The PPC Investigator is an insights tool available for Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Amazon Ads* that helps you identify exactly which element in a given account caused a metric to increase or decrease, and whether it's a keyword, placement, or an entire network that led to the changes.

Answering questions such as why conversions/clicks dropped the previous month can give you great insights into account improvement.

*Refer to this article for PPC Investigator for Amazon.

PPC Investigator helps you quickly identify the exact factors behind changes in your account performance. Instead of guessing why clicks, conversions, or costs shifted, this tool pinpoints whether the change was driven by a campaign, ad group, keyword, placement, device, or even a combination of factors.

By visualizing metric dependencies in the Cause Chart and drilling down to specifics with Root Cause Analysis, you can:

With this tool, you move from "what happened?” to “why it happened?” and take action with confidence.

Select the metric for which you noticed a change and choose the date range over which you want to compare performance.

When you choose to compare any date range to the previous period, the system considers the exact same number of days just before the selected current date range.

For example, if today were June 24th, and you take the last 7 days from today to compare to the previous period, then you’d be comparing the week from 18th to 24th to the week from 11th to 17th.

Once you've selected the date range and metric, you can view the results in two formats — Cause Chart and Root Cause Analysis.

The concept of the Cause Chart is based on the fact that the performance of every metric depends on the performance of other underlying metrics. In the Cause Chart, we use the relationships between different metrics to show potential causality. You will see the number of impressions that an account was eligible to receive during a given time period (Search Query Volume) and investigate cases where there is a drop in traffic or conversions.

The Root Cause Analysis for specific metrics can be accessed directly from the Cause Chart. Whenever you see the "locate" icon, as shown in the screenshot below, you can press it to go directly to that metric's Root Cause Analysis.

The PPC Investigator has a feature that enables icons to indicate whether the trend is positive or negative, allowing for adjustment to a color-blind-friendly mode. This is enabled by checking the box on the upper right, as seen below.

After identifying which metric needs to be worked on, the Root Cause Analysis goes a step further and highlights the exact Campaigns/Ad groups/Product partition/Keywords, etc. that were responsible for the change in an account.

It shows top movers who are significant contributors to the change in the account when compared across the two date ranges. You can view the top three positive and negative movers for a particular account.

These can be further broken down into sub-contributors to check where exactly the drop/surge happened. The tool identifies contributors by considering individual keywords/ad groups/networks/devices, and even specific combinations, such as keyword + device or network + ad group.

This shows the Campaigns/Ad groups/Product partition/Keywords/etc that had the highest increase in the metric that is being investigated. These elements had the highest contribution in increasing the metric across the account. This makes it easier to recognize what is working well for the account to replicate it in other campaigns or ad groups.

For example, if a mobile device shows up as a top contributor for an ad group, you can consider setting mobile bid adjustments for other ad groups.

This also makes it easy to identify which level is contributing to an increase. For example, if Campaign A saw a growth of 100%, its ad group X saw a growth of 160%, and its keyword C saw a growth of 188%; this can help a user identify the cause for the increase right down to the keyword level.

This shows the campaigns/ad groups/product partition/keywords/etc. that had the highest decrease in the metric being investigated. These elements had the highest contribution in decreasing the metric across the account.

If you hover over the "Clock" icon on a Top Mover, you'll be directed to the "Change History" section. Here, you'll find a comprehensive list of all changes made to the campaigns, ad groups, keywords, product partitions, etc., along with information about who performed these changes.

This feature helps you delve into the specific updates made to these entities, shedding light on the factors driving changes in their performance metrics.

Google Ads API only returns change history data for the last 30 days. Any records visible to you before that on the change history section of the tool are cached data.

Our system caches change history data from time to time, so the date range for which the data will be displayed for your account depends on the timeline since you connected your account to Optmyzr.

This means that you can view historical change data beyond the last 30 days as long as it has been cached by our system since the account connection.

Identify the pain points and work on improving them in the account to counter the decrease in account performance.

A 100% change may indicate that the Campaign/Ad group/Keyword may have been paused, which is impacting account performance. This can help you decide whether you would like to enable it or keep it paused. Also, if the 100% change is at the keyword level, then the keyword may have been moved to a new ad group.

Easily identify what is causing a drop in account-level performance. For example, an ad group saw a 50% drop, and under that ad group, a keyword saw clicks drop by 100%. In this case, it is clear that other keywords in that ad group are performing well in coping with the 100% drop in clicks from the identified keyword. This helps decide whether that keyword should be paused or optimized.