Google Ads competitor analysis for B2B: how to uncover your rival's strategy

A Google Ads competitor analysis tells you where your competitor puts their budget, which keywords they bid on and where they leave gaps. In short: you use Google Ads Auction Insights to see who appears next to you, Ahrefs and Semrush to unpick their keywords and estimated spend, and you turn those insights into keyword gaps that deliver cheaper, better converting leads. In this article you will read how to tackle that step by step as a B2B company, without getting lost in numbers that have nothing to do with revenue. Not a webshop approach, but B2B with a long sales cycle and lead generation as the goal.

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Why is a competitor analysis in Google Ads worth the effort?

On the search network you are not competing for first place in a list of ten, but for a handful of ad positions at the top of the page. Everyone bidding on your keywords pushes the price up. If you do not understand who is bidding alongside you and how, you keep guessing at your bidding strategy and your budget.

A good analysis answers three questions:

• Who appears next to me in the auction, and how often are they above me?
• Which keywords are my competitors bidding on where I am not present yet?
• Roughly how much do they spend, and where are they shifting their focus?

The goal is not to copy your competitor. That is the most expensive way to advertise, because you are paying alongside them for exactly the same expensive keywords. The goal is to find the gaps: terms with buying intent that carry little or no competition. That is where PPC delivers your cheapest and best leads. In our approach to Google Ads, every campaign therefore starts with this homework, not with blind bidding on the most obvious keywords.

What does Google Ads Auction Insights show you?

Auction Insights sits for free inside your own Google Ads account and is your first source. The report shows, per keyword, ad group or campaign, which other advertisers you share the auction with. Among other things you see your impression share and the “position above rate”: how often a competitor appeared above your ad when you were both taking part, as Google explains about auction statistics.

That produces directly usable insights:

• Who are your real advertising competitors? Often these are not the same companies as your commercial competitors. A large comparison platform or a foreign player may dominate your keywords without you knowing it.
• Where are you losing ground? If a competitor is structurally above you on your most important keywords, that says something about their bid, their quality score, or both.
• Where are you dominant? Keywords where you have a high impression share and the competition a low one are your strong positions. Those you want to protect.

The limitation: Auction Insights only shows auctions you took part in yourself. Keywords you are not bidding on yet stay invisible. That is why you need external tools to see the full picture.

How do you find the keywords your competitors bid on?

This is where tools from outside Google come in. Ahrefs Site Explorer shows the PPC Keywords per competitor domain: the paid keywords that domain advertises on, comparable to what Semrush advertising research exposes. You type in your competitor’s domain and get a list of terms their ads have been spotted for, often with the matching ad copy and landing page.

You do two things with that:

1. You expand your own keyword list. Terms you overlooked but that are clearly worth it for your competitor.
2. You track down keyword gaps. Compare your competitor’s list with your own. Keywords they bid on and you do not are candidates. The other way round: keywords where you are present and they are not are your untapped lead.

For B2B, that last point is crucial. The big, generic terms everyone fights over are expensive and often deliver traffic without buying intent. The win usually sits in the more specific long-tail keywords: combinations with a sector, a job role, a problem or a comparison. There the competition is thinner and the intent higher, exactly what you want when you steer on qualified leads instead of clicks.

That is how you funnel your keyword universe down to the core in a few steps: from every term in your market, via what competitors already occupy, to the underused gaps with buying intent that deliver the cheapest leads.

How do you estimate a competitor’s budget and strategy?

Beyond the keywords, you want to know how seriously a competitor invests and where they are heading. Semrush on Google Ads competitor analysis estimates competitors’ ad spend and position changes. That gives you an order of magnitude: is a competitor spending a few hundred or a few thousand euros a month, and is that budget growing or shrinking?

That context shapes your strategy:

• A competitor scaling up hard on certain keywords signals that there is money to be made there, or that they are locking down a market. Decide deliberately whether you fight along or move aside.
• A competitor pulling back frees up space. Keywords they let go become cheaper and you can pick them up.
• New ad copy and offers give away what the market responds to. You do not have to adopt them, but they show you which arguments and propositions land.

Important: these figures are estimates, not exact budgets. Use them to read patterns and direction, not to plan down to the euro. Always combine them with your own conversion tracking, because only your own data tells you what traffic really delivers in leads.

How do you turn your competitor analysis into more leads?

Collecting data is the easy part. The value sits in what you do with it. A workable action plan:

1. Draw up a list of your three to five real advertising competitors from Auction Insights, not your commercial competitors based on gut feeling.
2. Pull their PPC keywords from Ahrefs and set them next to your own list. Mark the gaps in both directions.
3. Estimate budget and direction per competitor via Semrush, so you know who is serious and where space is opening up.
4. Select the gaps with buying intent, especially long-tail terms that sit close to an enquiry or a quote.
5. Build targeted ad groups there with ad copy that shows your difference, and tie every group to a measurable lead goal.
6. Measure on cost per lead and quality of enquiries, not on impression share or CTR as a goal in itself.

That last step is where many companies go wrong. A high impression share feels like winning, but if those impressions do not produce qualified leads, you are buying expensive visibility without return. Steer on your ROAS and your cost per lead, and use the competitor analysis to shift your budget towards the places where the leads really are.

When is a competitor analysis not worth it?

Honest advice is part of the deal: not every situation calls for an extensive competitor analysis, and sometimes Google Ads itself does not pay off.

If you have a very small, niche market that is barely searched, you will find few competitors in the auction and an analysis will yield you few new insights. The energy is better spent reaching that small group through direct channels. If there is hardly any buying intent behind the keywords in your market, for instance because you sell something people do not actively search for, you will not solve that by imitating your competitor. In that case SEA may not be your strongest channel and other forms of demand creation make more sense.

And if your competitor has far more budget and deliberately dominates the expensive keywords at a loss, fighting along is rarely smart. Moving aside to the gaps they leave behind is then the only profitable route. So a good analysis tells you just as much about where you should not bid.

Frequently asked questions about Google Ads competitor analysis

What exactly is a Google Ads competitor analysis? It is the systematic mapping of who bids alongside you in the Google auction, which keywords they advertise on, roughly how much they spend and what their ads look like. You use those insights to improve your own keywords, bids and copy, and to find gaps where you can score more cheaply.

Which tools do I need to analyse competitors in Google Ads? Start with Google Ads Auction Insights, which is free inside your account and shows who you share the auction with. For the keywords competitors bid on you use Ahrefs, and for estimated spend and trends Semrush. Together those three give the full picture.

Can I see exactly how much my competitor spends on Google Ads? No, exact budgets are not public. Tools like Semrush give estimates that you should read mainly as an order of magnitude and a trend, not as precise figures. Always combine them with your own conversion data to base decisions on.

Should I use the same keywords as my competitor? Preferably not blindly. Bidding on exactly the same expensive keywords drives the price up and rarely delivers your best leads. The biggest win usually sits in the underused long-tail terms with buying intent where your competitor is barely present.

How often should I do a competitor analysis? For an active B2B campaign a fixed cadence works well: review Auction Insights monthly and run a more thorough analysis with external tools every quarter. On major market shifts or a new competitor, you pick it up in between.

Want to know where your competitor is leaving money on the table?

A competitor analysis is not a one-off exercise, but the foundation on which you deploy every euro of ad budget more precisely. We do this homework for you: we map your real advertising competitors, track down the keyword gaps with buying intent and build campaigns on top of them that steer on qualified leads, not on clicks. Small team, fast decisions, honest advice, even if Google Ads is not the smartest choice in your situation.

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