Your cost per click has risen 30% in a month and nothing in your account changed. Or impression share dropped and the sales team says a new competitor is "everywhere". Google Ads can't show you a competitor's bids or budget, but it can show you who you meet in the auction, how often, and who wins. That report is Auction Insights.
Most advertisers glance at it once, see a list of domain names and percentages, and move on. Used properly, it explains CPC changes, reveals new entrants weeks before they hurt you, shows which competitors only turn up in peak season, and tells you whether raising bids would actually win you anything.
This guide explains where to find Auction Insights at each level, what every metric really measures, how to read them together, how it works for Shopping and Performance Max, and a decision framework for turning the numbers into bid and budget changes.
Opening Auction Insights at the level that answers your question
Auction Insights is available for Search and Shopping campaigns, and in a more limited form for Performance Max. You can open it for a whole account, selected campaigns, an ad group or individual keywords in Search. The level you choose changes the answer, so pick it deliberately.
- In Google Ads, go to Campaigns and select the campaigns you want to analyse. Selecting all campaigns of one type gives an account-level view.
- Open Insights and reports and choose Auction insights. For an ad group or keyword view, select those rows first.
- Set a date range long enough to be meaningful: at least 30 days for most accounts, longer for low-volume ones.
- Use Segment to split by time (day, week, month or quarter) or device. The time segment is what turns a snapshot into a trend.
- Download the report. Exporting monthly builds the history you will need for trend analysis.
Rules of thumb for the level:
- Brand campaign: who is conquesting your name. Pair it with our guide to competitors bidding on your brand.
- Top non-brand keywords: who you really fight for your most valuable searches. Account-level views blur this with long-tail traffic.
- Individual campaigns by product line or location: competitors often differ by service or city, and an average hides it.
Auction Insights only shows competitors when there is enough data, so low-volume ad groups and keywords may show few or no rows.
The six Auction Insights metrics in plain English
Search campaigns show six statistics. Shopping campaigns show three of them. Each is calculated from the auctions you took part in, so competitors who never meet you do not appear, and their numbers describe their presence in your auctions, not across all of Google.
Semrush's PPC metrics guide describes the closely related top-of-page figure you also see in your own campaign columns as:
“Search top impression rate: How often your ads appear among the top ads (expressed as a percentage)”
— Semrush, PPC Metrics
| Metric | What it measures | Question it answers | Search | Shopping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Impression share | Impressions received divided by impressions eligible to receive, in the auctions you were in | How often does each advertiser show up? | Yes | Yes |
| Overlap rate | How often a competitor's ad showed when yours also showed | How directly do we compete? | Yes | Yes |
| Position above rate | When both showed, how often theirs was above yours | When we meet, who usually wins the position? | Yes | No |
| Top of page rate | How often an advertiser's ad showed above the organic results | Who buys prominence? | Yes | No |
| Absolute top of page rate | How often an advertiser's ad was the very first ad above the organic results | Who takes the number one spot? | Yes | No |
| Outranking share | How often your ad ranked higher than theirs, or showed when theirs did not | Overall, how often do we beat them? | Yes | Yes |
The "You" row is your own baseline. Every competitor row should be read against it.
Reading the metrics in pairs instead of one at a time
Single numbers mislead. Pairs tell a story.
Overlap rate with position above rate
A competitor with 70% overlap and 65% position above rate meets you in most auctions and usually beats you. That is your main rival. A competitor with 70% overlap and 15% position above rate meets you often but usually sits below you, which is less urgent. A competitor with 10% overlap and 90% position above rate is strong on a small slice of your traffic, often a specific location, device or time of day; segment to find where.
Impression share with top of page rate
High impression share with low top-of-page rate means the advertiser appears often but cheaply, often at the bottom of the page. Lower impression share with high absolute top rate suggests someone bidding hard on a limited budget, or concentrating on specific hours. Budget-limited aggressive bidders tend to vanish in the evening or late in the month.
Your impression share with your outranking share
Outranking share includes auctions where you showed and they did not, so it rises with your own impression share. If your outranking share against a rival falls while your impression share is steady, they are winning more of the head-to-head auctions. If both fall together, the problem may be your own budget or rank, not them.
Spotting new entrants and seasonal competitors early
New competitors rarely arrive at full strength. They creep in. Segment by week or month and watch for these patterns:
- A new domain with rising impression share over three or four periods. This is a new entrant ramping up budget.
- A competitor whose impression share appears only in certain months. Seasonal entrants such as retailers in November and December or tax firms before deadlines push CPCs up for a few weeks, then disappear.
- A sudden jump in someone's absolute top rate without a matching impression share change: they raised bids or changed bid strategy, often to a target impression share strategy.
- Domains that look like aggregators or lead sellers. These often bid on high-value terms in bursts.
When a new name appears, look at their ads in the Ads Transparency Center, check their landing pages, and use third-party tools to judge their scale. Our guide to estimating competitor website traffic explains how much weight to put on those estimates, and competitor ad research covers studying their creative.
Diagnosing a rising CPC with Auction Insights
When cost per click jumps, work through this sequence before changing anything. It separates competition from self-inflicted causes.
| Step | Check | If yes, likely cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Did your own settings change (bid strategy, targets, match types, new keywords)? | Self-inflicted; review the change history first |
| 2 | Did your Quality Scores or expected click-through rates fall? | Ad or landing page relevance; see Quality Score |
| 3 | Did a new competitor appear, or did an existing one's impression share jump? | More competition in the auction |
| 4 | Did competitors' top or absolute top rates rise while their impression share stayed flat? | Competitors bidding for higher positions |
| 5 | Did your own absolute top rate rise? | Your bids or strategy are buying position, which costs more |
| 6 | Is the change limited to one device, location or time? | Segment-specific competition; adjust there, not everywhere |
Step 5 is often missed. Automated bidding with a target impression share or aggressive targets can push you into position one more often, and the higher CPC is the price of that position, not competitors' doing. If Quality Score is the issue, our guide to improving Quality Score will do more for your CPC than any bid change.
The flip side is the logic every bidder in your auction is following. As Semrush puts it:
“Higher bids can elevate your standing in ad auctions, resulting in more impressions.”
— Semrush, PPC Metrics
When several competitors act on that logic at once, everyone pays more for the same positions. Auction Insights is how you see whether that is what is happening.
Auction Insights for Shopping and Performance Max
Shopping auction insights show impression share, overlap rate and outranking share only, because Shopping ads appear in carousels and grids where "position above" works differently. The competitor names are store names rather than display URLs. Shopping competition often looks very different from Search competition: marketplaces and large retailers dominate, and price matters more than ad copy. Our Google Shopping ads guide covers the feed and pricing levers that move these numbers.
Performance Max is harder to read. The campaign serves across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps, and auction insights for it reflects only the parts of that inventory where a like-for-like comparison makes sense. Treat Performance Max auction data as directional: useful for spotting who is present, much less useful for diagnosing position or CPC. If you run Performance Max alongside Standard Shopping or Search, compare auction insights in those campaigns too, since they are usually clearer.
Two cautions apply to both. First, competitor lists can include advertisers who are not really competitors (marketplaces, comparison sites, sometimes your own resellers). Second, impression share in Shopping depends on feed coverage; products that are disapproved or out of stock don't enter auctions, which can make your numbers fall without any competitive cause.
Turning Auction Insights into bid and budget decisions
The point of all this is a decision. Use the matrix below as a starting point, always checked against profitability. Winning more auctions is only good if the extra clicks pay for themselves; our guide to profit-based bidding covers setting targets that reflect margin.
| What you see | What it usually means | Sensible response |
|---|---|---|
| Your impression share low, lost mostly to budget | Demand exceeds budget | Raise budget if CPA or ROAS is on target; otherwise narrow targeting |
| Your impression share low, lost mostly to rank; rival's position above rate high | Outbid or out-qualified | Improve ad relevance and landing page before bids; then test higher targets |
| Rival with high overlap and rising absolute top rate | Competitor buying the top spot | Decide if position one is worth it; often position two converts at lower cost |
| Seasonal entrant pushing CPCs for a few weeks | Temporary auction pressure | Hold targets, accept some lost impression share, or plan seasonal budgets in advance |
| Competitor strong only on mobile or in certain hours | Segmented strategy | Compete where your conversion rate is strong; concede where it isn't |
| Your outranking share falling, CPC stable, conversions stable | Rival winning some auctions you didn't need | Often no action needed |
For how bid strategies respond to these changes, see Google Ads bidding strategies. For budget planning around seasonal competitors, see how to set a PPC budget.
A worked example: the emergency plumber and the new aggregator
Example: a hypothetical local plumbing company, illustrative numbers.
The company's main non-brand campaign had a steady average CPC of £6.80 for a year. In October it rose to £8.90 and conversions fell from 120 to 101 a month. Auction insights, segmented by month, showed:
- Two long-standing local competitors with unchanged impression share (around 45% and 38%) and steady position above rates.
- A new domain, a national lead-generation site, at 12% impression share in August, 29% in September and 41% in October, with a 78% absolute top rate.
- The company's own absolute top rate had risen from 31% to 44%, because its target impression share strategy was fighting for the top spot.
Segmenting by device showed the aggregator was strongest on mobile in the evening. Instead of raising bids across the board, the company switched the campaign from target impression share to target CPA, kept its existing evening bid adjustments for its own call centre hours and added stronger call assets. Over the next month average CPC settled at £7.40, conversions recovered to 114 and cost per conversion fell. The company conceded some top spots to the aggregator and won more of the auctions that actually produced booked jobs.
Keeping a monthly competitor log from Auction Insights
The interface is good for a snapshot and poor for history. A simple sheet fixes that. Each month, export auction insights for your key campaigns and paste them into a tab with these columns: month, campaign, competitor domain, impression share, overlap rate, position above rate, top of page rate, absolute top rate and outranking share. Then add your own average CPC and conversions for the same month.
Three charts are enough: each major competitor's impression share over time, your outranking share against each, and your CPC over the same period. When CPC moves, the chart usually shows why. Our guide to Google Sheets for marketers has formulas for building this kind of tracker quickly, and the same history is useful when you are reviewing Google Ads recommendations that suggest raising budgets or targets.
Questions advertisers ask about Auction Insights data
Why does a competitor appear in auction insights but not when I search?
Auction insights reflects thousands of auctions across locations, devices, times and query variations. Your own searches are a tiny, personalised sample, and repeatedly searching without clicking can even reduce how often your own ad shows to you. Use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool instead.
Can I see competitors' bids or budgets in auction insights?
No. Auction insights shows how often competitors appeared and where they ranked relative to you. It does not show their bids, budgets, Quality Scores, clicks or spend. Rising impression share and top-of-page rate suggest higher bids or budgets, but you are inferring.
Why is my impression share in auction insights different from the campaign's Search impression share column?
The date ranges, filters or levels may differ, and auction insights only shows rows when there is enough data. Make sure you compare the same campaigns, date range and network settings.
Does auction insights include Search Partners?
Auction insights for Search reports on Google Search. If your campaign also uses Search Partners, that traffic isn't represented in the competitor comparison, so treat the data as a Google Search view.
How often should I check auction insights?
Monthly for most accounts, weekly during peak season or after a sudden CPC change. Exporting the data each month into a sheet builds the trend history the interface itself doesn't keep in a convenient form.
Your next Auction Insights review, in 30 minutes
Open auction insights for your brand campaign and your top non-brand campaign, segment by month for the last six months, and export both. Identify your top three rivals by overlap rate, note any new domain with rising impression share, and check whether your own absolute top rate has drifted up. If CPCs rose, work through the diagnostic table before touching bids.
If you'd like experienced eyes on what your auction data says about your market, our PPC management team can review your campaigns and competitive position. Get a quote for a Google Ads audit.
Further reading on Google Ads Auction Insights
- Google Ads Recommendations: Which to Accept and Which to Dismiss
- Customer Match: Use Your Customer Lists in Google Ads
- Enhanced Conversions in Google Ads: Recover Lost Conversion Data
