How do I read the Google Ads Auction insights report?

For a Search campaign the report has six statistics. Four of them set you against one other advertiser at a time, and Google defines them this way:

• Impression share is the impressions you received divided by the estimated number you were eligible to receive. In another advertiser’s row it is that advertiser’s, and Google’s API reference gives its base as the impressions your ads were eligible for. So it isn’t the figure they see in their own account. Google’s example is a competitor showing 100% in your report and 50% across the auctions it was eligible for.
• Overlap rate is how often another advertiser’s ad received an impression when yours did too. Google’s example: 60% means that on 6 of every 10 times your ad showed, an ad from that advertiser showed as well.
• Position above rate is how often the other advertiser’s ad was shown in a higher position than yours, when both were shown at the same time. Google’s example: 5% means theirs was above yours on 5 of every 100 times both showed.
• Outranking share is how often your ad ranked higher in the auction than the other advertiser’s, or showed when theirs didn’t. Google’s example: 20% means your ad won over theirs 2 times in 10.

Outranking share is the one that gets misread, because Google’s two descriptions of it name different bases. The help page’s example counts the times your ad and theirs showed together. The API reference counts the impressions your ads were eligible for, the same base as your impression share. On that reading your outranking share against anyone can’t pass your own impression share: you can’t show above someone on a search you didn’t show on. So a low outranking share may say more about how often you show than about the other advertiser.

Position above rate and outranking share aren’t two halves of a whole. Position above rate looks only at the searches where both ads showed. Outranking share also counts the searches where yours showed and theirs didn’t.

The other two statistics say where on the page an ad showed. Each row has its own, yours included.

• Top of page rate is how often an advertiser’s ad was shown at the top of the page, above the unpaid search results. Google’s example: 20 of 100 impressions above the organic results is a top of page rate of 20%.
• Absolute top of the page rate is how often it was shown as the very first ad above the organic results. Google’s example: 10 of 100 impressions as the first ad is 10%.

By those examples both are shares of the impressions an ad received. In another advertiser’s row, Google’s API reference adds, the percentage is computed only over the auctions your ad appeared in. So a competitor’s absolute top of the page rate of 41% says where its ad sat on searches you were on too, and nothing about how many searches it showed on. Impression share says that.

Google describes two columns of your own tables as shares of your impressions as well: Impr. (Top) % is the percent of them shown among top ads, and Impr. (Abs. Top) % the percent shown as the very first ad among them. Neither is Search top IS or Search abs. top IS, which divide by the impressions you were eligible for among top ads, and so fall when you miss a search altogether. Google doesn’t recommend the two percentages as a target for your bids, because they may decrease as bids increase: a higher bid can enter you in more competitive auctions, in a worse place. The branded keywords guide covers the shares, and the bid strategy that aims at them.

A Shopping campaign’s report has three of the six: impression share, overlap rate and outranking share, counted on the Search Network alone. A Performance Max campaign’s report covers its Search and Shopping ads on the Search Network, split between the two, for the account or for a campaign.

No column answers a question alone. Read a row left to right as one sentence about one advertiser: how many of your searches it showed on, how often it was there when you were, and which of you was higher.

• northfield.example is the one above you. It showed on 71% of the searches your keyword could have shown on, where you showed on 37%. When you showed, it was there 64% of the time, and above you on 78% of those. Its ad was the very first one 41% of the time, and yours 12%.
• timberloft.example is level with you. It was above you on 55% of the searches you shared, close to an even split. It showed on more of the keyword’s searches than you did, 52% against 37%.
• oakandash.example is below you. It showed on fewer searches than you and was above you on 31% of the ones you shared.

Three habits make the report worth the time:

• Read a keyword or an ad group before a campaign. A campaign’s report adds up every auction its keywords entered, so an advertiser who is above you on one keyword is averaged with the searches it never appears on.
• Segment by time before you read a change into it. One row for 30 days can’t say whether anything changed. An advertiser who appears, or whose position above rate climbs, in the weeks your own figures fell is the one that moved.
• Don’t act on a small move. Google says impression share is an estimate, and that small fluctuations over time don’t necessarily mean action is needed. Each auction can end differently depending on the competition at that moment, so some movement in where your ad shows is normal.

Auction insights is the competitor analysis Google Ads does for you, and it answers three things about another advertiser: whether it shares your auctions, how often, and how high on the page. Its six statistics hold nothing else. None of them is a bid, a budget, a keyword, a Quality Score or the text of an ad.

• It shows your auctions, not their account. The report lists the advertisers in the same auctions as you, and counts their impression share there. An advertiser at 100% in your report may be at 50% across the auctions it’s eligible for, and one who never meets your keywords isn’t in it.
• It shows that an ad was above yours, not why. Google builds Ad Rank from six things: your bid, the quality of your ads and landing page, the thresholds an ad must clear, the competitiveness of the auction, the context of the search, and the expected impact of your assets. An advertiser above you may be bidding more, or bidding less on a better ad: Google says that even if your competition bids higher than you, you can still win a higher position at a lower price with highly relevant keywords and ads.
• A row may not be a competitor. Google says google.com can appear if you use Google-hosted domains or a Google Business Profile, or if a competitor’s landing page is a Google site.

To see what a competitor’s ads say, Google has a second tool, outside your account. The Ads Transparency Center, at adstransparency.google.com, is a searchable repository of advertisers and the ads they’ve served on Search, Display, Gmail and YouTube. Search it by the advertiser’s name or its website’s, and filter by date and by the location targeted. Google’s announcement of it lists what you can learn there: the ads an advertiser has run, which were shown in a region, the last date an ad ran, and its format.

For competitor research, that is what Google itself shows you: the auctions you share, and the ads they ran. Neither tool’s pages list an advertiser’s bids, budgets, keywords or results. If a competitor’s ad uses your trademark in its text, the trademarks guide covers the complaint Google takes.

Being outranked isn’t a problem by itself. More of a keyword’s searches costs more, so they are worth winning only where the keyword already pays its way. Your own tables answer that, keyword by keyword, before you open the report at all.

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Audiences, keywords, and content › Search keywords and set the date range to the last 30 days.
2. 02Select the columns icon. Under Competitive metrics tick Search impr. share and Search lost IS (rank), add Conversions, Cost and Conv. value / cost (or your cost per conversion, if your campaigns don’t bid on value), and select Apply.
3. 03Read down Search lost IS (rank): the percentage of the time the keyword’s ads weren’t shown because of poor Ad Rank. Stop at each keyword losing 20% or more.
4. 04Ask three things of it. Did it convert five times or more in the 30 days? Under that, its return is one sale either way. Does it return at least what its campaign does, by the campaign’s own row on the Campaigns table? And where the campaign bids to a target, does it meet the target?
5. 05For a keyword that passes all three, tick it and select Auction insights to see who is above it.

The table also says what the campaign’s 53% is made of. Of the 16,940 searches it lost to rank, 8,160 belonged to “bed frame”, which never converts, and 5,800 to “oak bed frame”, which returns the most. The campaign’s figure can’t tell those apart, and the keywords’ rows can. What to do with a keyword that spends and never converts is the keyword guide’s subject.

You can’t change another advertiser’s bid or ad. You can change your own Ad Rank, and Google names two ways to a better share of the top of the page: improve the quality of your ads and landing page experience, or increase your bid. Which of those you can reach depends on who sets the bid.

• On Manual CPC, the bid is yours. Google says raising your max. CPC will probably increase your ad’s chances of appearing. Tick the keyword on the Search keywords table, select Edit, then Change max. CPC bids. A maximum isn’t the price: the most you pay for a click is what it takes to clear the Ad Rank thresholds and beat the next advertiser’s Ad Rank. Raise it a step at a time, and read the keyword’s return again before the next.
• On a target, the bid is the strategy’s. Google sets the bid in each auction to reach your target, so the lever is the target. For more volume under a target ROAS, Google says to consider gradually reducing it, which lets the strategy enter more auctions. A target CPA set too low, it says, may forgo clicks that could convert. A campaign’s target covers every keyword under it, so loosening it moves them all. The Target CPA and Target ROAS guide covers setting one.
• With no target and a budget that runs short, the budget. Google lists a bigger campaign budget among the ways to more impression share. The campaign’s Search lost IS (budget) says how much it’s missing that way, and the Limited by budget guide says when a raise pays.
• On any strategy, the quality. Quality Score isn’t an input in the auction. It’s Google’s summary of the ad quality that is, and each of its three parts is rated beside other advertisers’ ads for the same search: expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Google suggests using it on your high-performing keywords to find the ones that may do better with changes to their ads and landing pages. The low Quality Score guide works through each part.
• Where the keyword doesn’t pay, nothing. The auction is turning down searches that lose money, and winning more of them would lose more.

For a whole campaign losing searches to rank, the search impression share guide tells the searches lost to rank from the ones lost to budget.

Goldbeater doesn’t read the Auction insights report. Google’s API reference marks each of the report’s metrics as not publicly available, so the other advertisers’ rows stay in Google Ads. What Goldbeater reads is your side of every auction: the share of its searches each keyword and campaign showed on, the share it lost to rank, and what it returned. Who took the searches is in Auction insights, and a finding that turns on it says to read the report.

Every day it reads each enabled keyword that took a click in the last 30 days, and raises one that lost 20% or more of its searches to ad rank where those searches would pay. That means five or more conversions in the 30 days, converting at least as well as its campaign as Google Ads totals it, not under its campaign’s target, in a campaign at least as efficient as the median of your other Search campaigns.

What the finding offers depends on who sets the bid. Under Manual CPC, Goldbeater drafts the keyword’s maximum CPC 20% higher, and you can set it anywhere up to double today’s bid before you approve it. Under automated bidding there’s no keyword bid to raise, so it drafts nothing and names the lever: the part of Quality Score Google rates below average; failing that, the campaign’s target; with no target, the budget, where the campaign lost 20% or more of its searches to budget; and otherwise a campaign of the keyword’s own. A finding reads medium at 50% lost where the lever is a bid, the quality or a target, and low otherwise. In a brand campaign three times as efficient as that median it reads low and the raise is offered, not recommended, since much of what a brand search brings would have come anyway.

That is the marked keyword from the table above: its 58%, its 6.80 and the campaign’s 5.10 are the table’s figures. Beds — Phrase bids automatically to a target ROAS of 4.50, which the keyword beats, so the finding names the target and drafts no change. The campaign’s other three keywords raise nothing: one loses under a fifth of its searches, and two return less than the campaign.

Two more checks read the same loss from further out. A campaign that lost 20% or more of its searches to rank, and more than to budget, while converting better than your typical campaign by more than chance explains, with a target or manual bids to move, raises the finding the search impression share guide shows. A brand campaign that showed first on fewer of its searches than in any of its weeks before, or paid a quarter more a click, raises the one in the branded keywords guide. Every line Goldbeater checks is in the audit checklist.

What is Auction insights in Google Ads?

A report that compares your ads with the other advertisers in the same auctions as you. For a Search campaign it has six statistics: impression share, overlap rate, outranking share, position above rate, top of page rate and absolute top of the page rate. It opens from a ticked campaign, ad group or keyword.

What is outranking share in Google Ads?

How often your ad ranked higher in the auction than another advertiser’s, or showed when theirs didn’t. Google’s help page gives the example of 20%: your ad won over theirs 2 times in 10. Its API reference gives the base as the impressions your ads were eligible for, and on that reading it can’t be higher than your own impression share.

What is a good impression share or outranking share?

Google’s help pages give no figure for either. A share is worth raising only where the searches you’d win would pay, so read it beside what the keyword returns: its conversions, and its cost per conversion or conversion value over cost against its campaign’s.

Why is there no Auction insights report for my keyword?

A keyword, ad group or campaign has to meet a minimum threshold of activity in the date range, and Google’s help pages give no figure for it. They say the report doesn’t show insights where impression share is under 10%. A filter above the table shows which keywords, ad groups and campaigns have a report.

Is impression share in Auction insights the same as Search impr. share?

Your own row is the same sum: the impressions you received over the estimated impressions you were eligible for. Google says of Shopping campaigns that the two may differ slightly, likely because Auction insights filters out auctions with very low impressions. Search partners are left out of both.

Can I see a competitor’s bids, keywords or Quality Score in Auction insights?

No. The report’s six statistics say how often an advertiser showed, how often it showed with you, and how high. None is a bid, a keyword, a budget or a Quality Score. To see the ads an advertiser has run, search for it in Google’s Ads Transparency Center.

Why is google.com in my Auction insights?

Google says it can appear if you use Google-hosted domains or a Google Business Profile, or if a competitor’s landing page is a Google site, such as play.google.com.