The Insights page in Google Ads
The Insights page is where Google Ads collects automatically generated findings about your market and your campaigns: rising searches, predicted demand, how your search terms group into themes, which audiences convert, how budgets are pacing, and why a campaign isn't serving. This guide covers each insight type, where it shows (account or campaign level), what it needs before it appears, and how to use it, using Google's own help pages.
This guide is built from Google Ads Help: About the Insights page, Why you might not have insights, and the pages for each insight type linked below. The competitor report has its own guide, auction insights; the search terms report and negatives are in our search terms and negative keywords guide, and the record of edits in our change history guide.
What the Insights page is
Google says the page helps you "identify trends in your market and understand your performance". Insights are picked for your business from two things: your account's performance and searches across Google for the products and services you advertise. Google adds that "Insights update daily", so new ones can appear at any time.
Each insight can be opened for more detail, and many are linked to recommendations, so you can act from the same screen. Nothing changes in the account until you apply something yourself.
Where to find it
Click the Campaigns icon, open the Insights and reports drop-down in the section menu, and click Insights. A drop-down in the top right switches between the last 7 days and the last 28 days.
The page works at two levels. With no campaign selected you see account-level insights; with one campaign selected you see that campaign's. Some types only exist at one level, as the table below shows. Search trends and demand forecasts are also available in manager accounts, where the data from client accounts is collected in one view.
The insight types at a glance
Google's table of insight types, levels and campaign types:
- Search trends: account level; Search, Shopping, Performance Max.
- Demand forecasts: account level; Search, Shopping, Performance Max.
- Search terms insights: account and campaign; Search, Shopping, Performance Max.
- Asset audience insights: account and campaign; Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Video, App.
- Persona audience insights: account and campaign; Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display, App, and Video Action campaigns only.
- Budget pacing: account level; all campaign types.
- Target pacing: campaign level; campaigns with a Target CPA or Target ROAS.
- Diagnostic insights: campaign level; Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display, Video.
- Performance insights: campaign level; most campaign types, including Hotel and Local.
Search trends
Search trends show search interest for categories related to your business that are growing. They come in two kinds: Account trends related to your existing ads, and Suggested trends in areas where you don't show ads yet.
Each trend is measured over one of three periods: week over week (last 7 days against the previous 7), month over month (last 28 against the previous 28) and year over year (last 28 days against the same 28 days a year ago). Search volume is shown on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is the most popular point in the trend period, set against your own clicks, cost or impressions. Opening a trend shows the trending search terms, which of your campaigns cover them, and related trends.
Demand forecasts
Demand forecasts look ahead instead. They use historical data to predict products and services that may see more search interest "within the next 180 days". On the Insights page they sit under Predicted trends. Each forecast gives a forecast start date, the predicted search volume over the event, and when searches are expected to peak. Google updates the data daily and replaces predictions with real data as it arrives; once demand starts rising, the forecast continues as a search trend.
Google's suggested uses include checking when demand for a known event such as Black Friday is likely to start, spotting less well-known events that matter to you, and comparing your performance with advertisers in the same auctions before the event. That comparison is the auction insights data.
Search terms insights
Search terms insights group the searches your ads appeared for on Google Search, search partners and Google Maps into categories and subcategories based on intent. For each category you see clicks, impressions, clickthrough rate, conversions, conversion rate, conversion value and search volume, plus the campaigns and ad groups that got the traffic. You can pick a custom date range back to March 2023 and download the data.
The main difference from the search terms report: categories take in all search terms, "including those not exposed in the search terms report due to privacy reasons". Lower-volume terms are grouped as "other search terms". Category labels are generated by the system, so a label can look like one of your negative keywords even when the terms behind it are misspellings; open the category to see the actual terms. Google notes the numbers can differ slightly from the search terms report because the data is processed differently.
Audience insights
Audience insights describe the people who convert. Persona audience insights list the audience segments behind your conversions, each with its type (in-market, affinity, detailed demographic, life events), its share of conversions, and an index. Google explains: "A higher index means that a given audience segment is more unique for you." Asset audience insights show which segments respond most to a particular asset, with affinity indexes and a link to add similar assets.
If you use optimized targeting or automated bidding, these insights show which Google segments were targeted and performed well. How signals and targeting work is in our audience signals guide.
Budget pacing and target pacing
Budget pacing insights show how each campaign, including campaigns on shared budgets, has spent and is projected to spend this month, with forecast results, and give each campaign a status: limited by budget, budget remaining or on track. What those statuses mean and what to do about them is in our limited by budget guide. Google notes it "will never charge more than your monthly spending limit".
Target pacing insights appear for campaigns with a Target CPA or Target ROAS, and show how performance has been pacing against the target you set; see our target CPA guide for how the target itself works.
Diagnostic and performance insights
Diagnostic insights come from campaign diagnostics, which Google says "checks 90+ signals across your campaign's core components". It looks at the past week: whether the campaign served impressions, got goal-aligned actions, and spent most of its average daily budget. Issues are grouped by area, such as account (suspensions, billing), ads, audiences, bidding and budget, goals and conversion tracking, and products. When nothing is wrong it shows a "happy state". A new campaign may have too little history for the performance checks.
Performance insights flag significant changes in a campaign's goal-aligned metrics over the past 7 or 28 days and explain what caused them. When a change lines up with an edit someone made, the change history shows who made it and when.
When insights don't appear
Google is clear that insights "won't always be generated for every account and campaign at all times". Common reasons from its help page:
- No campaign in the account is a type that supports that insight.
- For search trends, demand forecasts and search terms insights, Google hasn't found categories related to your business that are trending significantly.
- For performance shifts, auction insights and change history insights, it hasn't found significant changes in your performance.
- Audience insights need enough impressions, interactions and unique converters, so accounts with few conversions may see none.
Google's advice is to check back: "Google Ads regularly finds new insights."
How we use it
This is our own practice, not Google's guidance:
- We check the account-level page weekly, at 28 days, mostly for budget pacing and search terms insights.
- We read demand forecasts a couple of months before a client's busy season and plan budgets and ads around the forecast start date.
- We treat Suggested trends as ideas to discuss with the client, not as campaigns to launch straight away.
- We use search terms categories to spot themes, then check the actual terms in the search terms report before adding negatives.
If you want help reading your Google Ads account, see our services.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the Insights page in Google Ads?
Click the Campaigns icon, then Insights and reports in the section menu, then Insights. Select a campaign first to see that campaign's insights.
Why is my Google Ads Insights page empty?
Insights only appear when Google finds something significant and when the account has a campaign type that supports them. Audience insights also need enough conversions. Google suggests checking back, as new insights are found regularly.
How often do Google Ads insights update?
Google says insights update daily. You can switch the page between the last 7 days and the last 28 days.
What is the difference between search terms insights and the search terms report?
The report lists individual search terms; search terms insights group them into intent-based categories and include terms the report leaves out for privacy reasons.
Are search trends the same as demand forecasts?
No. Search trends show growth that is already happening; demand forecasts predict increases in search interest within the next 180 days. When a forecast trend starts rising, it shows as a search trend.
For more on Google Ads reporting, see our guides to Performance Planner and recommendations and optimization score.