Data is a big deal.  We know how important accurate marketing data is to you.  So if some of our estimates seem off, here is your own personal cheat sheet to get them more accurate.

 Here at SpyFu we love data.  Getting you the most accurate info on what your competitors are up to is our number one priority.

Also our passion.

That’s why we take our information directly from google, either their keyword planner or the SERP itself, to find our information.  For better or worse.

*intro*

Most of the information on SpyFu is taken directly from a search engine result page, which is what the searcher is going to see anyway, so that data is a cold hard fact.  This is especially helpful when you’re broad matching on a keyword in Adwords and not even realizing it.  

When it comes to things like estimated ad budget, we know we’re not always perfect, but there’s a trick to it getting those numbers really close, and you hold the key.

If you’re looking up a direct competitor, and their budget numbers look a little fishy, check out your own domain on SpyFu.  Let’s say our estimate is about half of what you actually spend, then the competitor's budget will be about half too.  It’s just that simple.

This is because we’re getting faulty information from Google’s keyword planner. Not a huge deal when Google's numbers are off for one single keyword, but when you stack up thousands of keywords, thousands of little mistakes can really skew our estimates.

But again, if you are also bidding on those same keywords, you have a cheat sheet of how far the overall numbers are off.

We realize this trick is a little ‘hacky’, and we try and improve the raw estimates as much as possible, but for now this is the best thing we can do.