How to Audit a Google Ads Account: The Step-by-Step Checklist That Exposes What’s Actually Wrong

The average Google Ads account wastes between 20% and 40% of its budget on clicks that were never going to convert. That’s not a hot take — that’s what you find when you actually open the accounts and look.

Most advertisers don’t audit their accounts because they don’t know what to look for. Most agencies don’t audit their clients’ accounts because they’re afraid of what they’ll find. This guide fixes the first problem. If you’re dealing with the second, we’ll get to that too.

Whether you’re doing a PPC audit on your own account, evaluating a new agency’s work, or just trying to understand why your CPCs keep climbing while conversions stay flat — this is the checklist you actually need. No fluff. No “ensure alignment with business goals.” Real things to check, real numbers to benchmark against, and real red flags to walk away from.

Start Here: What a Real Google Ads Account Audit Actually Covers

A lot of “audits” are just a PDF with screenshots and a recommendation to increase the budget. That’s a sales deck, not an audit.

A real Google Ads account audit is a structured, layer-by-layer examination of everything that affects whether your money turns into revenue. There are six layers. You need to check all of them, in roughly this order, because findings in one layer will explain anomalies in another.

The six layers are:

1. Conversion tracking & measurement — Is the data trustworthy?
2. Account & campaign structure — Is it organized for control or chaos?
3. Campaign settings — Are the defaults silently killing efficiency?
4. Keyword strategy & search terms — Are you paying for the right searches?
5. Ad copy & landing pages — Is the message doing its job?
6. Bidding & budget allocation — Is the money going where it wins?

Don’t start with keywords. Don’t start with bids. Start with tracking. If that layer is broken, nothing else you find matters — you’re optimizing based on fiction.

Layer 1: Conversion Tracking — The Foundation That Most Audits Skip

Pull up the Conversions column in your Google Ads account. Now ask three questions: Are these conversions actually firing? Are they firing once per real conversion? And do they represent actions that mean anything to the business?

You’d be shocked how many accounts count every page view as a conversion, or fire a “purchase” conversion tag on the thank-you page that loads on both successful orders and failed ones. We’ve seen accounts reporting 800 conversions a month from a business closing 12 deals. The smart bidding algorithm was optimizing beautifully — for garbage.

What to check:

• Conversion tag status: Go to Tools → Conversions. Any tag showing “Inactive” or “Unverified” is a problem. Any tag that last fired more than 72 hours ago on an active campaign deserves a hard look.
• Counting method: “Every” vs. “One” matters enormously. For lead forms and phone calls, it should almost always be set to “One.” If it’s set to “Every,” a single user reloading a thank-you page inflates your numbers.
• Conversion value: If you’re an ecommerce account and conversion values aren’t passing dynamically, your Target ROAS bidding is flying blind.
• Include in Conversions: Check whether micro-conversions (PDF downloads, page scrolls) are set to “Include in Conversions.” They shouldn’t be unless you have zero primary conversions to track.

Red flag: Conversion rate above 15% on a non-transactional landing page almost always means a tag is misfiring. Conversion rate at exactly 0.00% on a campaign that’s been running for weeks means the tag never fired once.

Layer 2: Account Structure — Organized for Learning or Organized for Billing?

Good account structure gives you control and clarity. You can see what’s working at a granular level, make budget decisions without cannibalizing your own campaigns, and give Google’s algorithm enough data to learn without letting it run wild.

Bad account structure exists to make the account look impressive in a screenshot — dozens of campaigns, hundreds of ad groups, thousands of keywords — while actually being harder to manage and less efficient to run.

What to check:

• Campaign segmentation: Branded, non-branded, competitor, and remarketing should live in separate campaigns. If branded and non-branded keywords share a campaign and a budget, your branded terms (which convert cheaply) are cannibalizing budget from non-branded terms (which need it more). Or vice versa. Either way, you’ve lost the ability to control it.
• Ad group theme tightness: Each ad group should have a tight keyword theme. If one ad group contains “enterprise CRM software,” “small business CRM,” and “free CRM trial,” the ad serving is a mess and Quality Scores will reflect it.
• Number of active ads per ad group: Google recommends at least one Responsive Search Ad (RSA) per ad group. But if you have ad groups with only one ad and no pinning strategy, you’re not testing anything — you’re just hoping Google gets it right.

Red flag: A single campaign running Search, Display, and Search Partners all together. That’s three completely different channels with wildly different intent signals sharing one budget and one set of bids. Separate them.

Layer 3: Campaign Settings — Where Google’s “Recommendations” Cost You Money

Google Ads default settings are designed to maximize Google’s revenue, not yours. That’s not a conspiracy theory — it’s just the nature of defaults that push spend upward. A PPC audit that doesn’t go deep on settings is leaving some of the easiest wins on the table.

What to check:

• Search Partners: Enabled by default. For many B2B accounts, Search Partners deliver a 30–50% higher CPA than Google Search. Check your Segment → Network data. If Search Partners is dragging down your ROAS and you can’t exclude it at the keyword level, turn it off for that campaign.
• Display Network expansion on Search campaigns: “Google Search Network with Display expansion” — this setting is a budget leak disguised as a feature. Your Search campaign budget can quietly flow to Display placements with no way to see which placements you’re showing on. Separate them or disable Display expansion entirely.
• Location targeting: Check whether you’re targeting “Presence OR interest” vs. “Presence only.” If you’re a local service business and you’re targeting “interest,” you’re paying for clicks from people who searched for your city but are physically nowhere near you.
• Ad rotation: Should be “Do not optimize” if you’re A/B testing ad copy seriously. “Optimize” lets Google pick a winner after minimal data, which isn’t A/B testing — it’s letting an algorithm make decisions on small sample sizes.
• Automated extensions and assets: Check whether Google has auto-added seller ratings, dynamic callouts, or image assets you didn’t approve. Some of these are fine. Some will pull in messaging that contradicts your brand.

Quick win: Disabling Display Network expansion on any Search campaign that’s running “Search with Display” can immediately improve ROAS — often within the same billing cycle. It takes two clicks.

Layer 4: Keywords & Search Terms — The Most Expensive Part of a Lazy Account

This is where most of the wasted spend hides. Your keyword list is what you intend to bid on. Your search terms report is what you’re actually paying for. Those two things are often shockingly different.

What to check:

• Search Terms Report: Go back 90 days. Filter for search terms that spent more than your target CPA with zero conversions. That list is your immediate negative keyword candidates. In most audits, this exercise alone identifies hundreds of dollars in wasted spend per month.
• Match type distribution: Broad match without a healthy negative keyword list is an expensive experiment. If more than 40% of your keyword budget is on broad match and your negative keyword list has fewer than 100 terms, you have a problem. Phrase and exact match give you more control while you build the account’s conversion history.
• Negative keyword lists: How many negatives does the account have? A well-managed account with 6 months of history should have at minimum 200–400 negatives across campaigns. We’ve audited $50K/month accounts with 12 negatives. That’s not management — that’s account abandonment.
• Keyword cannibalization: Are the same keywords appearing in multiple ad groups or campaigns? Google will run them against each other in auction, driving up your own CPCs. Use the search terms report cross-referenced against your keyword list to spot overlap.
• Low-volume & irrelevant keywords: Keywords with zero impressions over 90 days should be paused or removed. They add noise and can fragment your Quality Score history across too many ad groups.

Red flag: A search terms report showing a long tail of irrelevant queries — job-seeker terms, DIY terms, competitor brand names, or queries from entirely wrong industries — means broad match is running without supervision. We’ve seen an industrial equipment company paying for “forklift operator jobs” for eight months straight. Nobody caught it because nobody was looking.

Layer 5: Ad Copy & Landing Pages — Where Clicks Go to Die

You can fix every structural problem in an account and still get terrible results if the ad copy is generic and the landing page is the homepage. This layer is about message-to-market match: does what the ad promises align with what the landing page delivers?

What to check:

• RSA asset performance: In your Responsive Search Ads, check the asset ratings. Any headline or description rated “Low” that’s been running for 30+ days should be replaced. Google is telling you directly that it’s hurting performance.
• Ad strength vs. actual performance: “Excellent” ad strength and terrible CTR often coexist. Ad strength measures variety of inputs, not quality of messaging. Don’t optimize for the score — optimize for CTR and conversion rate.
• Headline relevance: Do your ad headlines include the primary keyword for that ad group? If you’re bidding on “project management software for agencies” and none of your headlines mention agencies, your Quality Score will suffer and your relevance score will tank.
• Landing page alignment: Click through the ad destination URL manually. Does the page match the ad’s promise? If your ad offers a free trial and the page asks for a demo request form, your conversion rate is paying for that mismatch.
• Mobile landing page experience: Check your landing pages on a real mobile device, not a responsive preview. Load time above 3 seconds on mobile is a conversion killer. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights — anything below 70 on mobile needs attention.

Quick win: Creating a dedicated landing page for your highest-spend ad group — even a simple one that mirrors the ad’s headline and has a single clear CTA — consistently outperforms sending traffic to a homepage or a generic service page. We’ve seen conversion rates double from this one change alone.

Layer 6: Bidding Strategy & Budget Allocation — Is Your Money Going Where It Wins?

Bidding strategy is where opinions get strong and context matters most. There’s no universally correct answer — but there are clearly wrong answers that we see constantly.

What to check:

• Is smart bidding earning it? Smart bidding strategies like Target CPA and Target ROAS need data to work. Google recommends at least 30–50 conversions per month per campaign before smart bidding is reliable. If you have a campaign with 4 conversions a month running Target CPA, you’re not benefiting from machine learning — you’re giving a confused algorithm a steering wheel.
• Budget allocation across campaigns: Sort your campaigns by conversion volume and cost per conversion. Is budget concentrated on your best performers? Frequently, we find that the campaign with the lowest CPA is budget-constrained while a mid-performing campaign is spending freely because someone set a high budget on it 18 months ago and never revisited it.
• Branded campaign impression share: This number should be above 85%. If it’s below that, you’re either underbidding on your own brand terms or there are competitors running conquest campaigns against you. Either way, fix it — branded traffic is the cheapest, highest-intent traffic you’ll ever buy.
• Target CPA vs. actual CPA trend: Pull a 30-day vs. 90-day comparison. Is actual CPA trending toward your target, or drifting away from it? Smart bidding that’s been running for 90 days and is still 40% above target isn’t learning — it’s stuck.
• Shared budgets: Be suspicious of shared budgets across campaigns with different conversion rates and goals. They create a situation where a high-volume, lower-value campaign can drain budget from a lower-volume, higher-value one.

Red flag: Maximize Clicks as a bidding strategy on any campaign that has conversion tracking set up. Maximize Clicks optimizes for traffic volume, not conversions. It’s a fine starting strategy for brand-new campaigns with no conversion data — but if your account has been running for six months and you’re still on Maximize Clicks, your agency is either lazy or hoping you won’t notice the conversions aren’t the priority.

The Google Ads Audit Checklist: At a Glance

Use this as your working reference during an account review. Check each item off, note what you find, and prioritize fixes by estimated impact on spend efficiency.

Conversion Tracking

• ☐ All conversion tags active and verified
• ☐ Counting method appropriate for conversion type
• ☐ No micro-conversions inflating primary conversion data
• ☐ Dynamic conversion values passing for ecommerce

Account & Campaign Structure

• ☐ Branded and non-branded campaigns separated
• ☐ Ad groups have tight, single-theme keyword clusters
• ☐ At least one RSA per active ad group

Campaign Settings

• ☐ Search and Display campaigns separated
• ☐ Search Partners performance reviewed; disabled if underperforming
• ☐ Location targeting set to “Presence only” where relevant
• ☐ Auto-applied recommendations reviewed and selectively disabled

Keywords & Search Terms

• ☐ 90-day search terms report reviewed for wasted spend
• ☐ Negative keyword list has 200+ terms (for accounts 6+ months old)
• ☐ Broad match keywords monitored with strong negatives
• ☐ Keyword cannibalization across campaigns identified

Ad Copy & Landing Pages

• ☐ Low-rated RSA assets replaced
• ☐ Ad headlines include primary keyword
• ☐ Landing pages checked for ad message alignment
• ☐ Mobile page speed above 70 on PageSpeed Insights

Bidding & Budget

• ☐ Smart bidding campaigns have 30+ conversions/month
• ☐ Budget concentrated on best-performing campaigns
• ☐ Branded impression share above 85%
• ☐ No Maximize Clicks on conversion-tracked campaigns

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a Google Ads audit take?

A thorough audit of a mid-size account — say, $5K–$30K/month in spend — takes a skilled analyst 3 to 6 hours to do properly. Anything delivered in 30 minutes is a surface-level review, not an audit. If an agency hands you a 4-page PDF after a “free audit” and it’s full of vague recommendations, they did the work in under an hour. Treat it accordingly.

How often should I audit my Google Ads account?

A full structural audit is worth doing every 6 months. A lighter account review — checking search terms, conversion tracking, and budget pacing — should happen monthly. If you’re spending over $20K/month, weekly check-ins on the key metrics aren’t overkill.

What’s the most common problem found in a PPC audit?

Broken or misconfigured conversion tracking, by a wide margin. It’s the issue with the highest downstream impact and the one most likely to go unnoticed for months. The second most common is negative keyword neglect — accounts that were set up correctly once and never maintained.

Can I do a Google Ads audit myself?

Yes, and you should — even if you also have an agency. Understanding your own account well enough to ask hard questions is the single best thing you can do to protect your ad spend. This checklist gives you everything you need to do a credible review. The one area where you might need outside help is interpreting whether your account structure and bidding strategy make sense for your specific business model and competition level.

What does a Google Ads audit cost if done by an agency?

Reputable agencies typically charge $500–$2,500 for a standalone audit, depending on account complexity and spend level. Many agencies offer a free audit as a business development tool — those can still be valuable if the agency is credible, but go in knowing their goal is to win your business, which shapes what they choose to highlight.

What’s the difference between a Google Ads audit and an account review?

An audit is a one-time structured assessment — a full diagnosis. An account review is typically an ongoing, lighter-touch check-in against KPIs. You need both: periodic deep audits to catch structural problems, and regular reviews to catch performance drift before it turns into a crisis.