Manage your automated rules

Once you've set up automated rules, you can enable, pause, edit, remove, or filter your rules whenever you like. You can also undo any rules that ran on your Search campaigns. You can also update the email notifications you receive about your rules, view a list of all the changes that your rules have made in your rules logs, and see rule statuses.

Note: When scheduling a rule to run at a specific time, it's important to note that standard turnaround time for rules to run is within 2 hours after the conditions are triggered. For instance, if a rule is scheduled for 9 a.m., it may run anytime between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.

Managing rules

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the "Appearance" icon, and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the Search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page you’re searching for.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Bulk actions drop down in the section menu.
3. Click Rules.

There, you'll see a list of your rules, along with an icon indicating whether each rule is enabled or paused.

• Enable, pause, or remove any rule in your account: Click the down-arrow next to the status icon.
  The action of removing a rule is permanent.
• Edit a rule: Scroll to the right and click Edit. Adjust the settings in the management panel, and click Save. Note that you can't edit removed rules. Also, be aware that editing a rule is the same as removing the original and creating a new one.
• Filter your view to hide removed rules: Click the filter icon, then select the column and value you want to filter for. You have the option of filtering for “rule status,” “name,” “notification setting,” or “validity".
  You can hide or unhide paused or removed rules via the 3-dot icon for the rules table.
• Undo a rule: You can use "Undo" to revert the changes made by campaign, ad group, ad, and keyword rules. To undo a rule, navigate to the Version history page, then click Undo for a rule in the “Actions” column. After you click Undo, a preview pane will open to show you how undoing a rule will impact your account. If everything looks good, you can start the undo from this pane. The undo should finish in the same amount of time that it took to run the rule initially.

Key points about undoing rules

You can’t undo email-only rules

Rules using the “send email” action can’t be undone.

You can only undo the most recent changes made by each rule.

For example, say your rule runs successfully on Friday and Saturday. You'll only see the "Undo" button appear next to the changes made on Saturday. If you want to undo the changes made on Friday, you must first undo the Saturday changes. The "Undo" button will then disappear for Saturday and appear for Friday.

Tip: One exception is if a rule ran but it didn’t make any changes. In this scenario, you won't have to undo it first in order to undo earlier changes.

Manual changes made after a rule runs won't be undone.

Let's say you run a rule that increases the bid of 10 keywords by $1.00, and then you manually alter one of those keywords, increasing its bid by an additional $0.50. If you undo the changes made by the rule, it'll only undo the changes made to the nine keywords that you didn't alter yourself. To get a better sense of which changes would and wouldn't be undone, we recommend previewing the undo.

You can't redo an undo.

If you undo the changes made by a rule on one day, there's no Redo button to re-do those changes.

Email notifications and Rule History

When you create a rule, you can choose to receive email notifications when your rule runs. You'll have the option to be notified after each rule runs and only if it runs with changes or errors.

To sign up for these notifications, just select the email option you'd like from the Email results drop-down menu as you're creating your rule.

If you prefer not to receive email notifications, you can instead check the Version history page to keep track of when your rules run and what changes the rules have made in your account.

Viewing automated rules in Change History

You can also view changes that automated rules have made to your account on the Change History page.

Logs and rule statuses

If you prefer not to receive email notifications, you can always check the logs to keep track of when your rules run, and what changes the rules have made in your account. The logs will show you a list of your rules, their status, and how many changes were made as a result of the rule running.

To see your logs:

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Bulk actions drop down in the section menu.
3. Click Rules.
4. Click the Version history tab to see a list of all changes.
   • Note that the "Version history" table uses the date picker selection.
5. Click the results to see the details of any changes the rule may have made.

The "Status" column in the logs shows you if your rules have run, and whether they were successful. Below are the different possible statuses and what each means:

Running

• Your rule is currently making changes in your account.

Completed

• Your rule has run successfully, and all intended changes were made.

Completed, with errors

• Your rule completed, but some changes had errors (click Version history, then the results for a rule to learn more).

Not completed: System error

• Your rule could not be started or was stopped before completion (click Version history, then the results for a rule to learn more).

Not completed: Timeout

• Your rule didn't complete in the allotted time (click Version history, then the results for a rule to learn more).

Next steps

• Learn more about the changes recorded in your account history
• See common ways to use automated rules