If you want to know who you are actually competing with on Google Ads, the answer is already in your account. The Auction Insights report names the other advertisers appearing in your auctions and shows how you compare, and it costs nothing.
The single most useful thing it tells you: whether you are losing because you are being outbid, or because you are not entering the auction at all. Those have completely different fixes.
This post covers how to find the report, what each metric means, what it cannot tell you, and the mistake that makes it expensive.
Finding and Reading It
Where It Lives
Google’s documentation on impression share metrics covers the underlying numbers this report compares you on.
Google’s documentation on the Auction Insights report explains that it is available at campaign, ad group and keyword level. The keyword level is where the useful detail is, because competition differs enormously between your core service terms and your broader ones.
Five Numbers Per Competitor
Impression share is how often an advertiser appeared out of the auctions they were eligible for. Overlap rate is how often you both appeared in the same auction. Position above rate is how often their ad was above yours when you both showed. Top of page rate is how often their ad appeared above the organic results. Outranking share is how often your ad ranked higher than theirs, or showed when theirs did not.
Read Them Together
Any one number in isolation misleads. A competitor with high impression share but low overlap is working a different set of searches. A competitor with high overlap and a high position above rate is genuinely beating you on the same terms.
Reading a Competitor’s Numbers Together
High Overlap, High Position Above
They are genuinely beating you on the same searches. This is the only pattern that justifies looking hard at your own rank and quality.
High Impression Share, Low Overlap
They are present constantly but mostly in different auctions from yours. Usually that means they bid on a wider set of terms, not that they are outcompeting you on yours.
Low Impression Share, High Overlap
A focused competitor working the same narrow set of searches you care about. Often the most direct rival you have, and the easiest to miss because their overall presence looks small.
Your Own Outranking Share
How often you ranked above them, or showed when they did not. Rising outranking share against a specific rival over several months is a better signal of progress than position on any single day.
What It Does Not Tell You
Nothing About Their Spend
The report shows relative presence and position. It says nothing about budgets, bids or cost. Anyone claiming to read a competitor’s spend from it is guessing.
Nothing About Their Results
A competitor appearing constantly may be generating excellent enquiries or quietly burning money. Visibility is not profitability, and you cannot tell which from the outside.
Nothing About Why They Rank Higher
Google explains that Ad Rank combines your bid, ad and landing page quality, the Ad Rank thresholds, auction context and the expected impact of your assets. A competitor above you may be paying less with better quality, which is the uncomfortable possibility worth considering first.
Using It Without Wasting Money
Do Not Treat It as a Scoreboard
This is the main trap. Outranking a named competitor feels like winning and is not a business objective. The number that matters is still cost per genuine enquiry, which we come back to in why more than half your Google Ads budget might be wasted.
Segment by Time
Run the report over several months rather than one week. A competitor who appeared heavily for a fortnight was probably testing. One whose share has climbed steadily for three months has made a decision.
Look for New Names
An unfamiliar advertiser with meaningful impression share usually means a new entrant in your market. You generally see it here before you see it in your enquiry count, which is a few weeks of warning.
Segment by Device
Google allows the report to be segmented, and mobile competition often differs from desktop. If a competitor dominates mobile and you sell to people searching on a phone in a car park, that gap matters more than the overall average suggests.
Check It Per Keyword
Competition varies by term. You may dominate your niche service and be nowhere on the general category term. That tells you where to focus far better than a campaign-level average.
What to Do With What You See
Separate Presence From Performance
Before changing anything, check whether your own impression share is being limited by budget or by rank. Google reports both, and they need opposite responses. Adding budget to a rank problem buys nothing.
Compete on Quality Before Bids
Google counts ad and landing page quality and the expected impact of assets in Ad Rank, so a competitor can outrank a higher bid with better assets. Adding sitelinks and callouts costs nothing, as we covered in ad assets and extensions.
Fix Tracking Before You Judge Anything
Without knowing which clicks became enquiries, this report pushes you towards decisions based on visibility alone. Google’s guide to conversion tracking covers the setup, and we go through the local version in conversion tracking for WhatsApp leads.
Change One Thing at a Time
Bid strategy changes and structural edits restart calibration, as we explain in the Google Ads learning period. Make one change, then wait a full conversion cycle before reading the report again.
When a New Name Appears
Treat It as Early Warning
An unfamiliar advertiser with meaningful share usually means a new entrant. You generally see it here weeks before it shows up in your enquiry count.
Find Out What They Are Offering
Search your own keyword and read their ad and landing page. That tells you what they are promising and whether it is something you can match or should ignore.
Do Not Panic Match Their Offer
A new competitor buying attention with a discount may not survive the quarter. Changing your pricing because of a name in a report is a large decision built on a small signal.
Seasonality Moves These Numbers
Competitors raise budgets around their own busy periods, and UAE demand shifts across summer and Ramadan. A drop in your share may be someone else’s seasonal push rather than anything you did.
A Sensible Monthly Routine
Open Auction Insights at keyword level for your three most important terms. Note any new names. Check whether your lost impression share is going to budget or to rank. Make one change that matches the answer. Write down what you changed and the date.
Next month, compare. That is a far more useful habit than watching position every day.
One Report It Pairs With
Auction Insights tells you who else is in the room. The search terms report tells you what you actually paid for. Read together they answer the two questions a small account has: who am I up against, and were those searches worth entering at all.
Who You Think You Compete With Is Usually Wrong
Most owners name the two or three businesses they know socially. The report routinely shows a different set: national brands bidding on local terms, aggregators and directories, and companies you have never heard of.
That gap is the single most useful thing the report produces. You cannot make sensible bidding decisions against a competitive set you imagined.
The Bottom Line
Auction Insights names the advertisers you share auctions with and shows how you compare on presence and position. Its real value is separating two problems that look identical from the outside: not entering auctions, and entering and losing them.
It tells you nothing about competitor budgets or results, and treating it as a scoreboard is how accounts end up overpaying for position nobody needed.
If you want someone to read this report properly for your account and act on what it says, our Google Search Ads management service covers it.
WhatsApp Hameed for a quick question, or call +971 56 544 6241 for a free consultation. There is also a contact form if you would rather write it out.
Knowing who you are bidding against is useful. Deciding to beat them regardless of cost is how good accounts go wrong.
