Change history provides a log of changes to items (also referred to as entities) such as campaigns, keywords, ads, and sitelinks. The report shows whether changes were made by an account sync, a user, or a system, such as advertiser management or bid optimization. The report also includes links to the account, campaign, and ad group where the change occurred, enabling you to view performance metrics at the selected scope.
Use the change history to:
- Investigate which actions improved or degraded a campaign’s performance
- See changes which may reveal how a bid strategy is managing its portfolio
- Verify that changes were made
What's new in change history
If you used change history in the past, it now includes more features that enable you to see, filter, and drill into the data that you want:
- Access change history from the left navigation panel to see changes at the selected scope and lower. For example, while viewing campaign performance metrics, you notice that the number of clicks dropped from 1000 to 500. To try to figure out what happened, click Change history in the left navigation panel. The report lists all changes to and within the campaign. That is, you can see changes made in the campaign, and its ad groups, keywords, ads, and bid strategy, if applied.
- Filter the change history report.To only see changes made to campaigns, without changes made to the campaign's entities, filter the report to the campaign entity.
- Scope the report before or while viewing change history. To scope the report before viewing change history, while viewing performance metrics, click Change history. To scope the report while viewing change history, use the navigation bar near the top of Search Ads 360 to navigate to a different scope.
- Switch to the performance metric report directly from change history. In the change history report, click the account, campaign, or ad group to switch to the performance metrics for the entity.
- Sitelinks. Change history lists when sitelinks were added to a campaign.
What's in the change history report
The change history report displays:
- Email address of the person who made a change
- How the change was made
- When the change was made
- When the change was trafficked to the engine.
- Type of item or entity, such as a campaign or keyword that the change applies to. Also the name of the account, campaign, and ad group of the changed item.
- Change details. For example, you can see if a URL template was added to a campaign, a geo-target was removed from an ad group, a bulk edit increased bids by 10%, or a bid strategy set a mobile bid adjustment to -20%.
- Changes that occurred at the selected scope and lower.
- Changes from May 21, 2016 or later.
- Changes to inventory management templates.
Learn more about the change details.
Who makes changes
This table lists features used to make changes and who makes the change.
| Feature or system | Who made change |
|---|---|
| Adaptive | System |
| Advertiser management | User or system (Change can be made by user maintenance tools) |
| Bid optimization | System |
| Budget management | User |
| Bulk operations | User |
| Bulksheets | User |
| Bulksheets sFTP | User |
| Data processing backend | System. Indicates that Search Ads 360 created or updated a data-driven attribution model |
| External API (also referred to as the Search Ads 360 API) | User |
| Inventory management | System |
| Rules | User |
| Scheduled edits | User |
| Sync | System |
| Search Ads 360 user interface | User |
Changes not tracked in the change history report
- Changes made by or to ad copy tests are not included in the report. For example, change history doesn't include the start date for an ad copy test, or an ad group's membership in a test.
- Changes made by or to attribution models. For example, change history doesn't track whether a different attribution model is applied to a column.
What you can do with the change history report
In addition to using the report to view changes, you can filter and scope the report to see the data you want, and download or email a non-editable version of the change history report in file format (.xls, .xlsx, or .csv).