Google Ads Auction Insights: See Who Is Beating You in the Auction
Most contractors running Google Ads check the same three numbers: how much they spent, how many clicks they got, and how many calls came in. That tells you what happened. The Auction Insights report tells you why.
Auction Insights is a built-in Google Ads report that shows every business competing in the same search auctions you are. It reveals how often they appear alongside your ads, how often they rank above you, and what percentage of the same search inventory you are both chasing. Most contractors have never opened it. The report is not hidden, but finding it requires navigating two or three levels into the interface, which puts it outside the routine most business owners or their agencies follow week to week. That means the competitive intelligence it contains is sitting unused in nearly every contractor account running right now.
Where to Find the Report
In Google Ads, navigate to the Campaigns tab. Select one or more campaigns by checking the box to the left of the campaign name. A toolbar appears above the list. Click the three-dot menu or look for the "Auction insights" button. The report also runs at the ad group level and at the individual keyword level. Keyword-level data is the most useful for contractors because it shows which specific queries attract the most competition. Your emergency service terms almost always have a different competitive landscape than your general informational keywords, and treating them with identical bids ignores that difference entirely.
The report requires a minimum impression threshold. Any campaign generating at least 400 to 500 impressions per month in a local market typically has enough data. If the report shows no results at the keyword level, run it at the campaign level first and narrow from there.
The Six Metrics, in Plain Language
| Metric | What it measures | What contractors should watch |
|---|---|---|
| Impression share | Percentage of eligible auctions where your ad appeared | How much of the available search traffic you are capturing vs. missing |
| Overlap rate | How often a competitor's ad appeared when yours also appeared | Who you are actually competing against in the same homeowner's search |
| Outranking share | How often your ad ranked above theirs, or appeared when theirs did not | Whether you are winning or losing the positioning battle against each competitor |
| Position above rate | How often their ad appeared above yours when both showed | How frequently a specific competitor beats your placement |
| Top of page rate | How often your ad appeared above organic results | How consistently you are in a premium position across all auctions |
| Absolute top of page rate | How often your ad was the first paid result on the page | How often you are capturing the highest-visibility position |
The three metrics that drive the most useful tactical decisions for contractors are overlap rate, outranking share, and position above rate. Together they answer: who are you actually competing against, are you winning those head-to-head matchups, and by how much?
Who Shows Up in a Contractor's Auction Insights Report
For home service contractors, three categories of competitors typically appear in the report, and each calls for a different response.
National lead aggregators. Angi, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, and similar platforms bid on contractor categories across every market simultaneously. They show high overlap rates because they appear in nearly every auction. A high position above rate against an aggregator means homeowners see their listing before yours and click there first, reaching a page that routes them to multiple contractors including your competitors. You cannot out-bid Angi dollar for dollar. The correct response is ad copy they cannot match: your specific business name, a local phone number, a concrete same-day guarantee tied to a real service radius. Aggregators write generic ads by design because they serve every market. Your specificity is the advantage.
Local direct competitors. These are the accounts worth watching most closely. A local plumber appearing with a 68 percent overlap rate and a 61 percent position above rate means they show up alongside you in most of the same auctions and consistently outrank you in more than half of those. That competitor has either higher bids or a better Quality Score on the same terms. Open the Google Ad Transparency Center, search their business name, and compare their ad copy and landing page to yours. A tighter match between their headlines and their service page often explains the Quality Score gap more than bid volume alone.
National franchises and regional chains. These competitors spend broadly across trade categories. Their impression share may be high, but their position above rate on specific local terms is often lower than local competitors because their landing pages are less geographically specific. A local contractor with a city-specific landing page and a matching GBP can consistently outrank a national brand on hyper-local queries even at a lower bid.
One Change That Affects How to Read This Data
In April 2025, Google updated its policy to allow the same advertiser to show multiple ads on a single results page, one in the top block and one in the bottom block, each running in a separate auction. This changed how eligible impressions are calculated. Impression share figures expanded because each position became a separate auction.
The practical implication: if a competitor's impression share jumps 15 to 20 percent without any obvious change in the competitive market, that policy change may explain it rather than a sudden increase in their spending. Do not automatically raise bids in response to every impression share shift. Look at whether your own impression data changed in the same period. If your calls and lead volume stayed flat but their impression share rose, the baseline shifted rather than the competition intensifying.
How to Use the Data to Make Specific Adjustments
If a local competitor has a position above rate above 55 percent: They are consistently outranking you in shared auctions. Before raising bids, check three things. First, compare your Quality Score for the matching keywords against theirs by looking at landing page relevance. Second, confirm your ad copy references the specific service in the headline, not a generic company tagline. Third, verify your landing page loads in under two seconds on mobile. Quality Score improvements reduce what you pay per click without increasing your bid; bid increases alone push your costs up without improving the underlying score.
If your outranking share on emergency keywords is below 40 percent: Run Auction Insights specifically for your emergency keyword list and compare it to your general service keyword data. Emergency queries like "furnace not working tonight" and "burst pipe repair now" often have a completely different competitive set than planned service queries. A contractor bidding flat CPCs across both types is under-bidding on the queries where the homeowner is most likely to call whoever ranks first. Segment emergency terms into their own campaign and apply a higher bid cap to that segment specifically.
If your overlap rate with aggregators exceeds 80 percent: They are showing up in nearly every auction you run. Add the aggregator platform names to your negative keyword list at the campaign level to prevent impression waste on searches that include competitor brand names. Focus your bid adjustments on the auctions where local competitors appear instead, since those are the matchups where a positioning win leads to a direct booking rather than a directory referral.
Three Actions for This Week
- Open Auction Insights at the campaign level for your highest-spend campaign and record the name and outranking share of every competitor with more than 30 percent overlap rate. That list is your actual competitive set, not who you assume you compete with. Search each competitor’s business name in Google in a private browser window, using your primary service keyword, and note what their ad says. Understanding their positioning is the first step to identifying where your copy is generic where it needs to be specific. A competitor consistently beating your position above rate almost always has one of two advantages: a more relevant headline or a landing page that matches the search query more directly. Both are fixable in a day of work.
- Run Auction Insights at the keyword level for your five highest-spend emergency service keywords. Compare the position above rate for those keywords against your campaign-level average. If a specific competitor shows a consistently higher position above rate on emergency terms than on your general terms, they are allocating higher bids or better Quality Scores specifically to high-intent queries. Your bid strategy for those keywords needs to reflect that elevated competitive pressure. Separating emergency intent keywords into their own campaign with a higher bid cap is the structural fix that lets you respond to that competitive pressure without overpaying on lower-intent queries in the same account.
- Set a monthly reminder to check Auction Insights and record the overlap rate and outranking share for your top three competitors. Competitive pressure in local Google Ads shifts seasonally: HVAC advertisers increase spend in May and September, roofing competitors surge after storm events, landscaping bids spike in early spring. A competitor barely appearing in your report in February may be your highest position above rate competitor by June. Tracking the trend monthly gives you three to four weeks of advance notice when competitive pressure is building, which is enough time to adjust bids, improve ad copy, or increase daily budget before your placement drops during a high-volume season.
Auction Insights does not require additional spend, a higher Google budget, or any technical setup. It is already in your account and reflects your current auctions in real time. The contractors who check it monthly understand exactly who they are competing against on every query, which competitors outrank them most often, and which keywords are losing the positioning battle despite adequate budget. That information turns reactive bid management into a deliberate competitive strategy instead of a monthly guess about why lead volume changed.