Ad History

Earlier, I mentioned the benefit of getting keyword statistics on SpyFu without spending a dime. Even the unpaid version offers up the top ten most dominant PPC domains on any given keyword during the last 6 months.

With an Ad History preview, we include these domains’ ads from each month—for free. Here’s where you will find it. Go to http://spyfu.com. Type a keyword into the main SpyFu search bar and click “search.”

When you see this chart on the keyword results page, look at the left hand column of domains. These are the domains that have advertised at the highest frequency, at the highest cost, with the highest rank and the most updates to their ads. 

How do these domains differ from each other in their ad style? Open any ad when you click on an orange or blue box, and you get variations on ad copy from the advertisers who know this audience.

Here, smartpress.com advertised on “online printing” in June 2011 and ranked in the #2 position of 22 ads. Different shades show you where the ad changed like with GotPrint.net from January to February, and that’s key to getting the most out of this feature.

In the premium version of SpyFu, Ad History opens into a trend-spotting machine. Ad History shows which domains dabble and which ones are serious competitors to learn from.

In the premium version of SpyFu, Ad History opens into a trend-spotting machine, giving you insight into peak competitive months for a keyword, (think “personalized gifts” around graduation and December). Visually spreading out ad habits over a year like Ad History does shows you which domains dabble and which ones are serious competitors to learn from.

When you see ad changes over time, we back that up with the actual ad copy. Can you imagine what you can do when you know that an active advertiser you compete with found the sweet spot with particularly effective phrases?

Don’t believe it? The “free credit report niche” had a tidal wave of changes from “free” to “$0” when the big guys discovered it converted better.

We built in interactivity for our subscribers, too. Clicking a domain name takes you to that domain’s complete paid keyword lineup with every ad they placed. We load you with rich information like this for every month during the last 12 months.

To get this interactivity and all SpyFu premium features, find the subscription option that works best for what you need.