Ahrefs helps you prepare a Google Ads campaign in two ways: keyword research (volumes, difficulty, intent filters from the Standard plan up) and its ‘Paid keywords’ and ‘Ads’ reports on competitors. It does not tell you whether a keyword deserves a bid for your offer. For CPC ranges, Google Keyword Planner is free. The decision then happens keyword by keyword.
Ahrefs is an SEO suite first: backlinks, keyword research, site audits and rank tracking. Several pieces still feed a Google Ads campaign. Keyword research gives you ideas, volumes and a difficulty score, with search intent filters from the Standard plan up. The ‘Paid keywords’ and ‘Ads’ reports show which keywords your competitors buy ads on, and with which copy. Ahrefs also offers a free Google Ads copy generator.
Ahrefs also publishes a PPC keyword research guide on its blog, linked in the sources. It pairs its reports with a spreadsheet where you score the first keywords, then ChatGPT, which completes the scoring, groups the list and suggests negatives. We compare that workflow step by step on our Ahrefs alternative for Google Ads page.
What Ahrefs does not do matters just as much. It does not give a bid verdict per keyword based on your offer, and it does not produce lists ready to import into Google Ads. It hands you raw material. The sorting is still yours, and the sorting decides what you end up paying for.
Volume measures demand, not intent. A heavily searched query can bring nothing but browsers, and a rare one can come from someone ready to buy. For Google Ads, use volume to compare keyword families with each other, never to decide a bid on its own.
In an SEO suite, difficulty is about organic rankings. It tells you nothing about the price of a click or how many advertisers compete on the query. A keyword that is hard in SEO can still be affordable in ads, and the other way around.
Sort the list by intent instead. If your plan includes the intent filters, keep commercial and transactional queries, as the Ahrefs PPC guide recommends. If not, sort by hand: queries that name your product or category, queries that compare solutions, queries that ask a question, and queries about free options, jobs or training. The first two families are your candidates. The rest mostly feed your negative keywords.
The Ahrefs ‘Paid keywords’ and ‘Ads’ reports show which keywords your competitors bid on and what they promise: price, speed, guarantees, specialization. That is often where you find an angle nobody owns yet. The free ad copy generator can then give you a first draft, to check against your landing page.
A visible ad does not prove it is profitable. It says nothing about the advertiser's budget or conversion rate. A competitor may pay for a query out of habit, or just to defend its brand.
If ad intelligence is the core of your need, SpyFu specializes in it: competitors' PPC keywords and ads, more than ten years of ad history, and negative keyword recommendations. Should I Bid also has a Competitors module: the advertisers actually seen on the keywords you analyzed, their ad copy, their landing pages and who bids on your brand.
Google Keyword Planner is free with a Google Ads account. It gives you keyword ideas, search volumes, CPC ranges and campaign forecasts. One limit to know: without active spend on the account, volumes show as ranges instead of exact numbers.
Ahrefs is paid, by subscription; its free tier only covers your own site, and intent filters only come with the Standard plan. It adds the reports on competitors' ads and, of course, all the SEO. If you also do organic search, that extra is worth it. For Google Ads alone, Keyword Planner already covers most of the research.
Neither one gives you a per-keyword verdict based on the results page and your offer. That step remains, whichever tool you start with.
Deciding to bid means answering a question the numbers cannot settle: can the person typing this query buy what you sell? The same keyword can be great for one advertiser and a money pit for another, depending on the offer, the price and the landing page.
Ahrefs does not answer that for you. Its filters classify a query as commercial or informational in general, without knowing what you sell. Its PPC guide actually leaves fit to the reader: you score the first keywords yourself (commercial intent, product fit), then an AI assistant fills in the rest from your examples. On a few dozen keywords, that is doable. On several hundred, that is where mistakes turn into clicks with no buying intent.
To frame that decision, our guide on how to choose Google Ads keywords walks through the method, from intent to negative keywords.
As an illustration, take an online bookkeeping service that works with freelancers across the United States. The goal: consultation requests from a page built for self-employed people. What follows is a typical line of reasoning, not a measured result.
Step 1, in Ahrefs. The team starts from ‘online bookkeeping service’ and gets families: ‘bookkeeper for freelancers’, ‘bookkeeping for self-employed’, ‘cheap bookkeeping services’, ‘how to do bookkeeping yourself’, ‘free bookkeeping software’, ‘bookkeeper near me’. It notes the volumes, then checks the ‘Paid keywords’ report to see what rival online firms bid on.
Step 2, in Google Keyword Planner. It checks CPC ranges and forecasts for the shortlisted terms, keeping in mind that an account with no spend shows ranges.
Step 3, sorting by intent. ‘Bookkeeper for freelancers’ names the offer exactly: a bid candidate. ‘Cheap bookkeeping services’ signals a price shopper; worth a test if the firm competes on price. ‘How to do bookkeeping yourself’ and ‘free bookkeeping software’ target people who want to do without a bookkeeper: skip them, and ‘free’ joins the negatives. ‘Bookkeeper near me’ carries local intent; for an online-only firm, it is a cautious test.
Step 4, the decision. Before paying, the team looks at the Google page for each candidate: ads from rival firms, comparison sites, advice articles? That reading is what turns a list into a campaign. It then runs a small test in exact match and revises the list with real conversions.
These traps show up when you move from an SEO suite to a paid campaign. None of them is specific to Ahrefs: they come from the way its data gets read.
Should I Bid automates the sorting in step 3 and the results-page reading in step 4. You submit your keywords, from Ahrefs, Keyword Planner or anywhere else, along with your company context. It reads the live Google page, ads and organic results, and returns a Bid, Test or Skip verdict for each keyword, with a score out of 100.
Exclusions are recommended once per analysis, and the exact-match CSV export is ready to import into Google Ads. The keyword intent analysis covers seven markets, including the United States, with a device setting. You can try it with free analyses, no credit card.
Should I Bid does not replace Ahrefs for SEO: no backlinks, no rank tracking, no technical audit. If you do both jobs, keep Ahrefs for organic and use Should I Bid to decide what you pay for.
| Tool | Starting price | Details | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Should I Bid | Per credit (see Pricing page) | Per credit (1 credit = 1 keyword analyzed), free analyses to try, no credit card. Plans described on the Pricing page. | Source |
| Ahrefs | from $29/mo | Limited “Starter” plan at $29 per month, “Lite” plan at $129 per month. “Search intents” filter from the “Standard” plan ($249 per month). Free tier (Ahrefs Free) for your own site. | Source |
| Google Keyword Planner | Free | Free with a Google Ads account. Exact volumes require an account with active spend, otherwise ranges. | Source |
| SpyFu | from $39/mo ($29/mo billed annually) | “Basic” plan: $39 per month billed monthly, $29 per month billed annually. “Pro + AI”: $59 the first month, then $119 per month ($89 annually). 30-day guarantee. | Source |
Prices verified on . Public prices observed on the vendors’ websites on the date shown. They may have changed since: the source prevails.
Yes, before a campaign starts. Its keyword research gives you volumes, difficulty and, from the Standard plan up, intent filters. Its ‘Paid keywords’ and ‘Ads’ reports show what your competitors are doing. Ahrefs is still an SEO suite: it does not give a bid verdict per keyword based on your offer, and it does not produce lists ready to import into Google Ads.
For Google Ads alone, start with Google Keyword Planner: it is free with a Google Ads account and gives you ideas, volumes, CPC ranges and forecasts. Ahrefs is paid, and it makes sense if you also do SEO or want to see competitors' ads in the same tool. Neither one tells you whether a keyword deserves a bid for your offer.
Yes. Its ‘Paid keywords’ and ‘Ads’ reports show which keywords your competitors bid on, and with which copy. A visible ad says nothing, though, about the advertiser's budget or profitability. For deeper ad intelligence, SpyFu specializes in it, with more than ten years of ad history. Should I Bid also shows the advertisers seen on the keywords you analyzed.
No. Its intent filters classify a query in general, but Ahrefs does not give a bid verdict based on your offer. Its own PPC guide has you score the first keywords yourself, then hands the rest to an AI assistant. To automate that sorting, Should I Bid reads the live Google page and returns a verdict with a score out of 100: Bid at 70 or above, Test from 50 to 69, Skip below 50.
Yes, if you concentrate it. A small budget spread across dozens of broad keywords buys almost no clicks per keyword, so you learn nothing. Keep a few high-intent queries in exact match, add negative keywords from day one, and let the test run long enough to compare. The tighter the budget, the more the sorting before you bid matters.
Ahrefs is a monthly subscription. According to its pricing page, there is a limited Starter plan, then the Lite plan; the search intent filter, useful for paid search, only comes with the Standard plan and up. Ahrefs Free covers your own site. The amounts we recorded, with their date, are in the verified prices table on this page. Google Keyword Planner is free with a Google Ads account.