The Change log records **every change automation has made on this account, newest first**.

It is the feature that makes the rest of the rule engine safe to use, because it turns automation from something that happens *to* your account into something you can check.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-change-log-explainer-e72eba98.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? Seventy-three seconds on reading a row, and the check to run the day after.*

## **Finding it**

**Automations → Change log**, top right of the Rules screen. **Back to Rules** returns.

![The Change log, one row per change](/kb-assets/shot-auto-change-log-view-651d68.png)

The header names its scope — *Change log — All campaigns* — with a **date range** control beside it. Default is the last week.

## **Reading a row**

Each row is one change, to one thing, at one moment.

| Column | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| **Date** | when, to the minute |
| **Rule** | which rule did it — a link to the rule |
| **Run** | which execution — a link, e.g. `#259` |
| **Campaign** | where it happened |
| **Target** | the keyword or product target affected |
| **Type** | Keyword, or product target |
| **Ad type** | SP, SB or SD |
| **Action** | what was done — *Set Bid*, a pause, a budget change |

**The Run number is the column people miss.** Every change from a single execution shares one run number, so clicking it shows you everything that rule did in that pass rather than one row of it. That is the difference between *“this bid changed”* and *“this rule touched 40 keywords this morning, and here they are.”*

## **The three questions it answers**

**“Why did this bid change?”** Search the target. The row names the rule and the run.

**“What did my rules do last night?”** Set the range to yesterday. If the list is empty, nothing ran — which is itself worth knowing.

**“Is this rule doing anything?”** Filter to it. A rule that is ACTIVE with a recent Last run but no change-log rows is evaluating and deciding not to act. That is usually correct behaviour, not a fault — but it is also how a badly-scoped rule looks, so it is worth a glance at the conditions.

## **The check worth doing**

**The day after you switch on a new rule, open the Change log and read what it actually did.**

That single habit is the whole safety story. Rules are easy to reason about wrongly — a threshold that seemed obviously safe turns out to catch forty targets you did not have in mind. You find that out in one minute here, or in a month on your spend chart.

Three things to look for:

**Volume.** Did it change five things or five hundred? A rule touching far more than you expected is scoped wider than you meant.

**Direction.** Are the changes going the way you intended? A “trim waste” rule raising bids means a condition is inverted.

**Repetition.** Is the same target changing every day? That usually means two rules are fighting over it, or the look-back window is too short and the rule is chasing noise. See **Targeting Rules**.

## **Exporting it**

**Export** produces a file of the current view, respecting your filters and date range.

Two occasions where that is genuinely useful: **explaining a spend change to somebody who does not use TrackIQ**, and **keeping a record before a big change** so you can compare before and after.

## **What it does not cover**

The Change log records what **automation** did. Changes you make by hand, or in Amazon's own console, are not rule actions and will not appear here.

So a bid that changed with no matching row was changed by a person or by Amazon — which is a useful answer in itself, because it tells you to stop looking at your rules.

## **Related**

- [**The Automations Screen**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/the-automations-screen) — where rules and groups live.
- [**Targeting Rules**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/targeting-rules-bids-and-pausing) and **Campaign Rules** — what can appear in this log.
- [**Guardrails to Set Before You Automate Anything**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/guardrails-before-you-automate) — how to need this log less.