A competitor report should inform a decision
A list of nearby businesses is not a campaign adjustment. Useful competitor research identifies a relevant alternative your buyer might consider, verifies what it offers and proposes a change your own business can honestly support.
Site to Spend reads your business sources and competitor websites for offers, messaging and positioning. Those observations can inform strategy and supported campaign changes. A business appearing in search results is not proof that it bids against you on every keyword.
Separate observed facts from hypotheses
Record the source URL and observation date. A price published on a page is a fact about that page at that time, subject to its conditions. “Customers care most about price” is a hypothesis. “This advertiser spends A$10,000 each month” is not established by seeing its ad.
Google's Auction Insights reports advertisers participating in overlapping auctions when activity thresholds are met. It provides relative metrics such as overlap and impression share; it does not expose a competitor's complete budget, conversions or profitability.
Worked example: convenience versus price
Hypothetical comparison, not competitor evidence. A local service business sees one rival lead with a discount and another with online booking. Its own verified offer is weekend appointments at the published standard rate.
- Confirm that weekend appointments are genuinely available in the targeted area.
- Use the booking page as the destination, with availability visible.
- Test copy about weekend availability against the current service-focused message.
- Measure completed bookings and accepted enquiries, not just clicks.
Copying the rival's discount would advertise a price the business does not offer. Claiming “cheapest” would need supporting evidence. The useful idea is a truthful difference that answers the buyer's need.
Build a compact comparison record
- Competitor and source URL.
- Service and area that actually overlap.
- Observed offer, with restrictions and date.
- Your verified difference.
- Proposed ad, keyword or page hypothesis.
- Outcome and review period that will test it.
For keyword suggestions, apply the offer test from our campaign structure guide. A competitor with a broad service catalogue may attract searches that are unsuitable for your narrower business.
Do not change everything from one report
Choose a change that can be evaluated. If copy, landing page, targeting and budget all change together, a later improvement is hard to explain. Also check current delivery before making a creative decision: an account hold is not a messaging problem.
Keep the original settings, proposed rationale and follow-up observations. A competitor report can be stale, and a platform recommendation can be inappropriate for your budget or goal.
Make the report useful after launch
Review whether the relevant offer changed, whether your differentiator is still true and whether the campaign outcomes support the experiment. Connect research with copy review, measurement and the activity history described in our agent guide. Research is context for a decision, not a guarantee of winning auctions.