Spy on Your AdWords Competitors with SpyFu

By Jeffry Pilcher

Published on September 14th, 2010 in Digital Marketing

How would you like to know your competitor’s strategy for Google AdWords? (If you haven’t yet read The Financial Brand’s introduction to AdWords for banks and credit unions, you might want to do that first.) What keywords are they buying? How much is their daily budget? It’s easy to find all this information…and much, much more. All you need to do is type your competitor’s web address into SpyFu.com and you have access to a goldmine of data.

Take Bank of America, for example. Their daily Google AdWords budget ranges from $22,160 to $95,910. Their website, bankofamerica.com, gets 122,000 organic hits from Google searches every day vs. 56,800 clicks they pay for. BofA uses 30,465 keywords, among the top ten include "bank," "reverse mortgage" and "checking account."

You can see the specific ads BofA ran in which months for each keyword, and when they decided to change copy. For instance, for the search term "mortgage," BofA was running ads with refi rates in April, but switched to a free mortgage guide in May before taking a month off.

You can find this same kind of data for any company that’s buying Google’s AdWords — all for free! Pay for a SpyFu subscription ($69.95 monthly, $469.95 annually) and you have access to an unbelievable level of granular information and enhanced analytics capabilities.

SpyFu does an excellent job visualizing data, especially considering the wealth of information available to financial marketers. The site makes all the numbers that more digestible. You can even pit 2-3 advertisers against each other using SpyFu’s Kombat feature. This lets you compare keyword overlaps, budgets, organic search results and ads.


BANK OF AMERICA – SPYFU ADWORDS DATA

Free data includes budget, average ad position, paid vs. organic clicks, ten best paid keywords, number of keywords used, top ad competitors, organic search terms and competitors for organic search results, along with lists of the advertiser’s subdomains and other domains owned. That’s what you can get for free, just imagine what you get when you subscribe.

SpyFu Comparisons for Banks & Credit Unions

AdvertiserDaily BudgetKeywords UsedPaid Clicks
Bank of America$22,160 – $95,91030,46556,800
USAA$1,960 – $24,10034,65113,600
Wells Fargo$1,360 – $19,50023,8384,360
Chase$847 – $13,1008,1902,030
US Bank$213 – $2,6806,238248
Regions Bank$222 – $1,5506,115236
PNC$272 – $2,3904,658513
SunTrust Bank$65 – $9063,243108
Fifth Third Bank$60 – $9061,38356
Umpqua Bank$5 – $1188110
Navy FCU$1,440 – $34,6603174,830
Pentagon Federal$49 – $3131,40864
BECU$10 – $271714.5

Out of the top 10 largest credit unions in the US, only three have any kind of AdWords campaign running: Navy FCU, Pentagon Federal and BECU. But many banks don’t embrace SEM too. Even the much-loved Umpqua Bank only recently started tinkering with a small AdWords budget.

The detailed reporting SpyFu provides can reveal some interesting trends, like Navy Federal Credit Union who started their AdWords campaign in March 2009 and let it coast for about a year…then whammo! The budget skyrockets from around $1,000 to over $18,000 — that’s around $6.5 million annually (see SpyFu’s chart below).

SpyFu Keyword Comparisons

You can also type Google AdWord keywords into SpyFu to view a mountain of competitive data, allowing you to compare costs and even see how many of your competitors are running ads for the specific search terms you desire.

KeywordSearches/DayCost/ClickClicks/Day
online banking12,266$0.99 – $16.56215 – 272
checking account8,200$0.98 – $12.70111 – 141
bank account603$1.06 – $6.9932 – 41
bank33,333$0.79 – $3.1018,700 – 23,700
mortgageN/A$1.00 – $16.7221,400 – 27,000
home loan1,103$1.17 – $19.4649 – 62
credit card10,033$0.92 – $15.28637 – 806
cd rates3,666$1.05 – $10.7965 – 82
home equity laon1,103$2.51 – $41.8040 – 51
mobile bankingN/A$0.71 – $2.582 – 3
online bill pay403$0.91 – $4.263 – 4
savings account1,350$0.90 – $14.1262 – 78
money market account603$1.07 – $17.859 – 11
fico score903$0.94 – $15.6019 – 24
reverse mortgage2,016$0.97 – $16.1744 – 56
mortgage ratesN/A$1.45 – $24.24134 – 170
personal loan2,466$1.04 – $6.36161 – 204

SPYFU DATA FOR ‘ONLINE BANKING’

Free data includes cost-per-click, clicks-per-day, cost range per day, number of advertisers, number of search results, daily search volume, top advertisers, sample ads, related keywords and keywords other advertisers also bought. Here are the results for "online banking."

-- Article continued below --

The Financial Brand is your premier destination for comprehensive insights in the financial services sector. With our in-depth articles, webinars, reports and research, we keep banking executives up-to-date with the latest trends, growth strategies, and technological advancements that are transforming the industry today.

© 2025 The Financial Brand. All rights reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of The Financial Brand.