estimates rather than exact numbers. It is generally best to use any competitive research tool for trend insight and broader analysis of sites and keywords based on the data not being exact, clean data.
Sign Up
Price
iSpionage has 3 plans with pricing set for monthly and 6 month plans. The plans are:
- Silver – 1k SEO/PPC/Social Mention reports daily, 10k rows exportable per day, 3 competitor alers, no monitoring and no white-labeling, no keyword list sorting tools
- Gold – 3k SEO/PPC/Social Mention reports daily, 50k rows exportable per day, 10 competitor alers, access to white labeling, monitoring (125 keywords), and keyword sorting tools
- Pro – Unlimited SEO/PPC/Social Mention reports daily, 100k rows exportable per day, 20 competitor alers, access to white labeling, monitoring (250 keywords), and keyword sorting tools
- Silver – 59$ per month, 299$ for 6 months
- Gold – $89 per month, 359$ for 6 months
- Pro – $129 per month, $449 for 6 months
Free Trial
There is no free trial available for iSpionage at this time. They do offer a 30 day money back guarantee however.
Discounts & Coupons
Currently no coupons or discounts exist. Occasionally they roll them out during the year so you can search for them when you are ready to sign up.
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