Google Ads Auction Insights: How to Read the Report and Beat Competitors

Most advertisers stare at clicks and cost and never ask the more useful question: who am I actually competing against, and am I winning? The auction insights report answers exactly that. It is one of the few places Google shows you real competitive data, and it turns guesswork about “why did my traffic drop” into a clear picture of who is taking your impressions and where. This guide breaks down every metric in the Google Ads auction insights report, shows you where to find it, and explains how to use it to take share back from competitors.

What is the Google Ads auction insights report?

Auction insights is a built-in report that compares your performance against other advertisers who competed in the same auctions as you. It does not show their budgets or their exact bids. Instead, it shows relative data: how often you both appeared, who ranked higher, and how much of the available visibility each of you captured.

It is available for Search and Shopping campaigns, and you can run it at the campaign, ad group, or keyword level. Reading it well is one of the fastest ways to find where an account is leaking share, which is why it is a core step in any serious Google Ads audit.

What do the auction insights metrics mean?

The report has six columns, and each one answers a different competitive question.

Read together, these tell you not just whether you are losing, but to whom and by how much.

Why does your own row show dashes in auction insights?

New users often worry when the “You” row shows a dash in three columns. Nothing is broken. Overlap rate, position above rate, and outranking share only exist in relation to another advertiser. You cannot overlap with yourself, sit above yourself, or outrank yourself, so those three columns stay blank on your own row and only fill in for competitors.

The left column describes your own placement, so it applies to you. The right column always describes a competitor’s position measured against you, which is why it only appears on the competitor rows.

Where do you find auction insights in Google Ads?

It takes a few clicks:

• Open your Campaigns, Ad groups, or Search keywords view.
• Tick the boxes next to the campaigns, ad groups, or keywords you want to analyze, or select all.
• Click Auction insights, or open it from the Insights and reports section.
• Use the date range and segment controls to slice the data.

The level you choose changes what you learn:

• Campaign level gives the big picture of who competes across a whole campaign.
• Ad group level narrows it to a tighter theme, like one service or product line.
• Single keyword level shows exactly who fights you for one specific term, which is the most actionable view of all.

Pulling the report on one ad group or a single keyword beats an account-wide view every time, because a blended average across mixed intents hides the competitor who is quietly beating you on your money terms.

How do you read the auction insights report?

Do not just glance at impression share. Read the row of each competitor as a story.

• A rival with high overlap rate and high position above rate is consistently beating you in shared auctions. That is your main threat.
• A rival with high impression share and high outranking share against you is dominating the space and probably outspending or outranking you.
• A new advertiser appearing in the report means fresh competition entered your market.
• Your own low top of page rate means your ads are showing, but often below the fold where they get fewer clicks.

Segment the report by device, time, and location to find exactly where you are weak, since you might dominate on desktop but lose badly on mobile.

What is a good number for each auction insights metric?

There is no single “good” figure for most of these, because four of the six metrics are measured against a specific competitor, not your account on its own. The trick is knowing what each number tells you and which lever moves it. Here is how to judge and improve each one, and what to look for when you check each competitor.

What is a good impression share?

It depends on the term. On your own brand keywords, aim high, often 80 to 95 percent or more, because losing brand impressions means handing warm demand to competitors. On broad, competitive generic terms, a lower impression share is normal and often smarter than paying for every click.

The more useful signal is why you are losing it. Google splits lost impression share into two causes: lost to rank and lost to budget. Lost to budget means you are capped and could grow by raising budget. Lost to rank means your Ad Rank is too low, which you fix with bids or Quality Score, not more budget.

What is a good overlap rate, and how do you use it?

There is no good or bad overlap rate. It is a map, not a score. A high overlap rate with a competitor means you show in the same auctions often, which marks them as a real rival for your traffic. A low overlap rate means you rarely collide, so they matter less to your strategy.

You cannot raise overlap rate to a target, and you would not want to. Instead you use it, and where it hurts, you reduce it:

• Rank your real rivals by sorting competitors on overlap rate. The ones at the top are where your competitive effort belongs.
• Cut wasteful overlap by adding negatives and tightening match types on searches where you meet a competitor but rarely convert, so you stop paying to enter those auctions.
• Catch new competitors early by watching for new domains climbing the overlap list, since aggressive newcomers show up here before you feel them in your costs.
• Pair it with position above rate, because a competitor with high overlap and a high position above rate is beating you often, which pushes them to the top of your fix list.

What is a good position above rate, and how do you improve it?

On a competitor’s row, you want their position above rate to be low, because it measures how often they beat you to a higher spot when you both appear. A high number for a rival is your clearest and most actionable problem: they are consistently outranking you head to head.

To bring it down, improve your Ad Rank on the terms where they win. Fix Quality Score first, meaning ad relevance, expected click-through rate, and landing page experience, then adjust bids. Check quality before you bid up, because a rival with stronger relevance can hold the higher slot while paying less, and buying past a quality problem is the most expensive fix there is. Find the competitor with the highest position above rate, then segment by keyword to see exactly where they beat you.

What is a good top of page rate and absolute top of page rate?

Higher is usually better on high-intent terms, since the top ad slots get the most clicks, and absolute top of page, the very first ad, is the premium position. But 100 percent is not always the goal. On some terms a slightly lower position with strong return beats overpaying for the top. On brand terms, aim high.

To improve both, raise Ad Rank with Quality Score and bids, strengthen your ad assets and extensions, and if the top slot is genuinely worth it, use Target impression share bidding set to top or absolute top of page. When you check competitors, a rival with a high absolute top rate but low impression share is entering fewer auctions and bidding hard when they do, which is a different threat than a broad, high-share competitor.

What is a good outranking share, and how do you improve it?

There is no fixed target, because every figure is relative to one competitor. A higher outranking share against a rival means you win more of the auctions you both enter. The value is in tracking it over time on your most important terms, not chasing a number.

To improve your outranking share against a rival, you have to win more of the auctions you share with them, and that comes down to Ad Rank. Push these levers on the exact terms where you lose to that competitor:

• Lift Quality Score by tightening ad-to-keyword relevance, writing stronger headlines and offers for a higher expected click-through rate, and sending clicks to a fast, relevant landing page.
• Raise bids on those specific keywords, not across the whole account.
• Add and improve ad assets like sitelinks and callouts, which raise Ad Rank and can push you above a competitor.
• Fix budget caps, because outranking share also counts auctions where you showed and the rival did not, so if your budget runs out early you appear less and your share drops.

Always confirm the terms convert before you push, since chasing outranking share on unprofitable searches just burns budget. And remember the tripwire: the number can climb on its own when a competitor trims budget or pauses, so read it next to overlap rate and position above rate before you call it a win.

How do you use auction insights to beat competitors?

This is where the report earns its keep. Turn the data into moves:

• Losing to budget? Raise the budget on campaigns where lost impression share to budget is high and the return is strong.
• Losing to rank? Improve Quality Score by tightening ad relevance, lifting expected click-through rate, and upgrading the landing page, then adjust bids.
• A rival keeps outranking you? Sharpen your offer and copy, or bid up on the specific terms where they beat you.
• New competitor appeared? Check their ads and landing pages, then defend your brand and top terms.
• Winning already? Scale budget on the terms where your outranking share is high and rising.

Used weekly, auction insights turns competitor pressure into a clear to-do list instead of a mystery.

A worked example: reading a real auction insights report

Here is a real auction insights report from a Search account we manage, with the competitor names anonymized. On the surface the account is winning, but the report reveals a specific rival worth acting on. The “You” row shows dashes in the three comparative columns, exactly as explained above.

Here is what each column means in this table:

• Impression share: the share of eligible impressions each advertiser captured.
• Overlap rate: how often that competitor showed in the same auctions as you.
• Position above rate: how often that competitor’s ad ranked above yours when you both showed.
• Abs. top of page: how often that advertiser’s ad was the very first ad on the page.
• Your outranking vs them: how often you ranked above that competitor, or showed when they did not.

What the report shows

The account leads the auction. Its 37.48% impression share is more than double the nearest rival, and a 52.55% absolute top of page rate means its ad is the very first ad more than half the time. Nobody else comes close on that.

But Competitor A is a real threat hiding behind the lead. They have the highest overlap rate at 32.93%, so they are the main rival for this traffic. Their position above rate of 40.32% means that when both ads show, Competitor A sits above the account about four times in ten. And the account outranks Competitor A only 32.51% of the time. Yet Competitor A’s absolute top of page rate is just 22.31%, so they sit high often but rarely take the number one slot. In plain terms, they bid or rank well enough to beat the account on placement in many shared auctions, while the account still owns the very top overall.

Competitors B and C are weaker threats. They overlap less, they beat the account on placement less often, and Competitor C barely reaches the top slot at all, with a 6.05% absolute top of page rate.

What to do about it

• Diagnose the missing share first. The account captures only 37.48% of eligible impressions, so more than 60% is on the table. Add the Search lost IS (budget) and Search lost IS (rank) columns in the campaign view. Lost to budget means raise budget on profitable campaigns. Lost to rank means improve Quality Score and bids.
• Attack Competitor A per keyword, not account-wide. Segment the report by keyword to find the exact terms where Competitor A outranks the account, then fix Ad Rank on those terms with tighter ad groups, stronger ads, and better landing pages before raising bids.
• Protect the lead. A 52.55% absolute top of page rate is strong, so keep Quality Score high and do not let a budget cap drop the account out of the top slot.
• Validate before pushing. Only scale on the terms where the auctions the account already wins are converting profitably.

That is the whole workflow in one report: see who competes, spot who beats you and where, then decide whether the fix is budget, rank, or a sharper offer.

What is the difference between Search and Shopping auction insights?

The report exists for both, but the columns differ. Search auction insights includes all six metrics above. Shopping auction insights is lighter, focused on impression share, overlap rate, outranking share, and position data, because Shopping ads do not compete on keywords the same way. For Shopping and Performance Max, competitive visibility often comes down to feed quality and bids, so pair the report with feed and structure work, and let smart bidding and automation do the heavy lifting once your data is clean.

How often should you check auction insights?

For active accounts, check it weekly on your top campaigns and any time performance shifts suddenly. A sudden traffic or conversion drop with no account changes usually shows up here as a competitor gaining share or a new advertiser entering. Reviewing it on a schedule means you spot competitive moves early, while you can still respond.

Can you get auction insights in Looker Studio, and why is the report sometimes blank?

Two practical questions come up constantly. First, the data does not flow into your usual dashboards. Google does not expose auction insights through the Ads API, and Looker Studio dropped the fields in 2024, so there is no native way to pipe it into a live report. The workaround is to schedule the report as an emailed download into a Google Sheet, then connect that sheet to your dashboard.

Second, if the report opens empty, nothing is broken. A campaign, ad group, or keyword only appears once it clears a minimum activity threshold for the period you picked, and you will not show at all if your own impression share sat under 10 percent for that range. Widen the date range before you decide there is no competition.

One more limit worth naming: auction insights cannot show you invalid or bot traffic draining your budget. Pair it with your search terms report and conversion data before you act on anything.

How Hustle Marketers uses auction insights to grow accounts

Reading competitive data and acting on it fast is exactly what separates a managed account from a drifting one. That is what we do. Hustle Marketers is a Google Partner and Meta Business Partner with more than twelve years of experience, over $780M in tracked client revenue across 2,500+ brands, and an Upwork Top Rated Plus profile with a 99% Job Success Score and a 5.0 rating. We are also Clutch Premier Verified with multiple award wins.

Auction insights is built into how we run accounts:

• Weekly competitive review. We track share shifts and new entrants, then adjust bids, budgets, and Quality Score to defend and grow. Our highest documented result reached 12.84x ROAS for one brand.
• Diagnosis, not guessing. When traffic drops, we use the report to find whether it is budget, rank, or a new competitor, and fix the real cause.
• Senior oversight. A senior specialist reads your data, not a junior. See our Google Ads expert and Google Ads consultant pages.

See how we run paid search day to day on our Google Ads management and full-funnel PPC management pages, or explore the wider work of our digital marketing agency.

Want to know who is taking your impressions? Get a free $500 Google Ads audit and we will read your auction insights and show you exactly where you are losing share. Book your free audit.

The bottom line on auction insights

Google Ads auction insights is the closest thing you get to seeing your competitors’ hand. It tells you who you are up against, who is beating you, and whether the fix is budget, rank, or a better offer. Ignore it and you optimize blind. Read it weekly and you turn competitive pressure into a clear plan: raise budget where you are capped, lift Quality Score where you are outranked, and scale where you are already winning. If you would rather have a team that reads this data daily and acts on it, we are ready. Book a free audit and we will show you where your share is going.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Google Ads auction insights report?

Auction insights is a free Google Ads report that compares your ads to competitors in the same auctions, showing impression share, overlap, and ranking data to win more visibility.

What does impression share mean in auction insights?

Impression share is the percentage of impressions you received out of the total you were eligible for. A low number means you are missing visibility to budget or rank limits.

Where is the auction insights report in Google Ads?

Select campaigns, ad groups, or keywords in Google Ads, then click Auction insights or open it from the Insights and reports section. It works for Search and Shopping.

What is a good impression share in Google Ads?

Aim for 80 to 95 percent or more on brand terms. On competitive generic terms, a lower share is normal. What matters most is losing to budget or rank.

How do you use auction insights to beat competitors?

Raise budget where you lose to budget, improve Quality Score and bids where you lose to rank, sharpen offers against rivals who outrank you, and scale where you already win.

How often should you check auction insights?

Check it weekly on top campaigns and any time performance shifts suddenly. Sudden drops with no account changes usually appear here as a competitor gaining share or entering the market.

Why is my own row blank in auction insights?

Because overlap rate, position above rate, and outranking share only exist relative to another advertiser. You cannot overlap with or outrank yourself, so they stay blank on your row.