How do I find what keywords competitors use in Google Ads? You can reconstruct most of a competitor's list without ever seeing the account itself. The method combines three sources: their live ads (which reveal the terms behind the copy), your own search terms report (which shows where you and they overlap in the auction), and Google's Auction Insights report (which shows who competes with you on which campaigns). Used together, these give you enough signal to position against any family law competitor in your market.
This works because Google Ads is a public auction with visible outputs. The ads themselves are indexed, the queries that trigger them leave a trail in your account, and Google publishes overlap data for every campaign you run.
The steps below walk through exactly how to do this for a family law firm. No paid tools required, though a few can speed the process.
How can I see a competitor's live Google Ads?
Start with the Google Ads Transparency Center. Search the competitor's firm name, filter by region, and you'll see every active ad they're running, including the headlines, descriptions, and display URLs. It is the one source that shows live creative straight from Google, at no cost, which makes it a practical starting point for reverse-engineering their targeting.
Ad copy is written to match keywords, so headlines and descriptions reveal the terms behind them. If a competitor runs a headline like "Contested Divorce Attorney" and a description mentioning "high-asset property division," those phrases are almost certainly in their keyword list or dynamically inserted from it.
What to record for each ad:
- Every headline variation (they often rotate 5 to 15 per ad group)
- Practice area language: divorce, custody, modification, adoption, guardianship
- Modifiers: "aggressive," "affordable," "board certified," "free consultation," "24/7"
- Geographic terms in headlines or descriptions
- Display URLs (subfolders often mirror ad group structure, e.g., /divorce-lawyer)
Run the same search from an incognito window on a mobile device and a desktop. Mobile-only ad extensions and call-only ads sometimes surface on one and not the other.
What does my search terms report reveal about competitors?
Your own account holds one of the most concrete data sources available: the search terms report. Every query that triggered one of your ads is a query your competitors are likely bidding on too, especially the ones where you struggle to hold the top of the page.
Open the report, sort by impressions, and add the Impr. (Abs. Top) % and Impr. (Top) % columns. These are impression rate metrics, the share of your own impressions that landed at the top of the page, and they are a different thing from impression share. Impression share is reported at the keyword, ad group, and campaign level, so at the query level these two rate columns are your read on how often you actually hold the top. Queries where you rarely do are the contested ones. Cross-reference them with the ad copy you gathered above. Patterns emerge quickly.
A practical workflow:
- Export 90 days of search terms data.
- Filter for queries with more than 20 impressions.
- Add the Impr. (Abs. Top) % and Impr. (Top) % columns, the two top-of-page rate metrics the search terms report does carry, to see how often you hold the top on each query.
- Then pull Search lost IS (rank) at the keyword and ad group level and map the contested queries back to the keywords that triggered them.
- A keyword losing impression share to rank, whose queries also sit low on the page, is a term competitors are bidding aggressively on.
- Group those by theme: contested vs uncontested divorce, custody vs visitation, modification vs establishment.
This tells you not only what competitors bid on, but where they outbid you. That's more useful than a raw keyword list.
How do I use Auction Insights to identify competitors?
Auction Insights lives inside Google Ads under any campaign, ad group, or keyword. It shows every domain competing against you in the auction, along with impression share, overlap rate, position above rate, and outranking share.
Run Auction Insights at three levels:
- Campaign level to identify who competes on your general practice areas
- Ad group level to isolate competitors by sub-practice (custody, divorce, support)
- Keyword level for your highest-value head terms like "divorce lawyer [city]"
A competitor with 60% overlap rate on your custody ad group and only 15% on your divorce ad group is telling you their bid strategy. They're prioritizing custody. That's a keyword allocation signal you can act on.
Track Auction Insights monthly. New entrants appear, existing competitors expand or retreat, and seasonal patterns show up (divorce filings spike in January and September, and competitor bids follow).
What can third-party keyword tools add?
Third-party PPC intelligence tools estimate which keywords a domain bids on by scraping search results at scale. They see a fraction of the actual auction and their data is modeled from observed impressions, so treat any specific keyword or spend estimate as directional.
Where these tools help:
- Surfacing landing page URLs the competitor sends paid traffic to (a strong hint at ad group structure)
- Historical ad copy archives showing how their messaging has evolved
- Identifying non-local practice areas they're testing (e.g., a divorce firm expanding into adoption)
Use them to supplement the three primary sources. The transparency center, your search terms report, and Auction Insights are built on first-party data. Third-party tools work from inference, so treat their output as a hypothesis to verify against your own account.
How do I turn this research into a bidding strategy?
Once you have the raw data, translate it into three outputs.
1. A gap list. Queries competitors are winning that you're not bidding on at all. These are candidates for new keywords or new ad groups. Prioritize by commercial intent: "divorce attorney near me" beats "how much does divorce cost."
2. A defense list. Queries you're winning where a specific competitor is closing the gap in Auction Insights. Consider raising bids, tightening ad copy, or improving landing page relevance before you lose position.
3. A positioning angle. If every competitor in your market runs "aggressive divorce attorney" copy, you have a differentiation opportunity. Test copy that emphasizes something concrete they don't: board certification, flat-fee uncontested divorce, evening consultations, specific practice depth in military or high-asset cases.
Build a rigorous negative keyword list from what you learn. If a competitor's ads show up on informational queries you don't want, add those queries as negatives before your budget follows them there. ORSA builds and maintains negative keyword strategy as part of every engagement because it's one of the highest-leverage ways to improve return on ad spend in family law. You can read more about our Google Ads services for family law firms.
Running Google Ads for your family law firm?
ORSA manages paid search for family law practices exclusively. If your campaigns should be producing more consultations, we’ll take a look and tell you what we see.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find what keywords competitors use in Google Ads without paid tools?
Three free sources cover it. The Ads Transparency Center shows their live creative, your own search terms report shows where you overlap in the auction, and Auction Insights shows who competes with you campaign by campaign. Paid tools add convenience and historical archives, and the free three carry the analysis on their own.
Can I see the exact keyword list a competitor uses in Google Ads?
No. Google does not expose any account's keyword list to outside parties. You can reconstruct most of it by combining the Ads Transparency Center, your search terms report, and Auction Insights, which together reveal the queries competitors are bidding on and where they compete hardest.
Is it legal to research competitor Google Ads?
Yes. Every source described here is public or lives inside your own Google Ads account. The Ads Transparency Center was built by Google specifically to make ads visible. Auction Insights is a standard report available to any advertiser.
How often should I check on competitor keywords and ads?
Review the Ads Transparency Center monthly for copy changes. Pull Auction Insights every 30 days at the campaign and ad group level. Scan your search terms report weekly for new queries and negative keyword candidates. Family law auctions shift seasonally, so quarterly deep-dives catch patterns that monthly reviews miss.
Should I bid on competitor firm names?
Sometimes. Bidding on competitor names can be efficient when your ad copy makes a clear, honest comparison and your landing page delivers on it. There are also ethical rules to consider under state bar advertising guidelines. We covered the tradeoffs in more depth in our resources on family law paid search.
The three sources together, live ads, your search terms report, and Auction Insights, reveal most of what any family law competitor bids on and where they compete hardest. That's enough to build a positioning strategy against them without ever seeing their actual keyword list. Their exact list stays proprietary. The auction is public, and the auction is what determines who wins the click.
Pick one competitor in your market this week. Pull their live ads, run Auction Insights on your top three campaigns, and identify five queries they're winning that you're not. If you want a second set of eyes on what you find, get in touch.
