How to see what changed in your Google Ads account and who did it

If your results or costs shifted and you don’t know why, start with change history. It is a log of edits made to your account. It is especially useful if an agency or freelancer used to run your ads, or if several people have access.

Where to find change history

In Google Ads, open the Campaigns menu and choose Change history (if you can’t find it, search for “Change history” in the Google Ads search bar).

You can look at the whole account or at one campaign or ad group. To narrow it down, select a campaign or ad group first, then open change history.

Google’s help says change history covers the last 2 years. Data older than that is not available.

What you will see

Each entry shows what changed and when. Google’s help lists examples like a paused campaign, a keyword someone added, and the old budget amount before an edit.

Change history also shows your performance over the same dates. That makes it easier to line up a change with a jump in cost or a drop in leads.

There is a User column. For changes made in the Google Ads website, it shows the person’s email. Google’s help says other changes may show a system name instead, such as “Google Ads system,” “Google Ads API,” or the name of an outside tool.

Filters that help

Google’s help lists these filters:

• Campaign and Ad group: only show changes in certain places.
• Change type: for example, only budget changes or keyword edits.
• User: only show changes made by certain people.
• Tool: only show changes made with a certain tool.
• Item changed: only show certain kinds of items.
• Campaign experiment: only show changes to experiments.

Change history also records edits made by automated rules (rules you or someone else set up to change things on a schedule), the Google Ads API (the way outside software connects to your account), and Google Ads Editor (Google’s desktop app).

A good first step is to set the date range around when things went wrong. Then filter by Change type, starting with budgets and bidding.

Checking auto-applied recommendations

Google Ads can apply some recommendations for you automatically. This is called auto-apply. Google’s help says you can confirm who turned it on, and when, through change history.

To see which recommendations are set to auto-apply, open the Recommendations page and look for Auto-apply settings (if you can’t find it, search for “Auto-apply” in the Google Ads search bar). The History tab there shows when each one was turned on and when it last applied.

Check the names you don’t recognize

Go down the User column and ask about each name:

• Is this person still working with you?
• Did an old agency or freelancer keep access after you parted ways?
• Is a tool or system name making changes you did not expect?

Then check who has access today. Open the Admin area and look for Access and security (if you can’t find it, search for “Access and security” in the Google Ads search bar). Remove anyone who no longer needs access.

Limits to know about

Change history is useful, but it is not perfect.

• Google’s help says some account-level changes, and some changes made by Google representatives, may not be listed.
• Very large bulk edits may show less detail. Google suggests smaller changes, ideally touching fewer than 2,000 items at once, if you want full detail.
• If entries seem to be missing, Google suggests clearing your browser cache or trying a private window.
• You can undo most types of changes made in the last 30 days, according to Google’s help.

If you use tools or scripts that read changes through the Google Ads API, the window is shorter. Google’s developer docs say change event queries must be within the past 30 days. So outside tools may only see the last month, even though the website shows 2 years.

A simple habit

Look at change history once a week, even when things seem fine. Filter to the last 7 days and scan the User column. It takes a few minutes, and it catches surprises before they cost you much.