PPC Web Spy

[Hamaru]

Hi,

I see that people have been asking a lot of questions about adwords. I use this software to help me out. It is 100% free and allows you to see the adwords keywords of any website. It also shows you how much they bid on each word. I know this will be a great help.

PPC Web Spy [affiliate part of link stripped - Linda]

 

[Daniel M. Clark]

I would like to see some discussion about this, if anyone knows anything about it - something more than "it's great, just go do it and don't ask questions". I was sent a link to this product via a newsletter from a person I have a great deal of respect for, but after reading the sales page for it, I have a lot of questions.

First, it's a toolbar, which automatically raises a red flag. It purports to tell you, in real time, what all the keywords that an advertiser bids on. I find this to be both unethical and absurd at the same time, but okay. Since I got the email from someone I trust, I decided to get the "free" toolbar to see if it really does that. I don't do PPC, so it was out of curiosity more than anything.

Side note - although I trust the person who sent me to the page, I despise sales pages. I gave them the address that I use for collecting spam for The Big Book of Spam

So, once I gave them my name (sort of) and my email and a password (not sure why they want a password, that's suspicious itself, to me), I was sent to a page that wanted me to "upgrade" (for a one-time cost of $97 of course). This is where things get sketchy.

When you upgrade, and you then convince someone else to download the toolbar, their toolbar (if I'm understanding correctly) hijacks Google results and inserts "your" affiliate links. That's what it promises - that the Google results, which look normal on the page, will actually be your affiliate links.

The person who sent me to this site obviously did so through an affiliate link obscoured by an aweber newsletter link. This person wants me to install this toolbar so that every time I search Google, he'll get paid on any links I click and buy from.

Now, if I'm wrong about this, please, someone tell me. If I'm reading it correctly...

 

[Linda Buquet]

Daniel, I'm sorry I somehow missed this post. I've posted about PPCWebSpy a couple times and didn't know what the back end, upgrade product does.

I just got the free one and the main feature I use it for is an ethical one. You can view all the destination URLs and if you click to research further it does not cost the advertiser. I just use it for niche research and out of curiosity, not really as a spy tool as I don't do affiliate PPC at all.

Agree it's not ethical to just steal people's campaigns and keywords and that back end upgrade sounds pretty suspicious for sure.