How to Spy on Your Competitor’s AdWords Campaigns

Have you ever wished you could figure out what your competitors are doing with their Google Ads campaigns? If you could just know what keywords they were using, what all their ads looked like, and which ones worked best, you’d have a fighting chance at beating them, right?

Well, we’re about to divulge a way for you to see your competitors’ Google Ads campaign. And guess what? You don’t have to become a private investigator or break the law.

All you need to do is use SpyFu.

SpyFu is an amazing tool that allows you to see what your competitors’ are doing with Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords). By using this tool, you’ll be able to find out:

The keywords your competitors are using.
Which of their keywords are performing the best.
How long their ads ran or have run for certain keywords.
The clicks and impressions they received from their ads.
The best performing ads.
Your competitors’ ad copy.
Your competitors’ monthly ad spend on campaigns.

This wealth of information isn’t hard to find when using the tool. Let me take you on a little tour of it.

PPC Keywords

The first step is to set up your SpyFu account. Once you’ve done that, you can get started on your research right away. Click on PPC Keywords, and put in your competitor’s URL.

On this page, you will see the keywords your competitor is using. You will also see the cost per click, the monthly cost of the ad with that keyword, how many monthly searches each keyword receives, where the ad falls in position, and how many ads are being run with that keyword.

If you look at the image below, the first keyword is “dentist nyc”. The cost per click is $7.16. This business spends $321 a month on it. The keyword receives 5.4K monthly searches. It has the first ad position, and there are 2 ads for this keyword.

With this information, you can gauge how much you would need to invest a month in order to advertise.

But how do you know if it’s a good keyword to invest in? That information is found in Ad History.

Ad History

To access this information, click on Ad History in the navigation and this will come up:

On this screen, you can find the keyword you are interested in using. In this case, we’re going to look at “dentist nyc.”

Here’s an example of an ad that included a free exam as well as a financing offer.

Here’s a different ad that focused more on credibility.

By reviewing competitors’ ads in SpyFu, you can see not only what offers and angles they’re using, but also what position the ads were ranked in, and how long the competitors’ have been using the ad copy.

In addition to looking at one keyword, you can look at all of your competitor’s keywords. You can even filter for the best vs. worst keywords in their Google Ads campaign.

Our suggestion is that as you’re looking through their campaign, take notes on the following questions: