What is the "Analyze competition" feature?

On your Opportunities tab, there's an "Analyze competition" link in the side panel. Use this feature to see how you're performing compared to other advertisers. With this data on your competitive landscape, you can make more informed decisions about which types of optimization changes are right for your account.

Here are some of the key benefits of having competitive data:

  • Understand whether your performance is in the normal range for advertisers like you.
  • Identify areas of your performance that might be improved by optimization changes.
  • Explore new opportunities to grow your account and become more competitive in your market.

How it works

On the "Analyze competition" page, discover whether your performance is below, at, or above average for advertisers like you. Here's how to use this feature:

1. Choose a metric.
You can compare your performance in terms of impressions, clicks, and clickthrough rate (CTR). Choose one of these metrics to focus on first, though we encourage you to later review all of the metrics to get a comprehensive idea of your performance. Learn more about these performance metrics.

2. Review each category.
You'll see a list of categories in which we think you're advertising based on your keywords and other factors. By using categories, we can benchmark your Google Ads performance against that of other advertisers who advertise similar products or services. For each category shown, your ads have appeared for searches on that topic. If a category is blue, you can click it to explore sub-categories within that topic. Learn more about who you are compared to.

 

See search terms from each category

You can see the Google search terms that triggered your ad for each of the most specific sub-categories in your account. Click a category name to see more specific sub-categories. When the category name is no longer a link, you know you’re at the most specific sub-category -- this is where you’ll see a See Search Terms link that leads to a list of actual searches that are identified as relevant to that category. If you don't think that the category is appropriate for you, consider adding negative keywords or refining your existing keyword list to help prevent your ad from showing on those irrelevant searches.
 

3. Review the data for the metric you selected.
There are two sections of data, each with their own way of comparing data:

  • The "competitive range" shows how your performance compares to that of all other advertisers in the category. The range of performance is broken into five segments, so you'll see if you perform in the top portion of advertisers, the bottom portion, or somewhere in between.

  • The bar graph shows how you compare to the advertisers who perform in that same range for the metric you've chosen to look at.

Learn more about these comparisons

To see a more specific analysis, there are several ways to further refine the data you see:

  • Narrow down the category you're viewing by clicking the category name.
  • See data for just one of your campaigns or ad groups by selecting it from the list in the side panel.
  • See data from competitors targeting a specific region. Click the Filter competition button above the table, select which location you'd like to see data from, then click Apply. Your performance will be compared to advertisers in the category whose ads were targeted to that location.

4. Consider where you'd like to improve.
Use this data in conjunction with other reports and statistics to understand if changes are right for your campaigns. If you think that you can gain some competitive advantage with keyword, bid, or budget changes, click the Explore ideas button to see some customized ideas for your ad groups and campaigns.

It's important to remember that it's not always a bad thing to compete below your competitors for a certain metric. Based on your specific advertising goals, make sure to focus on the metric that best reflects what success means to you. See some tips on how to interpret and act on this data.

About the data

In another article, we describe the details of this data. Here are some of the basic facts:

- Anonymous data: The competitor performance data that you see is aggregated and averaged, so all performance data is anonymous. You won't be able to know who is in the auction with you, but you will be able to see how you're performing compared to advertisers in the same category.

- Search performance only: The analysis only uses your performance data from Google search and the Search Network. Your performance on the Google Display Network is not taken into account.

- Time range: The data used in competitive analysis is refreshed once a week so that you'll always see relatively current data. The time range above the table shows the dates that are included in your performance data.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?
true
Achieve your advertising goals today!

Attend our Performance Max Masterclass, a livestream workshop session bringing together industry and Google ads PMax experts.

Register now

Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu
5621382119265981151
true
Search Help Center
true
true
true
true
true
73067
false
false
false