Keyword spy software has become very popular with marketers who run pay per click campaigns. The best services are usually expensive monthly subscriptions. But now a new keyword spy application with an inexpensive one-time fee has become available, making this the candidate keyword search engine for the masses.

Brad Callen, author of the well known "Elite" series of keyword tools, including Keyword Elite, Affiliate Elite, and SEO Elite, has put out a free Firefox browser application that allows anyone to peer inside the PPC campaigns of AdWords advertisers. He calls his application PPC Web Spy.

What will you see with this magic tool? For starters, the keywords on which advertisers are bidding and the ad copy they are using with those keywords. This is the same data that is provided by the monthly subscription sites, like Keyword Spy. Of course, there is a catch, as there usually is with free software.

The catch is this: you will only be able to view a small sample of just 10 keywords from each advertiser's account. This is just enough to get you interested, and that is the idea. Once you have obtained the application and started using it, it will not be long before you see the tempting UPGRADE button at the bottom of the keyword popup screen - the one that encourages you to purchase the Platinum version of the plugin and get up to 100 of the advertiser's best money-making keywords.

Is it really worth upgrading? Well, if you can absorb the expensive monthly subscription rate of a service like Keyword Spy then I would say go with that. You'll get essentially unlimited access to every one of the keywords that each advertiser is bidding on for their ads. But if you aren't yet a full-time pay per click advertiser, the cheap Platinum version of PPC Web Spy is well worth the investment.

After you have set up PPC Web Spy you will find that all AdWords advertisements appear with a green "View Keywords" button. Click on the button and you will see a popup screen with keywords, ad text, average cost per keyword, daily ad spend, and the number of clicks per day for the advertiser.

For any AdWords advertiser, this data is a must have, and it won't be long before you feel strange viewing AdWords advertisements WITHOUT the PPC Web Spy program switched on (there is a button in the lower right part of your Firefox browser which allows you to turn it off).

So how useful is the application?

Initially, when I first downloaded the PPC Web Spy program I noticed that the plugin would sometimes show the "now loading" icon but refuse to display any keywords. I had a suspicion that the advertisers for these ads had huge keyword lists. But it seems that the PPC Web Spy service goes through upgrades and when this happens you will be prompted to re-download the plugin. This only takes a few seconds and you are back up and running (though a browser restart is necessary). So the software is constantly improving.

I find that I use this PPC Web Spy program virtually all the time now when performing Google searches. Is it the BEST keyword spy application out there? No. But I think, for now, it's the best low-cost keyword spy application that you are likely to get your hands on.

Stephen Carter is a software developer and internet marketer. To learn more about PPC Web Spy and what bonus items are available to it's customers, check out his PPC Web Spy review page at http://www.ppcwebspyprogram.com/

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