Google paid keyword overlap

Why it matters

Knowing where you overlap with rivals helps you read your own costs. Shared terms are contested, so the ad copy and landing page need to win on more than the bid. Terms rivals cover and you do not are candidates to test. Terms only you hold may be a quiet advantage, or a sign nobody else finds them worth paying for.

The competitor ad watch loop is in build and not on sale. When it ships it will track the paid keywords rivals bid on. Until then, manual searches and the Google Ads Transparency Center give you a good working map, and you never need to click a rival's ad to build it.

What you need

• - Your list of paid search terms from your Google Ads account, with your own spend and results per term
• - A private or logged-out browser window set to the locations you target
• - The Google Ads Transparency Center, at adstransparency.google.com
• - Up to three rivals' advertiser names

Setup

1. Export your paid search terms and pick the ones with the most spend, plus any you are considering.
2. Search each term in a private window and record which rivals' ads appear and what they say. Read the ads; do not click them, since every click costs the advertiser money.
3. Look up each rival in the Google Ads Transparency Center, filter to the United Kingdom and a recent date range, and note the themes and products their ads cover that you did not search for.
4. Paste your terms, your results per term and the observed rival ads into the prompt below.
5. Repeat once a month from the same locations so you can see which overlaps hold.

The prompt

Paste this into any capable model, followed by the evidence you gathered in the setup.

You are helping a UK business map paid search overlap with its rivals on Google.
Below are: our paid search terms with our spend and results per term (from our own account); a log of manual searches (term, location, date, which rivals' ads appeared, their ad text); and notes from the Google Ads Transparency Center on each rival's ad themes.
Do this:
1. Build an overlap table: for each of our terms, which rivals appeared, quoting their ad text.
2. List terms where we appear and no rival did.
3. List themes or terms rivals advertise on, from the searches or the Transparency Center notes, that we do not cover. Quote the evidence.
4. For each shared term, compare our ad promise with the rivals', quoting both, and say where ours is weaker or vaguer.
5. Recommend actions per term or theme (test, hold, improve copy, improve landing page, reduce spend), each rated for effort (low/medium/high) and likely impact (low/medium/high), using only our own spend and result figures.
Remember that manual searches are a sample: results vary by person, place and moment.
Rules:
- Quote the evidence for every point, word for word, and say where it came from (which rival, which page or ad, which date I captured it).
- Label each point OBSERVATION (you can see it in the evidence) or HYPOTHESIS (your reading of why). Never present a hypothesis as a proven cause.
- Never invent a figure, a date, a price or a result. If the evidence does not show it, write "not in the evidence".
- Use British English and plain words.

Terms, searches and notes:
[paste here]

Doing it by hand today

Treat the manual searches as a sample, not a census. Run them from the same places each month and look for overlaps that persist.

Use the transparency tools rather than clicks. The Google Ads Transparency Center lets you search an advertiser, see the ads they have served over a period, and filter by date and location. It will not show you their bids or their results, so any view of a rival's spend is a hypothesis.

Before shifting budget, check your own tracking is sound with the tracking-tag regression watch, and sense-check totals with the ad spend tool.