Raven Tools: Any Comparable Alternatives?

[matbennett]

Looking at the response that Rand posted in this thread, it sounds like a lot of the tool vendors are going to be having problems with Adwords API data. Where as Ravens email shot made it sound specific to them, it sounds like it will impact seomoz as well, which presumably means most/all providers.

Might be worth waiting for the dust to settle a bit before investing in new toolsets.  However no harm in asking other providers if/how they might be affected.

I can't think of another suite that does the organics/paid/social combination as well as Raven though.

[David_ODonnell]

Thanks Mat, just caught wind of this, this morning with SEOmoz's email out about it. Definitely agree with waiting for the dust to settle on this one.

Cheers.

[David_ODonnell]

Thanks, from my brief review they didn't seem to have adwords integration or client access.

[MrFrisbee]

I believe that SEOanalytics use SEMRush data which must at least partially come from Google.  Who knows what where when how who why etc.

Seems some clever thinking is required by the SEO bods to get some sort of manual upload perhaps from each account holder.

[matbennett]

Hi David,

Not sure if you spotted it, but adwords returned to Raventools today.

[MrFrisbee]

But it seems they only have it back until late December AND Google have changed it so the results are only for Exact match - not broad or phrase (see below).  This must make the data almost useless or at least more complex as you now need to include many more variants to get an idea of the popularity of a phrase.  Also, the data is incomparable with historic data.

"The new AdWords API provides volume data for exact keywords only, not broad or phrase keywords. It’s an AdWords API change across the board. It applies to any developer, company or tool provider who uses the AdWords API and has updated to the latest version. This issue isn’t related to the API access conversation Raven has been having with the AdWords team."

[matbennett]

I hadn't looked at it yet.  That does suck.

[David_ODonnell]

Interesting, thanks for following up. Just found this blog post after seeing your comment:

http://raventools.com/blog/raven-restores-google-adwords-management-reporting/

[David_ODonnell]

I am concerned that access has only been granted throughout December, I hesitate that if it is taken away again we're back at square one. We're continuing to work on something in-house at the moment.

I'm also curios what effect the exact match data has on the Adwords reports, I'll have to test this myself. I can't imagine that if it only included exact match data in those reports, that it would be very useful at all.

[David_ODonnell]

Quick update, the Adwords reports (Ads > Adwords etc) seem to be accurate, exact match api does not seem to affect them, so that is a positive.