Advertisers and agencies relying on Google Ads’ notes feature are experiencing an intermittent bug that removes the familiar “Add note” option from account change popups, complicating documentation and troubleshooting for performance shifts. This issue, reported by Search Engine Land’s Anu Adegbola, highlights the role account notes play in maintaining institutional memory across teams and why workarounds are essential until a permanent fix is issued.
What happened and why it matters
According to Search Engine Land, the problem was flagged by paid search consultant Odi Caspi and appears to be intermittent — the “Add note” option sometimes appears, and at other times it does not. As Anu Adegbola explains, “Account notes are a key workflow tool for agencies and in-house teams tracking changes over time.” Losing straightforward access to this function increases the risk that critical optimizations, bid adjustments, or budget changes go undocumented, making investigation of performance swings slower and less precise. https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-bug-removes-notes-option-for-some-advertisers-467895
How users are experiencing the issue
In affected accounts, the “Add note” control no longer appears in the standard popup where advertisers typically annotate changes. The behavior is sporadic, which makes reproducing the bug challenging: sometimes the UI behaves normally, and other times the add-note capability is absent. Search Engine Land notes that one observed workaround is to click an existing note — which can reveal the option to add a new one — but that only works if a note exists in the current date range.
Confirmed workarounds
- Click an existing note in the performance graph or hover card to reveal the Add note option (only works if there is a note for the selected date).
- Open the Notes panel from the three-dot (More) menu and use the Add button there. Some users report this panel still provides access even when the popup control is missing.
- Document changes externally (e.g., shared spreadsheets, internal changelogs, or project management tools) until the issue is resolved.
Official guidance and context
Google’s own help documentation makes clear the intended role of notes: “Anyone with account access can add, edit, or remove notes on your Google Ads campaign or ad group pages.” This underscores why the bug matters — notes are designed to be a simple, built-in way to record contextual information tied directly to dates and performance graphs. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7560833?hl=en
Analysis — risks and implications for teams
The intermittent disappearance of the Add note control introduces several operational risks. First, it weakens change tracking: without consistent in-UI annotations, correlation between account modifications and performance shifts becomes more error-prone. Second, it degrades knowledge transfer: new team members or cross-functional stakeholders rely on notes to understand why decisions were made. Third, audits and performance reviews that depend on historical annotations will take longer and may miss context.
From a governance perspective, teams that enforce change documentation via the Google Ads interface will find compliance and accountability harder to maintain. Agencies managing multiple client accounts could see time drain as teams adopt manual or external logging processes to compensate.
Practical steps advertisers should take now
Until Google publishes a fix, advertisers should adopt pragmatic measures that reduce disruption with minimal overhead:
Short-term (immediate)
- Validate note visibility across accounts and users: have multiple team members check whether the Add note option is present in different date ranges and views.
- Use the Notes panel (three-dot menu) proactively: access the Notes panel directly (Campaigns > three-dot icon > Open notes panel) to add or review notes when the popup is unavailable.
- Establish an external change log: create a shared spreadsheet or use a lightweight project tool (e.g., Google Sheets, Notion, or Asana) with a simple template: Date, Account, Change, Rationale, Owner, Link to Campaign.
- Screenshot and attach: when making major changes, take a quick screenshot of the settings and paste the image into your external log or a ticketing system.
Medium-term (process)
- Make notes part of the QA workflow: require a note or external entry as part of campaign change checklists, ensuring the information is captured even if the UI feature fails.
- Leverage Ads Editor or API-based change logs: where possible, rely on Ads Editor or the Ads API’s change history to track edits; note that some UI-only features may not be accessible via API, so validate compatibility first.
- Train staff on alternative access methods: document the steps to open the Notes panel, add notes via the graph, and use external logs so teams can adapt quickly.
What to watch for
Monitor official Google Ads channels for a status update (Google Ads Status Dashboard and Google Ads Help Center) and keep an eye on industry coverage from outlets such as Search Engine Land for community-reported workarounds. Regularly review your external logs against account Change history to ensure fidelity.
Search Engine Land notes that Google has not publicly acknowledged the bug or issued a timeline for a fix, which means advertisers should assume the issue could persist until an official patch is released. As Anu Adegbola reported, the error was first spotted by Odi Caspi and has appeared intermittently over the past couple of weeks — a pattern that suggests the issue may be tied to UI rendering conditions or account-specific feature availability. https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-bug-removes-notes-option-for-some-advertisers-467895
Final takeaway
Account notes are small features that carry outsized value for teams that depend on them for context, accountability, and troubleshooting. The current Google Ads notes bug is disruptive precisely because it removes a low-friction way to record important information. Using the Notes panel, adding external logs, and building notes into change workflows will reduce risk while waiting for Google to resolve the issue.
At SEOteric, we recommend teams treat this as a prompt to formalize lightweight change documentation processes that remain useful even after the UI is restored — because reliable processes matter more than any single interface.
Attribution: This post was based on reporting by Anu Adegbola for Search Engine Land and Google Ads Help documentation. Original article: https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-bug-removes-notes-option-for-some-advertisers-467895 (Anu Adegbola, Jan 23, 2026).
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