Read the changes feed
Each event names the app, the field, the previous value, the new value and the date it was detected.
Detection is snapshot based, so the date is when asobeast noticed rather than when the store published. A refresh you trigger yourself narrows that gap. See Import an app.
Why competitor changes matter most
Your own changes you already know about. A competitor rewriting a title is the interesting row, because it usually precedes a position shift on the keywords that title covers. Pair a competitor change with a position drop on the same keywords and you have the beginning of an explanation. The Action Center formalises this inrank.investigate_drop, which looks for an indexed field change within 14 days of a visibility fall. See Work the Action Center.
Get notified
Subscribe a channel tometadata.changed. In the default batched delivery mode, owned app changes and competitor changes arrive as two separate reports, so a channel can subscribe to one scope without the other. See Send alerts.
How long are changes kept?
RETENTION_CHANGE_EVENTS_DAYS defaults to 0, which keeps change events forever. See Configuration reference. That default is deliberate: change history is small, and it is the record you most want years later when explaining a ranking trend.
Troubleshooting
- A change you made is not listed. No snapshot has been captured since the store published it. Refresh the listing.
- A change appears with no visible difference. Stores sometimes reformat whitespace or punctuation. The diff shows exactly what differed.
- Competitor changes stopped. Confirm the competitor is still tracked and that its listing has not been removed from the storefront.
Related
Track competitors
Add the listings whose changes you want to see.
Work the Action Center
Where a change plus a drop becomes an investigation.