The best free Google Ads spy tool is Google's own Ads Transparency Center, a public site where anyone can look up the ads a company has run. When you outgrow scrolling through it by hand, seogeoaeo.ai turns the same public ads into a sorted report for a small per-run credit price, and like everything on this list it works in a browser tab with nothing to install.
1. seogeoaeo.ai Competitor Google Ads (the pick once free gets slow)
This is the option we recommend for most people, even though it is not free. You paste a rival's website into seogeoaeo.ai's ad lookup, choose a country or all of them, and get back the Google ads pointing at that site. Each ad comes with its format, the account that paid for it, its first and last dates and how many days it has been live. The longest-running text ads are listed first, with their headlines, descriptions and landing pages written out.
One run costs 15 credits, and the price shows before you click. If the site has no Google ads at all, you get the credits back. The value over the free route is time: the sorting and reading are done for you.
2. Google's own ad archive (free)
Google launched this archive in 2023. It covers ads shown on Search, YouTube and Display by advertisers Google has verified. Type a company name or a website, then filter by region and by date. Each ad shows its format and when it last ran.
It costs nothing, and it is the same source seogeoaeo.ai draws its report from. The trade-off is effort. You open ads one at a time, you work out which ones have lasted, and you copy anything worth keeping into your own notes.
3. My Ad Center (free, for ads you already see)
When a Google ad appears in your own results, the three-dot menu next to it leads into My Ad Center, which links through to the same transparency pages. It is a quick way to check who is behind a single ad you just saw, though it is no help for planning research across a whole market.
4. Searching Google yourself (free, but narrow)
Typing your main keywords into Google and noting who advertises is the oldest trick there is. It only shows what Google serves to you, in your location, at that moment, so it misses a lot. Treat it as a quick sanity check, not research.
How the options compare
| Option | Cost | Install needed | Sorted by run length | Bid keywords or spend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| seogeoaeo.ai Competitor Google Ads | 15 credits per run | No | Yes | No |
| Google Ads Transparency Center | Free | No | No | No |
| My Ad Center | Free | No | No | No |
| Manual Google searches | Free | No | No | No |
None of these shows the keywords a rival bids on or what it spends, because Google does not publish either. Paid PPC suites such as SpyFu sell estimates of those numbers. If your job depends on bid estimates across a large account, that kind of suite is the better buy. For seeing what a competitor actually says in its ads, the public data is enough.
Getting value from free ad research
Look for ads that keep running. An advertiser that pays to show the same headline for months has probably found something that works for it. Write down the offer, the proof and the call to action, then build your own version around what you do better.
Also check for more than one paying account. Agencies and resellers often advertise for a brand under their own names, and that changes who you are really bidding against.