“How much are competitors spending? And why are they above me?” Almost everyone who pays for advertising asks this. Some services promise to “show” it, but they give an estimate, not data from the auction itself. Real data on who meets whom in ad impressions exists only in Google Ads, in the Auction insights report. You can open it yourself, without a contractor, in a few minutes.
Below: where the report is, three numbers worth looking at, what it leaves out, what to check yourself and where practitioners disagree. We checked the Google Help Center on 7 October 2026. Menu item names are given as in the English Google Help Center; depending on the interface version they may differ slightly.
What the report is and where to open it
What it is. When someone types a search, Google decides in a fraction of a second whose ads to show and in what order. That is called an auction. The Auction insights report compares your performance with other advertisers who take part in the same auctions as you. According to the Google Help Center, it is available for Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns (Performance Max is an automated format in which Google itself chooses where to show your ads).
Where to find it. In the Campaigns menu, open Campaigns. Tick the box next to the campaign you want and click Auction insights. For Search campaigns you can also run the report for ad groups and keywords. If you selected Search and Shopping campaigns together, you have to choose in the dropdown which one to view. For Performance Max the data is split into Search and Shopping ads. The report appears only where there are enough impressions, so a small campaign may not have one.
Three numbers worth looking at
For each site, Google shows several statistics in the report. Here are the three main ones, worded as in the Help Center:
- Impression share. How many impressions you received out of those you could have received. If it is 40%, you received 40 out of 100 possible impressions. The competitors’ rows show their share.
- Overlap rate. How often another advertiser’s ad received an impression when yours did too. Example from the Help Center: “60%” means that out of every 10 times your ad showed, this competitor’s ad showed as well in six.
- Outranking share. How often your ad ranked higher than the other advertiser’s ad, or showed when theirs didn’t. “20%” means that in two cases out of ten you came out ahead of them.
For Search campaigns there are three more: position above rate (how often the competitor was above you when both ads showed), top of page rate and absolute top of the page rate. The data can be segmented by time and device.
What the report leaves out
- Competitors’ bids and budgets. They are not among the statistics listed in the Help Center. The report tells you who is above you and how often, but not how much they pay.
- Small players. The Help Center says the report doesn’t show insights when impression share is less than 10%. It doesn’t explain exactly how this threshold applies to competitor rows, so don’t conclude “I only have five competitors”.
- Search partner sites. Google says data from them is not included.
- The same numbers the competitor sees. Their impression share in your report may differ from what they see in their own: their eligible impressions overlap with yours only partly. The Help Center gives an example: 100% in your report, 50% in the competitor’s own report.
- A separate competitor in the “google.com” row. It can appear if you yourself use Google-hosted domains or a Google Business Profile, or if a competitor’s page sits on a Google site. So it is not always one more advertiser.
One more important caveat from the Help Center: impression share is an estimate. Google writes that small fluctuations over time don’t necessarily mean any action is needed.
Where money gets lost: what to check yourself
1. Other niches in the list. If sites from a completely different field show up among your competitors, it may mean your ads are showing for unwanted searches. Practitioners link this to broad match keywords without negative keywords (words you don’t want ads to show for). Broad match is not scary by itself; it is scary without negative keywords. What to do: look at which searches your ads appear for. We described how in the article on three checks.
2. Trend, not a single snapshot. Set the period to “this month” and compare it with the previous one. Practitioners say that if a competitor’s impression share grows noticeably, they have probably raised their budget or bids. That is an assumption, not a fact: the report doesn’t show the reason. But you can see that something changed in the auction, and you can check your own numbers: enquiries and cost per enquiry.
3. Where impressions disappear: budget or rank. Add the columns “Search lost IS (budget)” and “Search lost IS (rank)” to the campaigns table (columns icon, “Competitive metrics” menu). The first shows how often your ads didn’t show because the budget was insufficient, the second because of poor Ad Rank. These are two different problems. According to the Google Help Center, impression share can be improved with a bigger budget, a higher bid, narrower regional targets and better ad quality. If the loss is due to budget, it is a question of money. If it is due to rank, money alone won’t fix it: look at the ad texts and the landing page. More on budgets in the article on doubling a budget.
4. A new campaign: too early to trust the report. Practitioners note that in the first days of a new campaign (especially Performance Max) the report may show the “wrong” competitors, for example a large marketplace you don’t actually compete with: the numbers are calculated on the searches the system has already collected. According to them, the search terms report fills in after about a week. The Google Help Center says nothing about this, so treat it as colleagues’ observation. Draw conclusions about competitors after the first or second week.
What impression share is “normal”: where practitioners disagree
There is no single number: practitioners name different ones, and we won’t choose between them for you.
- Impression share. Some say 60–70% is a good result and 100% is practically unreachable. Others consider 40–65% the working range, and anything above 80–90% means the budget is too high relative to demand. There is also the view that ideally it should be 100%, and when it is lower you should raise bids and budget.
- Overlap rate. Some call a competitor with overlap above 70% your main direct rival; others get wary from 50%.
The official Google Help Center gives no “right” percentage. It explains what the metric means and suggests checking whether you could reach more people by raising a bid or budget. From our own experience, we don’t look at the number in isolation. What matters more is whether it changed compared with last month and what happened to enquiries and cost per enquiry in the meantime.
From our practice
When we review accounts, we almost always look at this report. It has happened that an owner was sure: “I practically have no competitors.” We searched by hand on Google and really found nobody, while the report showed a site with a noticeable impression share. Our explanation is this: a manual search shows only what we see from our own place and at our own moment, while the report is compiled from all the searches your ads appeared for. This is a single case from our experience, not statistics, but that is exactly why we don’t stop at searching by hand.
Summary: what to do in ten minutes
- Open Campaigns, select a campaign and click Auction insights.
- Check whether there are sites from a different field among the competitors. If there are, check the searches.
- Compare this month with the previous one: who has started appearing next to you more often.
- Add the lost impression share columns (budget and rank) and see where you lose more.
- Don’t measure yourself against other people’s “norms”: compare with last month and with what is happening to enquiries.
You can read how we set up advertising in the search advertising, Performance Max and Shopping sections. If you want competitors analysed for you, we have a separate page on competitor analysis.
Want a free audit of your Google Ads account? Send us a request — we will look at your account and tell you what works for you in the auction and where you lose money.