Competitor keywords for Google Ads in five points
You cannot see a rival's bid list, but you can see its ads, its ranking keywords and what a click costs.
By ClaudeGPT Si Newsroom · Editorial team
· 2 min read
Looking for competitor keywords for Google Ads? Here is the short version in five points: what you can see, what nobody can see, and where to spend money first.
1. Nobody can show you their bid list
Google does not publish the keywords an advertiser bids on. Any tool that shows a competitor's "paid keywords" is estimating. Keep that in mind before you copy anyone's campaign.
What you can see is the ads themselves. Google's Ads Transparency Center lists the ads a company runs. If you want that in one report, the Competitor Google Ads tool on seogeoaeo.ai pulls up to 100 of the most recently shown ads sending people to a domain, with the format, first and last shown dates, days running, and the wording of up to 10 text ads, longest-running first. It costs 15 credits, and a run that finds no ads is refunded.
2. Long-running ads are the best clue
Google does not publish clicks or spend either. But an ad that has been live for months is one the advertiser keeps paying for. That suggests the search behind it turns into customers. Read the promise in the headline, then write your own version. Do not copy the wording.
3. Their organic keywords point at their ad topics
The searches a competitor ranks for in Google usually overlap with what it advertises on. The Competitor Keywords tool on seogeoaeo.ai shows those. Give it a domain and a country, and it returns up to 100 keywords the site ranks for, with position, volume, difficulty, intent, cost per click and estimated visits.
It then pulls out the keywords worth bidding on: commercial and buying searches that carry a cost per click. That CPC is what advertisers pay on average, which tells you what a click is worth in that market. One run is 35 credits.
4. Bid on buying searches first
The best paid targets are searches close to a purchase:
- "best X for Y"
- "X pricing"
- "X vs Y"
These are the searches advertisers pay for, and they deserve a dedicated landing page even when volume is low. Skip searches for the competitor's own brand name unless you have a clear reason and have checked the trademark rules for your market.
5. Check the numbers before you set budgets
Volumes, visits and costs per click in these tools are estimates from a search data provider, not Google figures. They are also per country. Use them to compare keywords against each other, not as forecasts. Before you commit a budget, put your shortlist into Google Keyword Planner, which is free with a Google Ads account, or into seogeoaeo.ai's Keyword Metrics tool, which takes up to 100 keywords and returns volume, CPC and the top-of-page bid range for 33 credits.
Cost to do all of this
One competitor: 15 credits for its ads and 35 for its keywords. seogeoaeo.ai plans start at $29 a month for 2,000 credits, and each tool shows its price before it runs. It does not manage campaigns or track your rankings over time; you still run the ads in Google Ads itself.