What Do the Auction Insights Metrics Mean in Google Ads?

The Auction Insights report in Google Ads compares your performance against other advertisers competing in the same auctions, using six metrics: impression share, overlap rate, position above rate, top of page rate, absolute top of page rate, and outranking share. Each one answers a different question about how often you show up and where, relative to specific competitors.

Impression Share

Impression share is the number of times your ad was actually shown divided by the estimated number of times it was eligible to be shown. It's the only Auction Insights metric that describes your own performance rather than a head-to-head comparison against a specific competitor.

Overlap Rate

Overlap rate measures how often another advertiser's ad received an impression in the same auction where your ad also got an impression. If a competitor shows "60%" in this column, their ad appeared alongside yours in 6 out of every 10 auctions where your ad was shown.

Position Above Rate

Position above rate shows how often a competitor's ad ranked in a higher position than yours, counted only across the auctions where both ads appeared at the same time. A "5%" figure means the competitor outranked you in 5 of every 100 shared auctions.

Top of Page Rate and Absolute Top of Page Rate

• Top of page rate — how often your ad (or a competitor's) showed anywhere above the organic search results
• Absolute top of page rate — how often the ad showed in the very first position above organic results, the most competitive placement on the page

Outranking Share

Outranking share is how often your ad ranked higher in the auction than a competitor's, or showed when theirs didn't show at all. It's the inverse counterpart to position above rate.

Why These Numbers Move Together

None of these metrics exist in isolation — a rising overlap rate with a falling position above rate against the same competitor typically signals that a rival is bidding more aggressively for the same queries, which is exactly the pattern Auction Insights is built to surface before it shows up as a drop in conversions.

Bottom Line

Pull the Auction Insights report at the campaign level and sort by overlap rate to identify your most frequent competitors first, then check position above rate against each one to see whether you're losing rank, not just share.

Source: Google Ads Help, "Use auction insights to compare performance" (support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2579754).