Spy on competitors · Solar Company Google Ads Spy Tool

Google Ads for solar companies with a spy tool for rival installer ads

Google Ads for solar companies pay off when your ad gives a homeowner a better reason to book a site visit with you than the national brands, local installers and lead sites around you. AdEye shows you what those rivals are saying. Type a competing installer's website into the search box and you get its live Google Search, Display and YouTube ads in one feed, read from Google's own Ads Transparency Center and sorted by how long each ad has run. An offer a rival has kept paying for since spring is the one that keeps its calendar full.

Solar advertising changed in 2026. The IRS states that the Residential Clean Energy Credit, the 30% credit homeowners claimed for buying a system, "is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025." For years that credit was the headline of half the solar ads in America. Installers had to replace it with something else: financing at a monthly payment, leases and power purchase agreements, battery backup, long warranties, local utility programs or a price per watt. Which of those your competitors chose, and which they kept running, is written in their ads. The same lookup works for roofers, HVAC and electrical contractors, covered on our home services Google Ads spy tool page, and for any advertiser on our main Google Ads spy tool page.

The search box on this page gives you a one-time demo of 10 searches with no card. Paid plans start at $60 a month, or $30 billed yearly, with daily new-ad alerts on a watch list. AdEye covers Google only. It does not show Meta ads, keywords, bids or spend, and nothing here is tax advice.

adeye · Ad Intelligence Feed

Live Google data

Enter a brand or a domain

Try:

Public Google Ads Transparency data. Nothing behind a login.

Comparing rivals? Separate up to 5 domains with commas to see their ads in one feed. Each one counts as one search.

Type a brand or a domain first, for example nike.com or Notion.

live ads from of competitors, in one feed

Open your swipe file

Google Ads Transparency has no ads on record for that search. Google indexes ads by advertiser, so the brand's exact domain works best, for example nike.com.

Google Ads Transparency has no ads on record for . That is an answer about the brand, not a problem with the search: they are not running Google ads that Google publishes, or they advertise under a different registered name.

We could not reach Google Ads Transparency just now, so this is not a result about that brand, we simply could not look. Please try again in a moment. This search has not been counted against your allowance.

Open your swipe file

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Live Google Ads Transparency data · Run length · Public data only

Google Ads Transparency

Run length on every ad

AI-tagged hooks & angles

Why it works

What rival installers' Google ads tell a solar company before the budget goes up

Google's record of a rival installer's ads, not one search result

Google lists the ads of verified advertisers in its Ads Transparency Center, and every solar company running Google Ads goes through advertiser verification. The headlines, descriptions, banners and videos there are the advertiser's approved ads, not whatever one search served to one phone in one ZIP code. AdEye searches that record by the competitor's domain or name and returns its Search text ads, Display banners and YouTube video together. You see the full set of offers a rival puts in front of homeowners, including the remarketing banners that follow a visitor for weeks after a first quote request.

The offer that replaced the 30% credit

Until the end of 2025, "30% federal tax credit" was the easiest headline in residential solar. The IRS now says the Residential Clean Energy Credit is not available for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so an ad promising it to a cash or loan buyer in 2026 is out of date. Rivals moved in different directions. Some lead with a monthly payment on a lease or power purchase agreement, some with battery backup for outages, some with a 25-year warranty or a price per watt, some with a utility or state program. Reading their current ads shows which story each competitor bet on. Ask a tax professional how any credit applies to a specific customer; this page is market research.

Run length shows the offer that keeps booking site visits

No tool can show you what a competing installer spends or what a signed contract costs it, and any page that prints an exact budget for a rival is guessing. What Google does publish is when each ad ran. An installer does not keep paying for a battery offer, a financing ad or a free roof assessment for months unless appointments come from it. AdEye turns the record into a first-seen date and a run length on every ad and sorts the long runners to the top, so you see which offers lasted in your market and which were tested for two weeks and pulled.

National brands, local installers and lead sites in one auction

A local installer bidding on "solar companies near me" meets national residential brands, regional installers, quote marketplaces and lead sellers that pass the same homeowner to several companies. National brands tend to lead with financing and scale, lead sites with "compare quotes from top installers", local companies with crews, reviews and years in the area. Look up two or three of each and the gaps show quickly. A local installer usually wins on what the others cannot say together: its own licensed crews, one point of contact from design to permission to operate, and service after the install.

A saved record, because solar demand follows the seasons and the news

Solar search rises with summer power bills, storm seasons and outages, and with every change in incentives and net metering rules. Installers change their ads to match, and once an ordinary commercial ad stops running you cannot count on finding it again in the public record. AdEye boards keep the creative, the advertiser, the format and the dates together per competitor, so the offer a rival ran after the credit ended is still on file when you plan next year. A watch list on the paid plans re-checks your rivals daily and emails you their new ads, and CSV export on the paid plans puts a board into a sales meeting deck.

Couple at a kitchen table comparing quotes on a laptop in the evening

The homeowner compares three installers before booking one visit

A household searching "solar installers near me" or "solar panels cost" opens several sponsored results at once: a national brand, a quote marketplace and one or two local installers. They want to know what a system will cost them each month, who will still be around to honor the warranty, and whether a salesperson will hound them. The ads that win the site visit answer one of those questions directly. If every ad above yours says "Go solar and save", the installer that names its financing, its warranty or its years in the county gets the call.

Small business owner and office manager reviewing rival ads on a laptop in the office

Read the installers you meet in the auction between site visits

An owner or sales manager can go through five competitors in ten minutes. Paste their domains, start with the longest-running ads, and write down three things per rival: the offer it leads with (a monthly payment, a lease, a battery, a price per watt), the trust signal it uses (warranty length, local crews, licensed electricians) and where the click goes. That sheet tells you which promises are already crowded in your service area before you raise a daily budget on expensive solar terms.

Side by side

Five ways to research competing solar installers' Google ads, compared

Each source answers part of the question. This is what each one shows, what it leaves out and what it costs.

Method	What you see	What you miss	Cost
Search Google yourself	The ads served to you for one query, at that moment, where you are	Other ZIP codes, devices and hours; how long an ad has run; every ad you did not trigger	Free, but your own searches can skew your impression data
Google Ads Transparency Center	A verified advertiser's ads, filterable by platform, region and date	No sorting by run length, no saving, no alerts, one advertiser at a time	Free
Auction Insights (your account)	Which domains share your auctions, with impression share, overlap and outranking share	Every ad, offer and landing page. Only auctions you entered	Free with active campaigns
Keyword-estimate tools (SpyFu, Semrush)	Modelled keywords, estimated clicks and text ad history	Display and YouTube creative; the estimates are models, not Google's record	SpyFu from $39 a month; Semrush Advertising $99 to $220
AdEye	A rival installer's live Google ads with run length, AI tags, boards and daily watch-list alerts	Keywords, bids, spend, Meta ads	$60, $99, $300 or $600 a month; $30 to $300 billed yearly

What it surfaces

Every ad card carries the hook, angle and a working signal

You type a brand or a domain. AdEye pulls that advertiser's live public Google ads into one feed and AI-tags each creative on the paid plans, so you read the strategy and spot the long-running winners before you save a single one.

Look up any competing installer, national solar brand or lead site by domain or name
Up to five rival domains in one feed, separated by commas
Search, Display and YouTube ads in one feed
First-seen date and run length on every ad
Long-running financing, battery and warranty offers sorted to the top
AI hook, angle and format tags on paid plans
Watch list with daily new-ad emails on paid plans
Boards per competitor or per service area, CSV export on paid plans

GOOGLE Top performer

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GYMSHARK USA INC · RUNNING 1,819D

Why AdEye

One feed, the AI read, the working signal in view

Not a stale doc full of screenshots. One query for a brand, the run length on every creative, and a swipe file worth reopening. Public ad-library data only.

Every Google ad at once

The Google Ads Transparency Center searched by brand or domain, so competitor ad research is one query instead of clicking through Google's own viewer.

The AI reads the why

Creatives are tagged with their hook, angle and format on the paid plans, a few per search and kept once read, and a working signal flags the long-runners, so you see why an ad works, not just what it ran.

A swipe file that stays current

Save winners to boards, each keeping its run length and a link back to the original creative on Google, so the file is still useful months later.

Good questions

Questions about solar company google ads spy tool

Yes, when the installer measures booked site visits and signed contracts rather than clicks. Someone searching "solar installers near me" or "solar battery backup cost" is close to a decision, and Google Ads puts you in front of them at that moment. The companies that make it pay keep ads to their service area, answer quote requests within minutes, send each campaign to a matching page and check what nearby installers already promise.

They are worth it because one residential system is worth many clicks, so a modest close rate can carry expensive keywords. They stop being worth it when clicks land on a generic homepage, when the follow-up is slow, or when the ad repeats the same savings line as every rival above it. Read competing installers' live ads before you scale, and give the homeowner one concrete reason to pick you.

Google has no fixed price. You pay per click, and solar terms are competitive because national brands and lead sellers bid on the same broad searches as local installers. Narrower searches, such as a town name plus "solar installer" or a specific product like a home battery, often cost less. Keyword Planner inside your own Google Ads account shows current bid ranges for your area before you set a daily budget.

Be careful. The IRS states the Residential Clean Energy Credit is not available for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so promising it to a homeowner buying a system in 2026 is out of date. Other incentives, utility programs and financing structures may still apply. Have a tax professional review any incentive claim in your ads, and check what rivals now advertise instead.

Look the installer up by its website domain in Google's Ads Transparency Center, or search the same domain in AdEye, which returns its live Search, Display and YouTube ads in one feed sorted by how long each has run. You can enter up to five rival domains at once, separated by commas. Both read Google's public record, so neither adds an impression or a click to the other company's account.

Name the outcome and the reason to call you: the monthly cost or savings story you can back up, the service area, and one trust signal a cautious homeowner checks first, such as warranty length, in-house licensed crews or years installing locally. Add one next step, usually a free site assessment or a quote. Then compare your draft with the longest-running ads of nearby installers and change whatever sounds the same.

It depends on the market, which is why you look rather than guess. Common directions since the homeowner credit ended are monthly payments on leases or power purchase agreements, battery backup for outages, long equipment and workmanship warranties, a stated price per watt and local utility programs. Search your three closest rivals in AdEye and sort by run length; the offers at the top are the ones they kept funding.

Many do both and compare cost per signed contract. Bought leads are fast, but the same homeowner is often sold to several installers, so you race to the phone. Google Ads takes more effort to run, yet the click comes to your page alone and you own the follow-up. Seeing which lead sites bid in your area, and what they promise, helps you write ads that stand apart from a quote marketplace.

Google lets US advertisers use another business's trademark as a keyword, so bidding on a rival installer's brand is allowed. Using that trademark in your ad text is different, and the owner can file a complaint that restricts it. Look the rival up in AdEye to see whether it already bids on your name, and our brand bidding page explains how to check who targets your brand.

Not from Google. Every advertiser's keywords, bids and budgets are private. SpyFu and Semrush estimate keywords by watching search results, which is useful but modelled. AdEye shows the ads themselves from Google's record, which tells you the offer, the product and the message, and it does not claim to know the keyword list. Our PPC competitor analysis page shows how to combine both views.

No. Google does not publish spend, cost per click or cost per lead for ordinary commercial advertisers, so any tool that prints a precise budget for a rival installer is estimating. The honest proxy is run length: an ad a company keeps live for months is one it keeps choosing to fund. AdEye sorts every ad by that signal.

Yes, on the paid plans. Add the installer to your watch list and AdEye re-checks it once a day, then emails you the ads Google has started showing that it had not seen before. That is how you find out a rival started a battery promotion, entered your county or changed its financing offer without checking by hand.

Yes. AdEye returns a rival's Display banners and YouTube video alongside its Search text ads, because the Transparency Center lists all three for a verified advertiser. Solar companies lean on Display and YouTube remarketing because homeowners take weeks to decide, so the banners a rival keeps running often show its follow-up offer, such as a price lock or a battery add-on.

Yes. Each search is one competitor, and you keep a separate board per client so research never mixes between installers in overlapping areas. The Agency plan covers 10,000 searches a month, with CSV export on the paid plans for client reports. Our ad spy tool for agencies page walks through a client workflow.

No. Reading the Transparency Center record, directly or through AdEye, does not trigger the rival's ads, so it adds no impression and no click to their account, and advertisers are not told who looked them up. Clicking a rival's ad on Google would cost them a click, which is a different thing and not a fair practice.

The Transparency Center and Auction Insights are free. AdEye costs $60, $99, $300 or $600 a month for 500, 2,000, 10,000 or 20,000 searches, or $30 to $300 a month billed yearly, after a one-time demo of 10 searches. Keyword-estimate tools such as SpyFu start at $39 a month and Semrush's Advertising toolkit at $99. See the plans on our pricing page.

For the ads themselves, pick a tool that reads Google's own Transparency Center record, because it shows an installer's real approved ads rather than one search result. AdEye does that and sorts by run length. For keyword and cost estimates, SpyFu or Semrush add a modelled view. Contractors who also sell roofing or HVAC can read those rivals the same way, and regulated local services are covered on our Google Ads for insurance agents page.

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See what your competitors are running today

Type any brand and watch their live ads stream into one feed, AI-tagged with the hook, angle and what is actually working.

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Public Google Ads Transparency data only. Nothing behind a login, no private data. Every CTA opens a quick signup, not a checkout.

Live Google Ads Transparency data · Run length · Public data only