Google+ audit log

Track Google+ activity for your domain

This feature is available with G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise editions. Compare editions

As a G Suite administrator, you can track Google+ user activity in the audit log.

Step 1: Open your Google+ audit log

  1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

    Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

  2. From the Admin console Home page, go to Reports.

    To see Reports, you might have to click More controls at the bottom.

  3. On the left, under Audit, click Google+.
  4. (Optional) On the toolbar, click Manage columns Manage columns and select the columns you want to see or hide.
  5. See below for how to interpret and customize log data.

Step 2: Understand Google+ audit log data

Data you can view

Google+ audit logs provide the following information:

Data Type Description
Event name Action the user performed, such as creating or deleting posts. See Event name descriptions for details.
Event description Summary of the event, such as “Jane created a public post.”
User Email address of the user who triggered the event.
Date Date and time the event occurred (displayed in your browser's default time zone).
Post visibility Visibility of the post associated with the event. One of the following:
  • Public (All G Suite Google+ users can access this post)
  • Private (A subset of G Suite Google+ users can access this post)
  • Organization-wide (All users in the organization can access this post)
  • Organization-private (A subset of users in the organization can access this post)
Attachment type Type of attachment on a post or comment, such as Post, Media, Album, Link, Poll, or Google Drive Object.
+1 context Where a +1 was added or removed from, either post or comment.
Post permalink Permanent hyperlink to the post associated with the event.
Post resource name Unique identifier of the post associated with the event.
Comment resource name Unique identifier of the comment associated with the event.
Event name descriptions

Here are types of events that are available under the Event name column (see above):

Event name Description
Post created User created a post.
Post edited User edited a post.
Post deleted User deleted a post.
Comment created User added a comment to a post.
Comment edited User edited a comment on a post.
Comment deleted User removed a comment from a post.
+1 added User added a +1 to a post or comment.
+1 removed User removed a +1 from a post or comment.
Poll vote added User added a vote to a poll.
Poll vote removed User removed a vote from a poll.

Step 3: Customize and export your audit log data

Filter the audit log data by user or activity

You can narrow your audit log to show specific events or users. For example, find all log events for when users created or deleted a post, or find all Google+ activity for a particular user.

  1. Open your Google+ audit log as shown above.
  2. Click + Add Filter.
  3. Enter or select the criteria for your filter. You can filter on any combination of the data you can view in the log.
  4. (Optional) Click Date range, select a period from the list, or enter a start and end date, and time.
  5. Click Apply.

Export your audit log data

You can export your audit log data to Google Sheets or download it to a CSV file.

  1. Open your audit log as shown above.
  2. (Optional) To change the data to include in your export, click Manage columns Manage columns, select or remove the columns that you want to export, and click Save.
  3. Click Download Download.
  4. Under Select columns, click Currently selected columns or All columns.
  5. Under Select format, click Google Sheets or Comma-separated values (.csv).
  6. Click Download.

You can export up to 210,000 cells. The maximum number of rows depends on the number of columns you select. Audit logs to Sheets are limited to 10,000 rows, while CSV exports can include up to 500,000 rows.

How old is the data I'm seeing?

For details on exactly when data becomes available and how long it's retained, see Data retention and lag times.

Step 4: Set up email alerts

You can easily track specific Google+ activities by setting up alerts. For example, get an alert whenever someone creates or deletes a post.

  1. Open your audit log as shown above.
  2. Click + Add Filter.
  3. Enter or select the criteria for your filter.

    To set up an alert, you can filter on any combination of the data you can view in the log except date and time range.

  4. Click Create Alert and enter a name for the alert.
  5. At Recipients, click Turn on Turn on to send the alert to a super administrator account.
  6. Enter the email addresses of any other alert recipients.Enter the email addresses of any other email alert recipients.
  7. Click Create.

To edit your custom alerts, see Administrator email alerts.

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