Google AdWords New Top Movers Report Aims To Automate “What’s Changed” Reporting

The new Top Movers report in Google AdWords shows you which campaigns and ad groups had the largest changes in clicks and cost between two timeframes.

Located under the “Dimensions” tab (View: Top Movers), the report compares performance for two consecutive time periods of equal length, and finds the campaigns and ad groups that experienced the largest change between the two periods. You can compare periods of 7, 14, or 28 days, or look at reports generated in the last 90 days.

At the top of the report is a dashboard summarizing ten of the largest moves in clicks or cost. Changes that aren’t significant enough to be a top mover are grouped in “Other changes.”

Below the summary is detail on each top mover. What is not immediately apparent is that the details table (shown below) has two modes, Cost and Clicks. You select which you’d like to view by clicking the “Cost” or “Clicks” headers above the summary table.

A nice feature that’s not readily apparent in the example below is that Top movers are broken out by Network, so you can see whether the changes are coming from Google search or Search partners traffic.

Google will also consider changes to your account and list “Possible causes” (see Adgroup: Red Roses below) like bids were increased, ad group was paused, keywords were added, when available.  

A handy time-saving feature is the link to the View change history report for each top mover.

A top mover is measured primarily by size of the change, not the percentage change. Changes will only be attributed once. For example, if a campaign has only one ad group, and that ad group see a huge increase in clicks, the campaign will, too. However, only the ad group will show in the report as a top mover.

Reports for each day are available by 6:30pm Pacific time on the following day. Not that a report will not be produced if the account has seen fewer than 100 clicks in total over the previous seven days. Top movers reports are available for up to 90 days.