How Auction Insights works
Auction Insights is a report inside Google Ads listing the other domains that entered the same auctions as you over a chosen period. It can be run for the whole account, a campaign, an ad group or a single keyword, and it only appears once there is enough data for Google to publish it without exposing any one advertiser’s settings.
The columns are all relative. Impression share is the portion of eligible auctions each advertiser appeared in. Overlap rate says how often a rival showed when you did. Position above rate says how often they beat you when you both appeared. Top of page and absolute top of page rates say where on the page each of you tended to land, and outranking share folds showing up and showing higher into one comparison.
Why Auction Insights matters
It is the only place Google names your live competition rather than your assumed competition. Businesses routinely find that the rivals they worry about barely bid, while an aggregator, a marketplace or a franchise from another city takes most of the auctions. That changes what you write in the ad and what you argue on the landing page.
It also dates changes. When enquiries go quiet, running the report over the quiet weeks against an equal stretch before them shows whether a new advertiser arrived or an existing one pushed harder — a very different situation from a tracking fault or a seasonal dip.
Common mistakes with Auction Insights
Reading the columns as budgets is the first. Nothing in the report reveals what anyone spends, what they bid or how many conversions they get; a rival with a high impression share may be buying traffic at a loss. Next is running it across the whole account, where a brand campaign and a generic campaign are averaged into a picture that describes neither. Segment by campaign at least, and by keyword when a specific term matters.
Then there is reacting to one competitor’s spike. Advertisers test, and a fortnight of aggression often ends on its own. Compare like with like and look for a pattern that holds.
How to act on it
Start with the segment that earns money and ask two questions: are we losing auctions we should be winning, and to whom. If a direct competitor is beating you on position, look at Ad Rank before the bid, because relevance and landing page are usually cheaper to fix. If it is an aggregator you cannot outspend, compete where they are weak: local proof, service detail, a person who answers the phone, terms they cannot match.
Then take the finding out of the ad account. Names from this report are a research list for pricing, offers and page content, not only for bidding, and the same names usually turn up in an organic competitor analysis as well.