About explanations

Explanations give you insights into large changes in your Google Ads account performance. When you discover a significant fluctuation in performance for a compatible campaign or ad group, explanations help you quickly find out why it happened.

Additionally, Google Ads sometimes gives recommendations that appear alongside explanations. While explanations tell you why your ad performance fluctuated, recommendations help you improve your ad performance moving forward.

Benefits

• Save time: Discover why your account performance changed with just a few clicks.
• All in one place: You no longer have to cross-reference reports, checklists, or other tools. Simply compare 2 date ranges and explanations for significant performance changes will be provided, if available.
• Diagnose issues: Get a more accurate and comprehensive view to help you diagnose possible reasons for changes in your campaign or ad group's performance.
• Get recommendations: Get recommendations to improve your ad performance. Recommendations are based on your campaign’s performance as reflected in explanations, including relevant metrics, the direction and size of your performance fluctuation, and specific causes.

Types of explanations

Explanations can help you learn more about how the following factors might have affected your campaign or ad group performance.

• Note: Some of these explanations are not applicable to all campaign types.

How to view explanations in your account

View explanations

By default, you’ll get explanations that compare the date range you selected with the previous period of the same length:

1. Go to your campaign or ad groups page.
2. Hover over values in your data table that are colored in blue with a dotted line.
3. You’ll view how this value has changed since the last period.
   For example, if you selected the last 7 days as your date range, you’ll get explanations of how your performance changed from the week before.
4. You can also hover over the performance graph on your main campaign page. Significant changes in your performance in the selected time frame will have explanations available.
5. Click View explanations to view what caused the change.

View explanations in your bid strategy report

You can find the root causes of meaningful changes by viewing explanations in your bid strategy report.

1. Go to the Campaigns page on the left page menu.
2. Click the link in your selected campaign’s “Bid strategy type” column.
3. Hover over the value that you’d like to view explanations for.
   • Target CPA: You can view explanations for the Cost, Conversions, and Actual CPA values.
   • Maximize conversions: You can view explanations for the Cost and Conversions values.
   • Target ROAS: You can view explanations for the Cost, Conversion value, and ROAS values.
   • Maximum conversion value: You can view explanations for the Cost and Conversions values.
   • Target impression share: You can view explanations for the Cost and Search top IS values.
   • Maximize clicks: You can view explanations for the Cost and Clicks values.
   • Conversion-based bid strategies: You can view explanations for the Conversion Delay value.
4. You can also hover over the performance graph in your bid strategy report. Significant changes in your performance in the selected time frame will have explanations available.
5. Click View explanations to view what caused the change.

View explanations in your campaign, ad groups, or change history

You can identify the causes of significant changes in your ad performance by viewing explanations when available in charts found on the campaigns, ad groups, or change history tabs.

1. Go to either the campaigns, ad groups, or change history tabs on the left page menu.
2. Hover over the performance graph. Significant changes in your performance in the selected time frame will have explanations available.
3. Click View explanations on chart annotations when available to view what caused the change.

Get explanations for custom date ranges

To compare 2 custom ranges, choose the 2 time periods you want to compare in the date range selection:

1. In the upper right corner of your screen, click the down arrow next to the date range.
2. Click the toggle next to "Compare", and then select Previous period below it.
3. Select a time period. Make sure both periods are of equal length and contiguous, or explanations won’t show.
4. Click Apply.

You’ll find a percentage change added below the numbers in your performance metrics columns.

Significant changes will be highlighted in blue and have an explanation.

Why you might not have explanations

Explanations are designed to showcase significant changes to the performance metrics that your campaign is optimizing towards. However, you may find that explanations aren't always available. Here are a few common reasons for the unavailability of explanations:

• The performance metric isn't aligned to your campaign goals.
• The change to your performance metric isn't significant enough to trigger an explanation.
• The date range includes today or goes further back than the last 90 days.

Explanations are currently only available for some campaign types and bid strategies as given below:

Related links

• Evaluating ad performance on the Search Network
• About average daily budgets