• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, January 14, 2015

AdWords, Kenshoo, and Marin Software received top honors in G2 Crowd's first search advertising solutions ranking based on ratings and reviews. Others in the cateogory include Ravin Tools, DoubleClick, Yahoo Advertising, Bing Ads, Adobe Media Optimizer, WordStream, and IgnitionOne. The company has put together a review site for search engine marketing platforms, and now ranks the top solutions by category.

G2 Crowd, a Yelp-like review platform for business software and tools, uses a software review engine to create The Grid, a visual representation of product rankings. The tool ranks products based on customer satisfaction reported by users and market presence determined from social and public data.

The Winter 2015 report is based on more than 450 reviews written by business professionals. Across all search advertising platforms, reviewers reported that the product they use meets their requirements at an average rate of 79%, and on average reviewers said they were 74% likely to recommend the product they use.

The site supports about 22,000 reviews on many categories ranging from human resource to accounting software, and now, search engine marketing. The search report comprises data from more than 450 reviews across 10 products.

Satisfaction rankings are generated from the user reviews, and market presence is calculated from vendor size, market share, Web indicators, and social impact. Based on a combination of these scores, each software solution is categorized as a Leader, High Performer, Contender, or Niche. Age of company, employee satisfaction, revenue, and more are all considered.

Later this month, G2 Crowd will publish other reports in the digital advertising space, cross-channel, search engine optimization that include Moz, Raven, and (possibly) Searchmetrics.