How to Use Auction Insights to Beat Competing Dental Practices
The auction insights report shows who you are competing against in Google Ads and how you compare. Here is how to read it and what to do with it.
If competing practices are outperforming you in Google Ads and you are not sure why, the auction insights report is the place to look. It is free, it is already in your account, and it shows who you are up against and how you compare.
Where to find it
Go to Insights and reports, then Auction insights. You can set any date range, and you can view it for the whole account or drill into a single campaign, ad group or keyword.
Changing the date range is useful on its own. It shows who used to advertise and has stopped, and who has recently started.
Start with the competitor list
The first column lists the domains competing in the same auctions as you. Copy each one into a browser and look at the site. These are the practices a potential patient is comparing you with, often by clicking both ads.
Look at:
- Is the copy about benefits to the patient, or is it dull?
- Are they running an offer? It may be worth running one too.
- Does the site work well on mobile, and how fast does it load?
- What do they do to get people to book that you could apply to your own site?
Your website needs to be at least on par with theirs.
What each metric means
- Impression share. How often your ad showed, out of the times it was eligible to. You miss impressions when you are outbid, run out of budget or have a weak quality score. Low numbers are normal, and they are good news: there is more traffic available if you bid higher or raise the budget.
- Overlap rate. How often a competitor's ad showed in the same auction as yours.
- Position above rate. How often a competitor's ad appeared above yours when both showed. A high number means they are bidding aggressively.
- Top of page rate. How often an ad appeared in the block of ads above the organic results. This is not the same as first position.
- Absolute top of page rate. How often an ad was in the number one position.
- Outranking share. How often your ad ranked above a given competitor.
If you forget a definition, hover over the column heading.
The overlap trick
Pay attention to low overlap rates with a practice you consider your biggest competitor. If the practice around the corner rarely overlaps with you, they are probably bidding on keywords you are not.
Put their domain into a competitor research tool to see which keywords they bid on, then consider adding the relevant ones to your account.
Segment by day and device
Click Segment and choose day of the week. You can see when competitors pull back. If a competitor barely spends on Sundays, that may be an opening for you.
Then segment by device. You can see whether a competitor is going hard on mobile or on desktop, and how your own outranking share differs between the two. If mobile is where your calls come from, this tells you whether you are winning there.
If you want me to look at your account and tell you what I would fix first, book a strategy call.