A competitive PPC analysis is a review of who you compete with in paid search auctions and how: their keywords, ad copy, assets, landing pages, bids and schedules. For lead gen accounts, it is only useful if you compare outcomes, not just tactics. Measure your own cost per qualified call and lead first, then use competitor data to find the keywords, offers and hours where you can win those leads for less.
Most competitor analysis guides stop at “see what your rivals bid on and copy what works”. That fails for lead gen accounts, where a large share of conversions arrive by phone. A competitor can hold the top position for a keyword that brings clicks but no calls, and copying them moves your budget into the same hole.
This guide walks through a competitive PPC analysis built for lead gen: eight steps, the tools for each, and a template you can reuse every month. It works for a single account, or for an agency running the same audit across clients.
What a competitive PPC analysis should answer
Before you open any tool, write down the questions you want answered.
A useful analysis answers five questions:
- Who do we compete with in the auction? Not the companies you think of as competitors, but the advertisers who show up next to you.
- Where are they winning that we are not? Keywords, locations, devices and hours.
- What are they offering? Price, free consults, guarantees, speed, phone or form.
- What does it cost us to compete there? Clicks, calls and qualified leads at today’s prices.
- Which tests should we run next? Each finding should end as a change you can test.
How to do a PPC competitor analysis in 8 steps
This is how to analyze PPC competitors when your account lives on leads and calls. Work through the steps in order: each one feeds the next.
Step 1: Benchmark your own account first
Competitor data means nothing without your own baseline. Pull the last 90 days by campaign and keyword:
- Cost per click and click-through rate
- Conversion rate, split by calls and forms
- Cost per qualified lead, where “qualified” means the lead fits your service, location and budget
- Revenue or pipeline per campaign, if your CRM has it
Lead gen accounts often find that their best keywords by cost per click are their worst by cost per qualified call. If calls are not yet counted as conversions, fix that first: our PPC call tracking guide shows how to tie every call to the keyword and ad behind it.
Step 2: Find your real auction competitors
Your sales team’s competitor list and your auction competitors are rarely the same. Directories, lead aggregators and national brands often bid on the same terms as local businesses.
Use the Auction insights report in Google Ads. For Search it is available for campaigns, ad groups and keywords that have enough activity in the period you pick, and it shows six statistics:
| Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Impression share | How often you showed, out of the auctions you were eligible for |
| Overlap rate | How often a competitor’s ad showed in the same auction as yours |
| Position above rate | How often their ad showed above yours when both appeared |
| Top of page rate | How often an ad showed above the unpaid search results |
| Absolute top of page rate | How often an ad showed as the very first ad on the page |
| Outranking share | How often you ranked higher than them, or showed when they did not |
One blind spot: Local Services Ads run in their own auction, above the search ads, and take calls directly. Those advertisers do not appear in Auction insights, so in home services, legal and similar categories, search for your main keywords and note who holds the Local Services slots too.
Segment the report by device and by time to see when a competitor gets aggressive. A competitor with a high overlap rate and a high position above rate on your best converting keywords is your real rival. Google does not show insights for an advertiser whose impression share is below 10%, so very small competitors will be missing.
Step 3: Collect competitor keywords
Next, see which keywords your auction competitors buy that you do not.
| Tool | What you get | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads Keyword Planner | Keyword ideas from a competitor’s website (“Start with a website”) | Free |
| Ahrefs, Semrush | Paid keywords, estimated traffic and ad history by domain | Paid |
| SpyFu | A long history of Google Ads keywords and ad copy | Paid |
Export the lists, remove brand terms and sort by intent. You want keywords that signal someone ready to call: “near me”, “cost”, “emergency”, “free consultation”, “hire”. Add the low intent terms you find as negatives, to stop irrelevant clicks in Google Ads before they eat budget.
Third-party tools estimate volumes and spend. Use them to spot gaps and patterns, not as exact numbers.
Step 4: Analyze competitor ads and assets
Search your top 20 keywords on mobile and desktop, in the locations you target, and note what each competitor shows. You can also look up an advertiser in the Google Ads Transparency Center to see the ads it is running.
For each competitor, record:
- The main promise: price, speed, experience or guarantee
- The call to action: call now, book online, get a quote
- Assets: call assets, location assets, sitelinks, structured snippets, lead forms
- Call ads: whether they run phone-first ads for mobile searches
- Offer details: free inspection, free consult, discount, financing
If most competitors push “get a free quote” forms and few show a phone number, there is a gap for phone-first ads: see how to use call assets and how to write call-only ads. If everyone leads with price, a speed or trust angle stands out.
A note on brand terms: you can bid on a competitor’s brand name, but keep it out of your ad text.
Step 5: Review competitor landing pages
The landing page decides whether a click becomes a call. For each competitor’s main landing pages, check:
- Message match: does the headline repeat the promise in the ad?
- Phone number placement: is it above the fold and tappable on mobile?
- Tracking numbers: does the number change between visits? If it does, they are probably tracking calls by keyword.
- Form length: how many fields, and is the form or the phone the main action?
- Trust signals: reviews, licenses, badges, years in business
- Hours: do they promise 24/7 answering or same-day callbacks?
Compare this with your own page. Our guide on how to optimize a landing page for calls covers what to fix first.
Step 6: Map bids, budgets and schedules
You cannot see a competitor’s bids, but you can infer a lot:
- Top of page bid ranges in Keyword Planner show what the auction costs in your area.
- Auction insights segmented by time shows when competitors pull back. Pair it with your own cost per click by hour of day: if your clicks get cheaper after 7 pm, rivals are probably pausing. Many local businesses stop ads at night and on weekends.
- Impression share lost to budget in your own account shows where you are already capped.
Evenings and weekends are often cheaper for lead gen, but only if someone answers the phone. Check the hours competitors leave open against your own call answer rate by hour before you add budget there.
Step 7: Compare cost per call, not cost per click
This is the step most competitive analyses skip, and the one that matters most for lead gen. Two keywords can cost the same per click and produce very different results on the phone.
The competitor heavy group looks like a must-win in Auction insights, but it brings the most expensive qualified calls. The cheapest clicks are not cheap either. The best move is to defend the emergency group and test new copy elsewhere, not to fight for the top position everywhere.
To build this table you need PPC call tracking software, so every call carries the keyword, ad and landing page that drove it, plus a way to mark which calls were qualified. Nimbata’s AI Rating gives each call up to five stars on the criteria you set, such as lead quality, which keeps “qualified” consistent across hundreds of calls. You can then send qualified calls back to Google Ads as conversions, so Smart Bidding learns which auctions are worth winning.
That list is what makes the last part possible. Once a call is rated and tagged, a workflow decides what Google Ads hears about it: a qualified call goes back as a conversion with its value, and a wrong number sends nothing. Your bidding then optimizes for the calls you want, while competitors who count every call keep paying for the ones you filter out.
Try it on your own account: start a free trial of Nimbata and see cost per qualified call by keyword once the tracking script is on your site.
Step 8: Turn findings into tests and repeat monthly
Every finding should end as a test with a clear metric:
| Finding | Test | Success metric |
|---|---|---|
| Competitors skip call assets on mobile | Add call assets and a call ad on your top 10 keywords | Cost per qualified call |
| Clicks get cheaper after 7 pm | Raise bids from 7 pm to 10 pm where your answer rate is above 90% | Qualified calls per hour |
| Rivals lead with price | Test a “same-day service” headline | Call conversion rate |
| Gap on “free consultation” terms | New ad group and landing page | Calls and qualified rate |
Competitor activity changes with seasons and budgets, so rerun the analysis every month for active accounts and every quarter for stable ones. Keep the same template so changes are easy to spot.
The monthly rerun does not have to be manual. Connect Nimbata MCP to Claude or ChatGPT and ask for the ranking in plain language:
Claude
Competitive PPC analysis template
Copy this checklist for each competitor:
- Auction insights: overlap rate, position above rate, top of page rate
- Top 20 shared keywords, and 20 keywords they buy that you do not
- Main ad promise, call to action and assets
- Landing page: phone placement, tracking number, form fields, trust signals
- Days and hours they appear and pull back
- Your cost per qualified call on shared keywords
- Three tests to run this month
For agencies, the same template becomes part of the monthly client report, with call tracking for agencies supplying the call data for every client. Showing clients cost per qualified call next to competitor data is a stronger story than impression share alone. See our guide to call tracking reporting for the numbers worth showing.
Frequently asked questions about competitive PPC analysis
What is competitive PPC analysis?
Competitive PPC analysis is the process of studying the advertisers you compete with in paid search: their keywords, ads, landing pages, bids and timing. The goal is to find where you can win more qualified leads for less, not to copy their campaigns.
How do I analyze PPC competitors for free?
Start with the Auction insights report in Google Ads, the Google Ads Transparency Center and manual searches on mobile and desktop in your target locations. Keyword Planner can also suggest keywords from a competitor’s website. Paid tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush and SpyFu add estimated keyword and spend data.
How often should I run a competitive PPC analysis?
Monthly for accounts with steady spend or seasonal demand, and quarterly for stable accounts. Also rerun it when your cost per click or impression share changes suddenly.
Can I bid on competitor brand names?
Google does not restrict the use of trademarks as keywords, so you can bid on a competitor’s brand name. Using their trademark in your ad text is different: Google may restrict it when the trademark owner files a complaint, and the rules vary by country. Keep competitor names out of your headlines and descriptions.
What metrics matter most in a PPC competitor analysis for lead gen?
Overlap rate, position above rate and impression share show the competition. Cost per qualified call and qualified lead rate show whether competing is worth it. Without call data, you are missing a large share of your conversions.
Make your analysis count calls
A competitive PPC analysis tells you where to compete. Call tracking tells you whether it was worth it. Start a free trial of Nimbata to see cost per qualified call by keyword, or book a demo to walk through it with your own account.
