Explore your competitive landscape

The competitive visibility report helps you understand your competitive landscape on a product category level, and take action to improve your visibility based on displayed impressions from your Shopping ads and organic listings. For information on specific products and brands, see the best sellers reports.

Your account must meet minimum eligibility requirements, and you must ensure that your use, or any third party's use, of Competitive visibility data complies with the Merchant Center terms and conditions.

See which reporting tables and fields are available with the Merchant API.

Competitive visibility data

Competitive visibility data is grouped by country, Google product category and traffic source.

You must specify country and category values in a WHERE clause for all competitive visibility queries. You can change the values in the WHERE clause to customize the report for dates, traffic sources, countries, and categories.

Queries with multiple country and category values might take longer to execute, or time out.

View businesses with similar visibility

You can query competitive_visibility_competitor_view to view businesses with a similar number of impressions to your business.

Here's a sample. To make the request, pass the following Merchant Center Query Language statement to the accounts.reports.search method:

SELECT
  report_country_code,
  report_category_id,
  traffic_source,
  domain,
  is_your_domain,
  rank,
  ads_organic_ratio,
  page_overlap_rate,
  higher_position_rate,
  relative_visibility
FROM competitive_visibility_competitor_view
WHERE date BETWEEN '2023-06-02' AND '2023-06-27'
  AND report_country_code = 'US'
  AND report_category_id = 536
  AND traffic_source = 'ADS'
ORDER BY rank

You can change the values in the WHERE clause to customize the report for other dates, traffic sources, countries, and categories.

Here's a sample response from the preceding query:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "competitiveVisibilityCompetitorView": {
        "reportCountryCode": "US",
        "reportCategoryId": "536",
        "trafficSource": "ADS",
        "domain": "examplepetstore.com",
        "isYourDomain": false,
        "rank": "4",
        "adsOrganicRatio": 8,
        "pageOverlapRate": 0.19,
        "higherPositionRate": 0.46,
        "relativeVisibility": 0.5
      }
    },
    {
      "competitiveVisibilityCompetitorView": {
        "reportCountryCode": "US",
        "reportCategoryId": "536",
        "trafficSource": "ADS",
        "domain": "example.com",
        "isYourDomain": true,
        "rank": "5",
        "adsOrganicRatio": 30,
        "pageOverlapRate": 1,
        "higherPositionRate": 0,
        "relativeVisibility": 0
      }
    },
  ]
}

For more information about the fields available for query, see the Fields in competitiveVisibilityCompetitorView table.

View businesses with highest visibility

You can query competitive_visibility_top_merchant_view to see which businesses are getting the most impressions across Google in a specific category, and how your business compares.

Here's a sample. To make the request, pass the following Merchant Center Query Language statement to the accounts.reports.search method:

SELECT
  report_country_code,
  report_category_id,
  traffic_source,
  domain,
  is_your_domain,
  rank,
  ads_organic_ratio,
  page_overlap_rate,
  higher_position_rate
FROM competitive_visibility_top_merchant_view
WHERE date BETWEEN '2022-08-01' AND '2022-09-01'
  AND report_country_code = 'US'
  AND report_category_id = 100
  AND traffic_source = 'ORGANIC'
ORDER BY rank

Here's a sample response from the preceding query:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "competitiveVisibilityTopMerchantView": {
        "reportCountryCode": "US",
        "reportCategoryId": "100",
        "trafficSource": "ORGANIC",
        "domain": "examplepetstore.com",
        "isYourDomain": false,
        "rank": "1",
        "adsOrganicRatio": 0.2,
        "pageOverlapRate": 0.3,
        "higherPositionRate": 0.45
      }
    },
    {
      "competitiveVisibilityTopMerchantView": {
        "reportCountryCode": "US",
        "reportCategoryId": "100",
        "trafficSource": "ORGANIC",
        "domain": "example.com",
        "isYourDomain": false,
        "rank": "2",
        "adsOrganicRatio": 5,
        "pageOverlapRate": 0.67,
        "higherPositionRate": 0.89
      }
    },
  ]
}

For more information about the fields available for query, see the Fields in competitiveVisibilityTopMerchantView table.

Compare your visibility to the category benchmark

You can query competitive_visibility_benchmark_view to see how your number of impressions trends over time compared to the average trend of other sellers.

Here's a sample. To make the request, pass the following Merchant Center Query Language statement to the accounts.reports.search method:

SELECT
  report_country_code,
  report_category_id,
  traffic_source,
  date,
  your_domain_visibility_trend,
  category_benchmark_visibility_trend
FROM competitive_visibility_benchmark_view
WHERE date BETWEEN '2022-09-01' AND '2022-09-07'
  AND report_country_code = 'US'
  AND report_category_id = 100
  AND traffic_source = 'ORGANIC'
ORDER BY date

Here's a sample response from the preceding query:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "competitiveVisibilityBenchmarkView": {
        "date": {
          "year": 2022,
          "month": 9,
          "day": 1
        },
        "reportCountryCode": "US",
        "reportCategoryId": "100",
        "trafficSource": "ORGANIC",
        "yourDomainVisibilityTrend": 0,
        "categoryBenchmarkVisibilityTrend": 0
      }
    },
    {
      "competitiveVisibilityBenchmarkView": {
        "date": {
          "year": 2022,
          "month": 9,
          "day": 2
        },
        "reportCountryCode": "US",
        "reportCategoryId": "100",
        "trafficSource": "ORGANIC",
        "yourDomainVisibilityTrend": 0.3,
        "categoryBenchmarkVisibilityTrend": -0.15
      }
    },
  ]
}

For more information about the fields available for query, see the Fields in competitiveVisibilityBenchmarkView table.