What does it mean when the change history in a Google Ads account shows the account hasn’t been touched in months… or even years?
Does it mean your marketing team or Google Ads marketing agency is neglecting the account?
Or does it mean that the account is performing so well, no tinkering is needed?
This question has come up on LinkedIn recently, such as this one from Julie Friedman Bacchini:
Julie rightly points out there’s a lot more to Google Ads program management than what shows up in the change history. And I totally agree that the “account activity = good” and “no account activity = bad” formulas are much too simple.
With that said, I will also admit that change history is one of the first things I look at when auditing new accounts. It’s a poor barometer of performance, but it can still reveal some red flags.
Why too many Google Ads account changes is not a good thing
A change history that shows hundreds of daily updates is a concern. For our clients, who are largely in the B2B space, this level of change is unnecessary and often detrimental.
When we see hundreds of keywords added daily or bids updated throughout the day, it’s usually the result of some type of automation.
For example, we recently inherited an account where the prior agency was auto-updating the client’s Google Ads account with hundreds of new campaigns every day. These campaigns were for products on auction, automatically pulling the information from the company’s product page. When the item sold or the auction closed, the campaign was taken down.
Many products sold quickly or were on auction for less than a day. This meant the ads were live for less than a day, with the vast majority of them never even impressioning.
There’s zero value in creating hundreds of ads every day only to have them not impression and then removed only days later.
When we inherited the account, we recommended discontinuing the automation and instead focusing on creating always-on campaigns and a few choice promotion campaigns to give the AI time to learn and the ads to impression.
As a result, the account is performing 5x better than it was before.
Why no Google Ads account changes is also a red flag
The opposite scenario, where the change history shows zero account activity over months or years, is also a red flag.
When an account is optimized and performing well, you don’t want to tinker with it, potentially undoing all of your good work. So you can argue that an account with few updates is a good thing, especially if the account is small.
But that’s different than having no updates at all over months or years. I would hope to see a messaging update once a year, at the very least. And surely you would need to negate at least some keywords over the course of a few months (especially if the account is using broad match types)?
Further, with Google’s frequent updates, I would have to think there’s an opportunity to test something over the course of a year.
What should happen when your Google Ads account is quiet
Even when there’s not a lot going on in your Google Ads account, that doesn’t mean your team or marketing agency has nothing to do.
They are probably busy with (what I like to call) “value-added” projects. These projects bring a lot more value than constant account tinkering with no real performance benefits. We conduct at least one or two value-added projects every month for our clients.
Often, these value-added projects center around finding answers to important questions.
1. Answering client questions
Our clients usually have a lot of good questions, and finding the answers takes time, research, and analysis.
Some of the questions we’ve gotten from clients most recently are:
- How much are our competitors spending on their Google advertising?
- What type of messaging is our competitors using?
- Should we include video in our advertising?
- What is a good budget for this new product we are launching?
In addition to answering these types of questions, we also report to clients on tests we’ve conducted and provide regular updates (monthly or quarterly) on account performance.
2. Answering our own questions
Naturally, we also have our own questions that we want to find answers to. Some recent examples:
- How is the quality score since the last time we checked?
- How has PMax affected the account in general since it was launched?
- How are the brand inclusions and exclusions working?
- What is causing the recent increase/decrease in performance?
- What if the CPA was $250 instead of $200? Would that actually increase business opportunities for our client?
3. Conducting additional projects
If we have no burning questions, we will work on other value-added projects, which could include:
- Reviewing regular placements
- Reviewing regular search terms for negative keyword additions
- Analyzing sitelink performance and making updates
- Reviewing and updating ad and asset messaging
- Conducting website and landing page speed tests
- Examining Google Optiscore recommendations and evaluating whether to implement them (or test a variation)
- Reviewing devices
- Auditing locations
- Analyzing audience(s) performance
- Testing new Google features and campaign types
- Exploring display and video campaign targeting and audience options
As you can see, there are endless ways to improve performance outside of your Google Ads account. And most of these activities won’t show up in an account’s change history.
Yet this is strategic Google Ads program management at its finest.
Communication with the client is key
Good communication and regular reporting is the best way to avoid the perception that you or your team are on holiday because the Google account shows little activity
When you work on value-added projects outside of the account, you need to communicate those to the client as part of your regular reporting, preferably every month.
When you do that, the client should (hopefully!) never feel the need to look at an account’s change history to see what you’ve been doing—because you’ve already told them.
