Tool availability
Competitor monitoring of 2 keywords and 1 location (or 1 keyword X 2 locations) is included in all packages. Get in touch with support or sales to add more keywords or locations - the price depends on the number of jobs, locations and keywords you monitor. Contact support team to get started.
Overview
Overview
The Competitor Monitoring feature now lets you organize your keyword and location monitoring into Monitoring Groups, so you can track multiple sets of terms and regions in one place. Each group can combine any number of keywords and locations; data for each group appears in its own dashboard, where you can drill down by keyword or location to see detailed visual reports.
Monitoring Groups come in two flavors:
Brand Groups: Ideal for your trademarked terms. Brand Groups unlock Smart Activation (auto-pausing/reactivating your brand campaign) and include our Infringement Detector for spotting unauthorized use of your brand in competitorsâ ads.
Generic Groups: Contain non-branded, industry-wide keywords for broad competitor analysis or inspiration for ad copy. Generic Groups focus on trend monitoring and reporting.
How It Works
Monitoring Keywords in specified Locations
For each keywordâlocation pair, our system runs regular searches and captures the top paid search results.
Advertiser Tracking & Data Collection
We log which advertisers appear, how often, with what ad copy, and in which positions.
For Brand Groups, we also scan ad copy for potential trademark infringements.
Group Dashboard & Drill-Down Filters
Overview Charts: See each advertiserâs share of total impressions (pie chart) and ranking distribution (bar chart).
Keyword/Location Filters: Click any keyword or location to filter the dashboard and focus on that subset of data.
Ad copy: In the All competitors list you can see all competitors and all the ads they advertise on the given keyword.
Optional Smart Activation (Brand Groups only)
Automatically pause your brand campaign when no competitors are bidding on your monitored terms.
Resume it the moment another advertiser bids, ensuring you only spend when thereâs real competition.
View a log of pause/reactivation events and estimated budget savings.
Infringement Detector (Brand Groups only)
Continuously scans ad copy in your monitored results for unauthorized uses of your brand terms.
Sends real-time alerts with captured screenshots of infringing ads.
Provides a streamlined workflow to generate and submit copyright complaints to Google directly from the dashboard.
Setup a New Monitoring Job
To start monitoring your competitors, follow these steps to set up a new job:
Setting Up a Monitoring Group
Create Your Group
Click New Monitoring Group.
Enter a Group Name (e.g., âSweden Brand Termsâ or âGeneric Running Shoesâ).
Select Type: Brand or Generic.
Add Keywords & Locations
For brand groups, optionally select a Brand campaign - the group will automatically pick the Locations from the campaigns. If no campaigns is selected you are free to pick any location to monitor.
Keywords: Enter as many terms as you like, 2 keywords are included in all packages.
For Brand Groups, include your key trademarks and variations.
For Generic Groups, list industry-relevant phrases.
Locations: Pick one or more geographic areas where you want to monitor.
Enable Optional Features
Smart Activation toggle per keyword (Brand Groups only).
Infringement Alerts toggle per keyword (Brand Groups only).
Save & Start
Hit Create to launch the group. Data collection begins immediately.
Insights & Reports
You can find all Competitor monitoring metrics explained in detailed here.
The Competitor Monitoring tool provides comprehensive insights and reports on competitor activities:
1. Pie Chart: Share of absolute top of search
Visualize Market Share: The pie chart displays the percentage of search share that each advertiser holds in the top paid search results for the monitored keywords. This gives you a clear picture of how dominant each competitor is in the market.
2. Bar Chart: Top competitors
Track Ranking Performance: The bar chart shows how often each advertiser ranks in positions 1 to 4 for the monitored keywords along with Share of search. This helps you understand which competitors are consistently appearing and how often your ads are appearing at the top.
Save Brand Budget with Smart Activation (optional)
The Competitor Monitoring tool includes a Smart Activation feature designed to optimize your budget usage.
Activate and pause Smart activation
You can choose to enable or disable Smart activation at any time, you can choose to activate and save brand budget or only use the tool for insights.
1. Automatic Campaign Pausing
Smart Activation: When the tool detects that no other advertisers are bidding on your monitored keywords, it can automatically pause your brand campaign. This prevents unnecessary ad spend when thereâs no competition for those keywords.
2. Resume Campaign Automatically
Budget Efficiency: Once competitors start bidding on the keywords again, the tool will automatically reactivate your brand campaign. This ensures that your ads are only running when they need to, maximizing your budget efficiency.
3. Full transparency
How often is my Campaign paused: See how many times you ads where paused and activated, along with an estimation of how much budget was saved by pausing the campaign when no other advertiser where bidding.
Infringement detection
The Infringement Detector is a powerful tool designed to safeguard your brand's integrity by monitoring and detecting unauthorized use of your brand terms in Google search ads. Hereâs how it works:
Automated Monitoring: The feature continuously scans Google search ads to identify instances where competitors are using your brand's terms within their ad copy. This kind of usage is typically prohibited by Googleâs advertising policies unless prior permission has been granted, making it a potential infringement.
Infringement Alerts: When our system detects an ad from a competitor that improperly features your brand name or terms, it captures and displays the ad details. This gives you full visibility into who is violating your brandâs rights and how they are using your trademarked terms.
Streamlined Complaint Process: To make protecting your brand as efficient as possible, the feature provides a simple, integrated way to report the infringement. You can generate and send a formal complaint to Google directly from the platform, requesting that the ad be taken down for violating advertising guidelines.
By using our Infringement Detector, you can ensure that your brand name remains protected, your competitors adhere to fair advertising practices, and your brand image is not misused or exploited.
Conclusion
The Competitor Monitoring tool is an essential resource for keeping track of competitor activities in Google Ads and optimizing your brandâs campaign budget. By setting up monitoring jobs, analyzing the provided insights, and utilizing Smart Activation, you can maintain a competitive edge while ensuring efficient budget management. For further assistance or more detailed instructions, please refer to the toolâs help section or contact support.