Yesterday Rand and I were checking out KeyCompete, a fairly new keyword research site.
What is KeyCompete? Well, in the site's own words:
Not willing to throw in the towel, Rand wanted answers, damnit! He sicced me onto KeyCompete and told me to shoot them an email and raise hell about their site's lack of trustworthiness. In Rand's words, "Rebecca, you're probably the only one here who can get away with telling them that their site's shady and eliciting some sort of response." Uh, thanks, Rand!
Anyway, I shot an email to [email protected]. Much to my surprise, about a half hour later I got a response from a man named Jim Stracka. He told me that he'd be happy to chat with me over the phone about KeyCompete. After a few emails and a forty minute phone call, I got some answers.
Basically, KeyCompete is owned by Tiger Technologies, a company based in Houston, Texas. 11 people work for Tiger Technologies, 7 of whom work specifically for KeyCompete. Jim is KeyCompete's CEO. The keyword research tool launched around April 2006, and they currently have had thousands of users and a little under 500 customers.
What can you do with KeyCompete? Well, say you want to search for the term "seo":
"KeyCompete is an online keyword research tool that identifies the keywords your competitors are using in their pay-per-click campaigns. KeyCompete also identifies the competition that is bidding on your keywords."Needless to say, Rand and I were all "What the?! How do they do that? Where do they get their data?!" We scoured the site in hopes of finding out more information, but to our dismay there was nothing about where the company was located, who was behind KeyCompete, when the site launched, or how they acquire their data. Heck, we couldn't even find any contact phone numbers or names.
Not willing to throw in the towel, Rand wanted answers, damnit! He sicced me onto KeyCompete and told me to shoot them an email and raise hell about their site's lack of trustworthiness. In Rand's words, "Rebecca, you're probably the only one here who can get away with telling them that their site's shady and eliciting some sort of response." Uh, thanks, Rand!
Anyway, I shot an email to [email protected]. Much to my surprise, about a half hour later I got a response from a man named Jim Stracka. He told me that he'd be happy to chat with me over the phone about KeyCompete. After a few emails and a forty minute phone call, I got some answers.
Basically, KeyCompete is owned by Tiger Technologies, a company based in Houston, Texas. 11 people work for Tiger Technologies, 7 of whom work specifically for KeyCompete. Jim is KeyCompete's CEO. The keyword research tool launched around April 2006, and they currently have had thousands of users and a little under 500 customers.
What can you do with KeyCompete? Well, say you want to search for the term "seo":
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The results estimate about 200,000 searches for the term "seo" per month. It also shows you a list of domains that are advertising for that term. The color bar shows which sites have greater visibility for the keyword.
Built into this report are a number of other reports, including:
I then asked Jim about the tool's accuracy, and he told me that the accuracy varies. For certain domains the tool is very accurate, but for others someone will come along and say, "You only have half of my keywords." In that type of situation, when someone approaches them and says "You're not accurate about my domain," they'll analyze keywords from the long tail report and work to improve the accuracy.
When I shared my concerns about the lack of credibility and trustworthiness on the site, he did agree that it would be good for the site to have more accessible information about the company, ways to contact them, and some more specific information about how they collect data. (Although he did say that he doesn't get many emails like the one he received from me, so maybe I'm just a Suspicious Sally. Way to train me to look at sites with a critical eye, Rand!)
The last thing Jim wants is to give the impression that the company's trying to be secretive, so he thanked me for my suggestions and said he'd talk to their tech guy about implementing some changes to the site. I was really impressed with how promptly Jim responded to my email inquiry and his willingness to chat with me over the phone. He was very helpful and also seemed genuinely appreciative of my recommendations.
And wouldn't you know it, about twenty minutes after we wrapped up our phone call I returned to KeyCompete to get a snapshot for this blog entry, and they already made a change:
Hey, a live support and chat option! I also got an email from Jim saying they added more information to their FAQs regarding how they obtain their data. Needless to say, Rand and I were very impressed that they valued our suggestions and took us seriously. And, we got a lot of the answers we were looking for. All it took was a bit of sleuthing, a stubborn boss, and a tenacious young SEO. Look out, Overture! You're on notice!
Built into this report are a number of other reports, including:
- Watch Reports – Add a domain and you'll receive weekly updates on what's going on with that domain (what keywords they're bidding on, what's moving up and down in rank, the domain's top keywords)
- Keyword monitoring – You can watch keywords on a regular basis (what domains are bidding on it, receive more detailed reports)
- Competition Reports – See the domains that you're competing with and what keywords they're using
- Long Tail Reports – Examines the keywords that both you and your competitors are using/targeting, and based on this list will suggest less costly keyword combinations
I then asked Jim about the tool's accuracy, and he told me that the accuracy varies. For certain domains the tool is very accurate, but for others someone will come along and say, "You only have half of my keywords." In that type of situation, when someone approaches them and says "You're not accurate about my domain," they'll analyze keywords from the long tail report and work to improve the accuracy.
When I shared my concerns about the lack of credibility and trustworthiness on the site, he did agree that it would be good for the site to have more accessible information about the company, ways to contact them, and some more specific information about how they collect data. (Although he did say that he doesn't get many emails like the one he received from me, so maybe I'm just a Suspicious Sally. Way to train me to look at sites with a critical eye, Rand!)
The last thing Jim wants is to give the impression that the company's trying to be secretive, so he thanked me for my suggestions and said he'd talk to their tech guy about implementing some changes to the site. I was really impressed with how promptly Jim responded to my email inquiry and his willingness to chat with me over the phone. He was very helpful and also seemed genuinely appreciative of my recommendations.
And wouldn't you know it, about twenty minutes after we wrapped up our phone call I returned to KeyCompete to get a snapshot for this blog entry, and they already made a change:
Hey, a live support and chat option! I also got an email from Jim saying they added more information to their FAQs regarding how they obtain their data. Needless to say, Rand and I were very impressed that they valued our suggestions and took us seriously. And, we got a lot of the answers we were looking for. All it took was a bit of sleuthing, a stubborn boss, and a tenacious young SEO. Look out, Overture! You're on notice!
Great job on this Rebecca. I have been looking at keyword compete for a while and trying to figure out if I want to use that or brad callens keyword elite located here:
https://www.keywordelite.com/index1.htm
After your article and watching keyword competes how to video I am deciding to go with them.
Thanks and keep up the super awsome work!!!
-Joe Whyte
Since KeywordElite is a one time cost, there is no reason not to try both.
After doing some research, it seems that you can almost perfectly mirror their results by simply scraping and averaging the number of results returned by a keyword search between Google/Yahoo/MSN.
IMO, a time-saver by some regards, but fairly unremarkable and not any more accurate than any of my existing tools.
Ok, so yes good show and nice tool and what not, but , urm... is it just me or is there just a *smidge* of silimarity between A and B, and if there is then what about C?
Just a question mind you....
s.i.m.i.l.a.r.i.t.y.
It looks like the patent just covers the SERP, not the homepage. The results page on KeyCompete doesn't really look anything like Google's, so I think they're safe. :)
right-y-ho then. probably a good thing i didn't try to become a lawyer. ta very much Chris - what a waste of mental energy that was then:)
With Christmas around the corner, I think a lot of us have been wasting mental energy.
mental energy, mental anguish, empty wallet, dead bank account... *sigh* BUT look what you guys accomplished!
Little silver lining there around the mental fluffiness.. there - RIGHT THERE... yep - that should hold for the rest of the day :)
I think you pointed out what a lot of us were thinking. The homepage does look a lot like Google, but probably not to a fault, imo. It's pretty clean, and gets right to the point.
oh don't get me wrong, I think its lovely, clean, efficient, spot-on and wish-I'd-done-it-too-even-if-it-is-a-bit-cheesy-in-a-green-eyed-way... I just got the wrong end of the stick on the patent, and to be honest was a little worried for them there for a while, until you so graciously cleared up that small ball of mental fluffiness...
Just waiting for a Dutch tool like this...
Great article!! Definitely going to have to look into this more.
HI Rebecca,
The Website in discussion KeyCompete is Dead as there is something different that comes up.(Something UNRELATED)
Hello Pragnesh,
This post was written in 2006, so it's almost eight years old, and businesses do change. You may want to check out some of the newer posts in the Moz blog for more current information. Thanks for reading!
I a former customer of keycompee.
They are good at picking up on larger players in the ppc scene and providing those keywords, but if they are smaller accounts there is a lot left to improve on. On smaller accounts you may be lucky to find 10-15 of there keywords... with that said they do provide better results than Spyfu which I have also used.
Also Keycompete has NEVER responded to an email of my requesting the long tail reports I have requested about 10 times with never a response. They are supposed to provide these as part of their service. They have not sent them probably because it means they have to do a bit of work.
They also limit the amount of searches you can do. So if you are trying to ge t alot of work done in one day and hit your quota, you cannot get any more data until the next day.
I won't be using them again, but they were helpful for a short time.
We tried this one out and compared it against other tools we like. We really like keyworddiscovery and the depth they provide over this tool. "To each their own" is probably true with keyword research tools
nice work Rebecca, I like it =)
Aw, thanks.
One more thing about both keycompete and Spyfu. I have tested this with a few client websites and some of them they came back with the exact list (give or take a few keywords) and other they didnt. I also noticed that they didn't have ads for "local and regional" geo-targeted campaigns.
I've been keeping my eye on SpyFu for awhile. They appear to have something similar.
https://www.spyfu.com/Domain.aspx?d=-449820611...
But...the results have never been that impressive / accurate.
I'd have to agree - after really digging into this tool, it's very very similar to SpyFu.com. This version just has pretty "charts" that SpyFu.com doesn't have. Perhaps some of the data is "newer" but, both are on the same track with how they get information.
The thing that worries me about key compete and spyfu - the data is way off. I looked at things I knew the budgets for and what they ranked for, you know all the things you are certain about - and these tools were both waaaaaaay off.
Yes I have also been disappointed with SpyFu. Also GoogSpy was a cool tool in theory but not too useful as it didn't cover enough keywords (or maybe I'm just too demanding!)
Hit up ShoeMoney, I'm sure he could give you some insight into how they get their "data".
https://www.shoemoney.com/2006/08/28/what-if-y...
Yes! Our first appearance in an SEOMoz post! I can go as far as to validate 1/10th of your sample search. Awecomm Web Strategies does (or did up until about a week ago) bid on "SEO."
At first I was a little puzzled by the "Great/Good/Ok" scale. Seems pretty general, and I'd definitely rate us as a great if I had to. The demo explains that it's based on your ranking (ad position, I think) for that keyword across different engines.
Very interesting. I'm going to be playing around with this later on some clients. Expect a write-up tomorrow on my blog on how well I score it.
Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, it seems to be an English or US only service. I get "1 domains were found that match your search criteria" for suchmaschinenoptimierung (search engine optimization in German). You will certainly understand that I am unwilling to pay $5 for "All 1 results for SUCHMASCHINENOPTIMIERUNG" ;-)
Yeah, I noticed it too. Too bad, but I can understand why they only target US (for now).
Hopefuly they will evolve to other countries.
suchmaschinenoptimierung? Geez... your keyword research must be a nightmare! (just kidding) ;-)
I posted a whole story on this a while back and am giving a way free keyword list from here up to 1000 on my site at Competitors keyword giveaway
I am suprised you all arn not making this link into an affiliate link at least.
Also you should check out SpyFu which is now in free beta and quickly gaining speed on keycompete. They also offer the ads the competitor ran and how much they bid, etc....
This "where they get their data from " question is a big issue, just as it is for Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery. It's hard to hang your hat on figures where the sample size isn't very large - or even known.
I remember talking to someone at Overture way back, suggesting ideas sending out their data via a full-fledged tool. There was some interest at the time, but a lot's changed since then.
Maybe the Site Explorer crew could add this to their toolset?
Sweet jesus! Imagine if someone actually improved on this, this would create a whole new marketing generation with crazy ROI levels. I am definetely going to check it out and maybe find who or what their sources are.
Thank you
Great story - I had seen keycompete yesterday and was wondering how they were managing to do that. Rebecca, I'm transfering that over to Sarah at NVI - she will give it a ride too~
No kidding; that's why Rand and I were so intrigued by KeyCompete and were aching for answers.