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If you’re running Google Ads ads, then you probably know that tracking your paid search competition is not only vital, but exhausting. Tracking who your top PPC competitors are on the Google SERP is not a one stop, one metric ordeal. It requires thorough research and monitoring for multiple vantage points. Knowing this, and to help you simplify analyzing the competition, we wanted to add on to your Google Ads arsenal by following up our recent release of the Google Ads Monitor with the all-new Google Ads Daily Explorer. Now, besides for in-depth competitor discovery on a per keyword basis, you can track every single Google Ads ad your competition is running on a daily basis across all of your keywords. Here’s how.
The Complete Google Ads Competitive Picture
We wanted to make sure you were able to see the full Google Ads landscape, without any limitations, without any guesswork, each and every day. We designed the Google Ads Daily Explorer to give you broad and complete insights into how the paid search section of the SERP looks day in and day out. To help paint a complete daily paid search picture, we made sure to include information that not only helps you isolate the competition, but that helps you qualify the significance and potential impact of each of your competitor’s ad placements as well.
The Daily Google Ads Explorer includes a broad range of PPC information that includes an ad’s SERP position, average CPC, etc.
Specifically, we placed both information related to an ad’s position as well as to the underlying power of its performance inside of the tool. As such, the Google Ads daily explorer displays each ad’s:
- Scoring keyword
- Search volume
- Cost per click
- Domain
- Visual appearance as it is on the SERP (including the title, URL, & description)
- Location (i.e., top or bottom of the SERP)
- Rank position
The idea is that with the above indicated metrics, you can walk away from the tool feeling that you have a handle on the day’s Google Ads competition while at the same time developing a sense of the PPC landscape as time goes on and as you continue to interact with the tool.
Isolate the Google Ads Competition with Flexible Analysis
To help you analyze the daily Google Ads competition we’ve engineered the Daily Google Ads Explorer to allow you to organize the day’s ads according to any of the data aspects within the tool. Meaning, any of the columns (other than the Ad column) can be sorted in either ascending or descending order. In doing so, you have the ability to analyze the competition in any number ways. More than that, the Daily Google Ads Explorer is equipped with a filter, that with a bit of know-how can serve as a powerful PPC research tool.
Daily Google Ads Costs Analysis
By sorting the ads within the tool according to Average CPC, you can quickly execute a cost analysis of the competitions’ Google Ads for the day. In executing this option you could in fact extrapolate which ads may have received a lower or higher quality score. If for example you should find that many of the ads with a lower CPC also had a lower position, it may very well be that those ads received a low quality score. If so, there may be aspects within those ads that you might want to avoid replicating in your Google Ads campaigns. Obviously, this is just one of the ways you could make seeing the CPC of the ads shown sequentially work to your benefit.
The Google Ads Daily Explorer set to sort the day’s ads by Average CPC
Top Competitor Google Ads Analysis
Day in and day out, who is offering you the stiffest paid search competition across the board? By engaging the Daily Google Ads Explorer’s sort options you can group the day’s Google Ads ads by domain, i.e. competitor. With this option in place, you can quickly determine how many ads each of your competitors are running on the Google SERP across all of your keywords, as well as how well their ads are performing. Meaning, you can isolate and determine who is your top daily competitor across the board.
Just take the example in the image below. Here, cheapoair.com stands out by scoring ads for 14 of the campaign’s keywords. And with an average CPC of $0.43 to $2.47, they’ve managed to dominate the SERP ad visibility for this category of keywords over some big name companies (e.g., Air France, American Airlines, British Airways, Expedia, and Orbitz to name a few that have surfaced in this report). Studying their ad content might lead to clues regarding their Google Ads success strategy.
The Google Ads Daily Explorer’s domain sort helps identify top competitors across all of a campaign’s keywords
Multi-Metric Ad Analysis
As mentioned above, the Daily Google Ads Explorer is equipped with both sort and filter options. Combining the two makes for some pretty unique Google Ads analysis. Just by way of example, say you wanted to analyze the ads shown according to their position on the SERP, but only ads that were of a certain caliber in that they had a high search volume. Engaging both the sort and filter options is the perfect way to set yourself up for custom Google Ads analysis.
Looking at the image below and we quickly employed the filter to limit the results to keywords with a search volume higher than 10,000, and then sorted them sequentially by Ad Position in ascending order so that we could view the top ranking ads. Again, there are multiple ways you can make use of this ability, it all depends on your needs and wants.
The Google Ads Daily Explorer filtered for high volume keywords while simultaneously sorting ads according to position
Google Ads Analysis by Keyword Category
If you’re running campaigns that contain keywords that reflect various aspects of a site, different types of products, etc., and have as such gone about adding tags to your keywords, you can in fact analyze your Google Ads competition according to these tags (i.e., categories). Within the Report Options you can choose which keywords tags to include or exclude from the tool’s reporting. As a result, you can dissect the Google Ads competition according to keyword categorization thereby enabling you to further identify and analyze your PPC competition within various performance niches.
The Google Ads Daily Explorer filtered by keyword tag
Competitive Analysis of Google Ads on Desktop vs. Mobile
You can utilize the Daily Google Ads Explorer for any search engine within a campaign. Having one of those search engines be Google Mobile sets you up to be able to compare the mobile Google Ads competition to that on desktop. Engage some of the sorting and filter capabilities illustrated above, and you have yourself a powerful set of comparative Google Ads data. Allow us to demonstrate.
Google Desktop Ads Analysis
Applying the keyword filter (activated by clicking the funnel), we entered the term “cheap flights.” Doing so made it that the tool only included keywords that contain that phrase (it is also possible to filter for an exact phrase). Next we filtered the ads a bit so that the top performing keywords showed first. To do this we sorted the data (in descending order) by search volume. The result of our efforts was seeing that the keyword cheap flights to amsterdam has the highest volume at 33,100 with an average, and quite low, cost per click of $0.99. We also determined that the domain justfly.com is in the top number position for this keyword. Keep this data in mind as we move over to mobile.
Google desktop Google Ads results for “cheap flights”
Google Mobile Ads
Moving then to mobile and we applied the same parameters. Here however, and in contrast to desktop, the top Google Ads result according to search volume on mobile was cheap flights, which is an exact match keyword. Not only is the keyword for the top ad according to search volume different on mobile, but the very search volume of the top ad was well, noticeably. As opposed to a top search volume of 33,100 on desktop, the search volume for the keyword cheap flights sat at 4,090,000 and with an average cost per click of $1.78. Here on mobile cheapoair.com is in the top ranking position, not justfly.com, thus highlighting the fact that your top Google Ads keyword, as well as your top Google Ads competition, can be vastly different on mobile. Of course studying the rest of the results, and not only the “top ad,” may provide insights into behavior differences between mobile and desktop searchers, and help a digital marketer refine their SEO and Google Ads strategy based on the target audience.
Google Mobile Google Ads results for “cheap flights”
Researching Google Ads for Local Search
The Daily Google Ads Explorer is also a powerful tool for engaging in local paid search analysis. Rank Ranger campaigns that are set to track on multiple Google Local Search Engines can generate location-based Google Ads analysis reports. Just like the comparison between desktop and mobile Google Ads performance (as shown above), the Daily Google Ads Explorer can be utilized for comparisons and insights that can be implemented in an effort to improve local Google Ads strategies (or document your already successful methods).
To highlight just how practical and powerful this method of analysis is we took three locations within the State of Florida and compared the Google Ads performance for the same keyword, home security. In this particular instance our purpose was simply to isolate which local market is the most competitive for the keyword. That’s not to say you couldn’t go deeper with your analysis; you certainly could. We just wanted to make one simple and straightforward point…. The Daily Google Ads Explorer is a potent tool for local Google Ads analysis.
With that said, the data is as follows:
Location 1: Home Security in Orlando, FL
Total Ads: 83
Ads for keyword Home Security: 3
Competitors: 3
Google Ads Daily Explorer report for Orlando, FL
Location 2: Home Security in Tallahassee, FL
Total Ads: 172
Ads for keyword Home Security: 9
Competitors: 8
Google Ads Daily Explorer report for Tallahassee, FL
Location 3: Home Security in Tampa, FL
Total Ads: 167
Ads for keyword Home Security: 12
Competitors: 9
Google Ads Daily Explorer report for Orlando, FL
Summary and Conclusions of Local Google Ads Analysis
| Local Ads Comparison | Orlando | Tallahassee | Tampa |
| Total Google Ads Ads | 83 | 172 | 167 |
| Ads for Keyword Home Security | 3 | 9 | 12 |
| Competitors for Keyword Home Security | 3 | 8 | 9 |
The conclusions you draw from this type of analysis of course depends upon your Google Ads strategy and goals. However, a few things are apparent. With the analysis executed above we know which local markets are more saturated with ads, which are more focused on ads for the keyword studied, and which have more competitors. The insights shown here are really just the tip of the iceberg. As you add in data from the tool’s other metrics, your local Google Ads horizons will only broaden.
Is Someone Bidding on Your Brand Keywords?
There’s one last use for the Daily Google Ads Explorer that we’d like to showcase, tracking brand keywords. Have you ever seen a competitor’s ad that targets you, that claims that they can do what you do, but better? No one wants their brand targeted negatively via paid search. Use the Daily Google Ads Explorer to track down those ads that target your brand (and then of course report them to Google). It’s really as simple as adding brand keywords to your campaign and then letting the Daily Google Ads Explorer do the rest. Observe.
While compiling data for this post, we discovered that there are four sites running Google Ads targeting EasyJet’s brand. In fact, all we had to do was show brand keywords related to EasyJet inside of the Daily Google Ads Explorer. To make this even simpler, you could simply add brand keywords to your rank tracking campaign and place them under a brand tag. By doing so, all you would need to do to discover competitors targeting your brand in Google Ads is to select the tag to display via Keyword Tag filter in report options. After that, all you need to do is sit back and let the Google Ads Daily Explorer do the rest. If any domains come back with ads, then you know you have competitors that are honing in on your brand name.
Google Ads Daily Explorer filtered for brand keywords
The Google Ads Journey Begins Here
The all-new, all-awesome, Daily Google Ads Explorer (found within the Rank Ranger UI under Reports > Research > Competition Analysis) puts you on a path to a whole new world of paid search insights. We like to think, that at its core, beyond any filters and comparative analysis, the Daily Google Ads Explorer gives you a sense of what your Google Ads competition is doing day in and day out on the SERP. That by using the Daily Google Ads Explorer each and every day your understanding of the paid search competitive landscape will grow incrementally. If you walk away from using this new tool feeling that you have a better understanding of what your Google Ads competition is up to, that you have a greater intuitive grasp over your paid search purview, and that you can now make more grounded and informed PPC decisions, well we’d feel mighty good about that.
As such, and with all the marketing analysis tools and reports that we develop, we look forward to your feedback – let us know if the Google Ads Daily Explorer has helped you, and if there is anything we can do to make your job easier.
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