Scope out Your Paid Search Competition with the Auction Insights Report

Anne Garcia - May 24, 2012

Google AdWords has launched a new report called Auction insights to help advertisers find what their competition is doing in paid search. This new reports helps advertisers compare their performance against other advertisers who compete in the same set of keyword auctions. The Auction insights reports shows how often an advertiser’s ads rank higher than the competition on the search engine results page (SERP) and how often the ads appear compared to the competition based on estimated possible impressions.
Google says that this information can help advertisers make strategic decisions about bids, budgets and keyword choices by showing advertisers where they are succeeding and where there may be missed opportunities for improved performance. Data within the report is at the keyword level and each report can only be generated for one keyword at a time. Also, data is only available for keywords that meet a minimum threshold of activity for the time period specified.
To run the Auction insights report, go to your Keywords tab and click the box next to the keyword you are interested in. An auction insights report is only available if you see an icon to the left of the keyword. Below is an image of the icon.

Next, click the Keyword details box at the top of the statistics table. In the dropdown menu, click Selected under “Auction insights”. Below is a screen shot of how to run the report.

Google says that this new report will be rolling out over the next few days.