Who Is Bidding On My Keywords? How To Actually Find Out

You can find out which domains you are competing against in the same auctions, how often they show up above you, and roughly what they are spending. You cannot pull a list of the keywords they bid on. No tool has that, including the paid ones. Everything beyond Auction Insights is modelled, and the models disagree with each other by a lot.

That distinction matters because most advertisers go looking for a keyword list, buy a tool, get an estimate, and then make budget decisions on a number nobody verified. This guide covers what Google actually gives you for free, what the paid tools genuinely see, how far off their spend estimates can be, and what to do when a competitor starts bidding on your brand name.

If you would rather have this run for you every month, that is part of how we work as a PPC agency: the competitive audit is a standing deliverable, not a one-off report.

Can you actually see who is bidding on your keywords?

Partly. Google’s Auction Insights report names the domains that competed in the same auctions as you, and shows how you compared against each one. It does not show their keywords, their budgets, their bids or their ad copy. For keywords and ad text you need the Ads Transparency Center or a third-party tool, and for spend you are looking at an estimate.

So the honest version of the answer has three layers:

1. Verified, from Google: which domains compete with you, and how often they beat you. Free, inside your own account.
2. Observable, from Google: the actual ads a domain is running, through the Ads Transparency Center. Free, public.
3. Modelled, from tools: their keyword set, traffic and spend. Paid, and it is an inference from SERP sampling, not account data.

Anyone selling you layer three as if it were layer one is overselling. Treat their numbers as direction, never as decisions.

How to find competitors in Auction Insights, step by step

Auction Insights sits inside your own Google Ads account and takes about a minute to pull. It is available for Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, and you can run it at account, campaign, ad group or keyword level.

1. Open the campaign, ad group or keyword list you care about.
2. Select the rows you want to compare, or leave them unselected for the whole level.
3. Open the report and switch the view to Search or Shopping.
4. Set the date range to at least 30 days. Shorter windows fall below the activity threshold and come back empty.
5. Export to CSV. This is the only reliable way to keep a history, for reasons covered further down.

For a field-by-field walkthrough of the report itself, including how to read it at ad group level, see our deeper guide to Google Ads Auction Insights.

Run it at keyword level for your highest-spend terms, not just at campaign level. Campaign-level data blends brand and non-brand auctions together, which hides the competitor who only shows up on your brand name.

What does each Auction Insights metric actually tell you?

Six metrics for Search, three for Shopping. Most advertisers read impression share and stop, which is the one metric that tells you least about the competitor and most about yourself.

Auction Insights metrics and the decision each one supports

The pairing that matters is overlap rate against position above rate. High overlap and high position above rate means one competitor is systematically beating you in the auctions you both want. That is where a Quality Score and ad relevance review pays, and it is worth reading alongside branded versus non-branded search so you know which half of the account is actually under attack.

Why does Auction Insights show no competitors?

Because Google hides low-activity rows. Google’s documentation states plainly that “the auction insights report doesn’t show insights when impression share is less than 10%”, and that only keywords and ad groups meeting a minimum activity threshold get the report at all. An empty report is usually a data volume problem, not an absence of competitors.

Four fixes, in order:

• Widen the date range. 7 days rarely clears the threshold. Use 30 to 90.
• Move up a level. If a keyword returns nothing, run the ad group or campaign.
• Check your own impression share first. If yours is under 10% in that segment, you are the low-activity advertiser.
• Check the campaign type. The report covers Search, Shopping and Performance Max. Display, Video and Demand Gen have no equivalent.

Does Auction Insights work for Performance Max?

Yes, with limits worth knowing before you build a report around it. Google provides auction insights for Performance Max on Search and Shopping ads served on the Search Network, available at account and campaign level, segmented between Search and Shopping ads. You do not get asset group level data, and you do not get the other channels PMax serves on.

Segmentation across the whole report is limited to time and device. There is no geo segment and no audience segment. That single limitation quietly breaks a lot of reporting plans, because the question people usually want answered is “who is beating me in Texas”, and Auction Insights cannot answer it.

If you are working on PMax specifically, the controls that actually change who you compete against are covered in Performance Max brand exclusions setup and the Performance Max negative keywords strategy.

Can you export Auction Insights to Data Studio or the API?

No, and this is the part most guides still get wrong. Auction insights fields were removed from the Google Ads connector for Looker Studio, now renamed back to Data Studio as of April 2026, and the equivalent API metrics sit behind a closed allowlist that returns a METRIC_ACCESS_DENIED error for ordinary developer tokens. Practitioner reporting on the connector change puts the removal in late 2024, for new data sources first and existing ones shortly after.

What that means in practice:

• Manual CSV export is the only dependable way to keep an auction insights history. Export monthly and keep it in one sheet.
• Any dashboard template promising an automated competitive module is describing something that no longer works.
• If someone shows you a live auction insights dashboard, ask which account it is pulling from and when it last refreshed.

We treat this as a reporting integrity issue rather than a tooling gap, and it is one of the reasons our own reports separate what is measured from what is modelled. More on that in reporting integrity.

How do you see a competitor’s actual ads without paying for a tool?

Use the Google Ads Transparency Center. It shows the ads a verified advertiser is running, by domain, with format and region filters, and it is free. For Meta, the Ad Library does the same job. Between them you can see creative, offers and landing pages, which is often more useful than a keyword estimate.

The manual method that still works, and costs nothing:

1. List your 20 highest-spend keywords.
2. Search each one in an incognito window, with location set to your target geo.
3. Screenshot the paid results. Log the advertiser, headline, offer and landing page.
4. Repeat on the same day each month.

Three months of that log tells you which competitors are permanent and which were testing. Pair it with Google Keyword Planner for the competition and top-of-page bid ranges on the same terms, which gives you a second read on how contested each auction is. No tool gives you that, because tools report what they sampled, not what a buyer in your city saw on a Tuesday morning.

Which competitor research tools are worth paying for?

Only after you have exhausted Auction Insights and the Transparency Center. Paid tools are useful for breadth, for finding competitors you did not know about, and for tracking change over time. They are not useful as a source of truth about spend.

What each competitor research tool can and cannot see

Two rules for using any of them. First, check the same competitor in two tools before you quote a number, because the spread is usually embarrassing. Second, record the date you pulled it. Tool pricing and methodology both change, and a screenshot with no date is not evidence.

How accurate are competitor ad spend estimates?

Less accurate than the confident interfaces suggest. The estimates are built from SERP sampling and modelled click and CPC assumptions, so they drift most on exactly the accounts people care about: heavy brand spend, tight geo targeting, and anything running mostly on Performance Max or Shopping.

Use estimates for relative movement, not absolute numbers. “Competitor A roughly tripled its paid footprint in this category over six months” is a defensible read. “Competitor A spends $42,000 a month” is a number you should never put in a client deck without labelling it as an estimate and naming the tool.

Want this done properly on your account? Our free PPC audit includes a competitive read: who you actually compete against, where they are beating you, and what your brand terms are costing you. No obligation, and you keep the findings either way.

Is bidding on competitor keywords legal?

In the US, yes, bidding on a competitor’s brand name as a keyword is generally permitted, and Google’s own policy allows it. What is restricted is the use of a trademark in the ad text. That is the distinction that decides whether you have a complaint worth filing or a competitor you simply have to outbid.

So there are two separate questions:

• Keyword targeting: allowed. A competitor can bid on your brand name, and you can bid on theirs.
• Ad text and implied affiliation: restricted. Using someone’s trademark in the headline or description, or implying you are them, is a policy matter you can report.

Rules differ by country and by trademark owner, so if you are advertising outside the US, check the policy for that market before you build a conquesting campaign.

How do you stop competitors bidding on your brand name?

You mostly cannot stop the bidding. What you can do is make it expensive for them and cheap for you, and file a complaint when they cross into your trademark in the ad text.

The order of operations that works:

1. File the trademark complaint if your brand appears in their ad copy. This is the only lever that actually removes an ad.
2. Own your brand terms properly. A dedicated brand campaign with exact match, strong ad relevance and sitelinks. Brand CPCs are cheap when your Ad Rank is high.
3. Check absolute top of page rate in Auction Insights on brand terms only. If a competitor is taking the first position on your own name, that is the number to fix.
4. Do the maths before you defend everything. If their overlap rate is 4% and they never outrank you, ignore them and spend the budget on non-brand.

One caution on the popular advice to pause brand bidding entirely because you rank first organically. Test it as a geo holdout for at least 30 days before you believe it. In our experience the answer differs by category, and in competitive categories the paid click you drop gets bought by whoever is bidding on you.

How do you run a competitive paid search audit every month?

Turn it into a cadence, not a project. A competitive read is only useful as a trend line, and the export limits mean you have to build that history yourself.

A 30-day competitive audit cadence

Keep it in one sheet with four tabs: Auction Insights export, SERP snapshot log, brand-term defence tracker and trademark complaint tracker. Build it once and it takes about twenty minutes a month to maintain.

If you are building the wider keyword picture at the same time, run it alongside PPC keyword research and your negative keyword mining, because competitor search terms are one of the better sources of both new keywords and new negatives.

What changed in 2026 for competitive research?

Four changes, and together they make the old playbook unreliable.

• Auction insights cannot be dashboarded. The connector fields are gone and the API metrics are allowlisted. Manual export only.
• Looker Studio is Data Studio again, renamed in April 2026. Templates and internal documentation naming the old product are a freshness signal to fix.
• Performance Max auction insights exist at account and campaign level, segmented between Search and Shopping, which is more than the black box people still describe.
• AI Max for Search changes which auctions you enter. It left beta in April 2026 and brought search term matching and final URL expansion, and Google began auto-upgrading campaigns using automatically created assets or campaign-level broad match from 1 September 2026. Broader query matching means your competitor set widens without you changing a keyword.

That last one is the practical consequence most people have not absorbed yet. If your overlap rates shifted in September and you changed nothing, check whether your campaigns were upgraded.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a way to know if a competitor is bidding on your brand name?

Yes. Run Auction Insights filtered to your brand campaign or brand keywords only. Any domain appearing there with meaningful impression share is bidding on your brand. Cross-check the actual ad in the Ads Transparency Center to see whether they are using your trademark in the copy, which is the reportable part.

How can I find out all the terms my competitors are bidding for?

You cannot get the full list. Google does not expose it and paid tools infer it from SERP sampling, so they catch a portion and estimate the rest. The practical substitute is Auction Insights for who, the Transparency Center for what their ads say, and a tool for breadth, with all of it treated as directional.

Can I know the bidding budget of my competitor in Google Ads?

No. Budgets are not exposed anywhere. Spend estimates from tools are modelled from sampled impressions and assumed CPCs, and the same competitor will often come back with very different numbers in two tools. Use them for relative movement over time and never quote them as fact.

Why does Auction Insights show no competitors?

Because rows below 10% impression share are suppressed and low-activity keywords and ad groups do not generate the report. Widen the date range to 30 to 90 days, run the report a level up, and check whether your own impression share in that segment is under 10%.

What is the difference between search impression share and Auction Insights impression share?

Search impression share in your campaign reports is your own share of eligible impressions. Auction Insights impression share is calculated per domain for the set of auctions being compared, so the numbers are built on different denominators. They will not match, and a mismatch is not a bug.

Can you get Auction Insights through Google Ads Scripts?

Treat this as unreliable. With the API metrics allowlisted, script-based pulls are not something to build a reporting process on. Export the CSV monthly instead. If you need automation, automate the reminder and the filing, not the extraction.

How do you find competitor keywords for free?

Three free methods, in order of value: Auction Insights for the competing domains, the Ads Transparency Center for their live ads and landing pages, and your own search terms report for the queries you already share with them. Between them you can reconstruct most of a competitor’s commercial intent without paying for a tool.

Is bidding on competitor keywords worth it?

Sometimes, and it is a maths question rather than a principle. Conquesting converts worse and costs more, so it only pays where your margin and lifetime value absorb a higher CPA, or where you have a genuinely better offer to put in front of their buyers. Test it as its own campaign with its own budget so it cannot quietly drain your non-brand performance.

What to do next

Pull Auction Insights for your top five keywords with a 90-day window, then check your brand terms separately. That takes ten minutes and it will tell you more than any tool subscription.

If it turns up a competitor who is consistently outranking you, the fix is usually Ad Rank and offer, not budget. That is the work we do every day as a PPC management team, and you can see how it plays out in the 20x leads for a law firm and Armorpoxy 12.84x ROAS case studies.

Start with a free $500 PPC audit. We will tell you who you are really competing with, and what it is costing you.