Pull the change history and group it by user. It shows every change, who made it, and when — and it is the one thing in the account that cannot be dressed up in a report.

On this page

• How do I pull Google Ads change history by user?
• What does active account management look like in change history?
• What are the limits of Google Ads change history?
• Does a high number of changes mean good management?
• What two questions reveal whether an agency is any good?
• Is anyone else changing my account?

How do I pull Google Ads change history by user?

Change history, filtered to the last 30 days, grouped by user and by client type. Client type tells you whether a change came from a human in the interface, a script, an automated rule, the API, or Google's own recommendations.

That last distinction matters. A change made by Google's recommendation engine is not work your agency did.

What does active account management look like in change history?

On a 12-account book over 29 days, 1,141 of 1,148 events were made by one person, across campaigns, budgets, targets and criteria.

That is what active management looks like in the log. If a month of history shows a handful of automated rule firings and nothing else, you have your answer.

What are the limits of Google Ads change history?

Lookback is 30 days, exactly. You cannot audit further back this way.

Results cap out at roughly 300 rows per query, so on a busy account the visible window silently starts later than you asked for. On a high-volume account, "no changes found" may mean "the window truncated," not "nothing happened."

Change history also lags. Zero rows immediately after something was changed is not evidence it was not.

Does a high number of changes mean good management?

Volume of changes is not quality of changes. An agency making 400 changes a month may be churning an account that would perform better left alone. Restraint is a legitimate strategy and the log cannot distinguish it from neglect.

So pair it with the other question: what has happened to cost per booked job or cost per new customer over the same period, measured from your own system rather than the platform.

What two questions reveal whether an agency is any good?

1. "What did you change last month, and what did you expect it to do?" A good answer names a specific change, a specific expected effect, and a date they said they would read it.

2. "What number are you managing to, and where does it come from?" If the answer is a platform metric rather than something from your booking system or P&L, they are optimising a proxy.

Is anyone else changing my account?

Whether anyone else is also changing the account. Scheduled scripts on other seats are common on corporate and franchise accounts, and they can silently reverse work. On that same book, 7 events came from scripts on client-organisation seats — including a budget cut that reversed a deliberate increase.

Scripts are interface-only. There is no way to disable one through the API, so if it is authorised on someone else's seat, the durable fix is that person turning it off.

Related questions

What should I actually be doing to a Google Shopping campaign every week?

Less than most people do. The weekly job is reading the right numbers on a settled window and making at most one change — not optimising something every time you log in. Read the full answer.

Does a feed-only Performance Max campaign really only run on Shopping?

No. A feed-only campaign is weighted toward Shopping inventory, but it still serves across the Performance Max network — Google generates assets from your product data to fill the other placements. Read the full answer.

Is it a conflict of interest to pay a Google Ads agency a percentage of ad spend?

Yes, structurally — the agency earns more when it spends more of your money, regardless of what that spend returns. It is not necessarily disqualifying, but you should know what it does to incentives and what the alternatives are. Read the full answer.

Written by Usama Khan, who runs Google Ads for e-commerce brands and home-services companies at AdventurAds. Figures are from accounts under active management and are anonymised. Last reviewed 2026-08-26.