A Google Ads audit answers one question: where is money going that is not coming back? Most accounts simply drift. Tracking breaks during a site update, broad match expands into irrelevant searches, a recommendation gets auto-applied, and a campaign that once worked quietly stops paying for itself. This checklist walks through the account in the order that finds the biggest problems first.
What does a typical Google Ads audit include?
A typical Google Ads audit includes eight areas: conversion tracking, account and campaign structure, bidding and budgets, keywords and search terms, Performance Max and Shopping, ads and assets, account settings, and landing pages. Each one is reviewed against your business targets, and the output is a ranked list of fixes with the money at stake for each. Older guides call this a Google AdWords audit, from the platform's name before 2018, and miss newer areas such as Performance Max. A Google Ads account audit is different from a monthly performance report: it questions how the account is built, not just how it performed last month, so it should be run with fresh eyes, ideally by someone who did not build the account.
Before you start a Google Ads account audit
- Get the right access. To audit a Google Ads account you need at least read-only access to it, plus access to GA4, Google Tag Manager and, for stores, Merchant Center.
- Pick a date range. Use the last 90 days for decisions and compare against the same period last year to separate seasonality from real decline.
- Read the change history. Look for bid strategy switches, budget changes and bulk edits around the dates performance changed.
- Know the business numbers. Target cost per lead or return on ad spend, average order value, margins and lead-to-customer rate. Without them, you cannot tell good performance from bad.
1. Conversion tracking
If tracking is wrong, Smart Bidding optimizes toward the wrong thing, and every other finding is built on sand. Check this first.
- Only real business outcomes (purchases, qualified leads, booked calls) are set as primary conversion actions. Micro-actions like page views or add to cart are secondary.
- No double counting: the same purchase is not counted by both a Google Ads tag and an imported GA4 conversion as primary actions.
- Lead actions count "one" per click; purchase actions count "every".
- Purchase conversions pass the actual order value and currency, not a static value.
- Enhanced Conversions is turned on and receiving hashed customer data.
- If you have traffic from the EEA, Consent Mode v2 is implemented. Google has required it for EEA traffic since March 2024 to keep audience and measurement features working.
- Lead generation accounts import offline conversions (qualified leads or closed deals) from the CRM, so bidding learns from quality, not just form fills.
- The attribution model is data-driven or last click. Google retired first click, linear, time decay and position-based models in 2023, so older settings may have been migrated automatically.
Our guide to Google Ads conversion tracking covers the setup side in more detail.
2. Account and campaign structure
- Brand and non-brand searches are in separate campaigns, so brand performance does not hide weak non-brand results.
- Campaigns are split where budgets or targets genuinely differ (product lines, services, regions), not just by habit.
- Ad groups are themed tightly enough that ads and landing pages match the keywords in them.
- No duplicate keywords competing across campaigns with different bids.
3. Bidding and budgets
- The bid strategy matches data volume. Target CPA or Target ROAS on a campaign with a handful of conversions a month usually underdelivers.
- Targets are realistic. A target set far below historical performance throttles volume.
- Campaigns marked "Limited by budget" are profitable enough to deserve more, or are being starved while weaker campaigns spend freely.
- Bid strategy changes are not made weekly, which keeps campaigns in learning.
4. Keywords, match types and search terms
- The search terms report has been reviewed recently. Sort by cost and look for terms with spend and no conversions.
- Broad match keywords are only running alongside Smart Bidding and good conversion data.
- Shared negative keyword lists exist and are applied. If not, our negative keywords list guide gives you a starting point.
- Keywords marked low search volume or with poor Quality Scores are paused or reworked.
- The keyword set reflects how buyers actually search. The same principles as ecommerce keyword research apply: separate buying terms from research terms.
5. Performance Max and Shopping
- Brand exclusions are applied where you want Performance Max to find new customers rather than capture existing brand searches.
- Asset groups are organized by product category or audience theme, each with its own images, headlines and search themes.
- Final URL expansion is reviewed. If Google is sending traffic to blog posts or policy pages, restrict it with URL exclusions or turn it off.
- Channel and search terms insights are checked to see where the budget is really going.
- The Merchant Center feed has no significant disapprovals, and titles and product types are well structured.
6. Ads and assets
- Each ad group has at least one responsive search ad with varied headlines, not fifteen versions of the same line.
- Pinning is used sparingly. Heavy pinning limits testing.
- Sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets and, where relevant, call and location assets are active and current.
- Ad copy states a specific offer and reason to choose you. Ad Strength is a guide, not a performance metric.
7. Settings that quietly waste money
- Location targeting: the default "Presence or interest" option can show ads to people outside your service area who are merely interested in it. Most local businesses should use "Presence".
- Networks: Search campaigns can include Search Partners and the Display Network. Display expansion on a Search campaign is a frequent source of cheap, low-quality clicks.
- Auto-applied recommendations: check which ones are switched on. Some add keywords, broaden match types or change bidding without review.
- Ad schedule and devices: look for hours or devices with consistent spend and no conversions.
- Languages and audiences: confirm they match the market, and that audience segments are set to observation unless you intend to restrict reach.
8. Landing pages and Quality Score
- Quality Score components (expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience) are reviewed at keyword level for your highest spend terms.
- Ads point to the most relevant page, not the homepage by default.
- Pages load quickly on mobile and forms work on every device.
- The headline on the page matches the promise in the ad.
Google Ads not converting? A diagnosis order
When a campaign gets clicks but no conversions, work through these in order.
- Confirm tracking fires. Complete a test conversion and check it in Tag Assistant and in the Google Ads conversion action status. A surprising share of "not converting" accounts are converting and not recording it.
- Check who is clicking. Read the search terms and location reports. Irrelevant searches or out-of-area clicks explain many dead campaigns.
- Test the landing page yourself. Use a phone, on mobile data, and try to buy or submit the form. Look for slow loads, broken forms and hidden prices.
- Compare the offer. Search your own keywords and look at the competing ads and pages. If their offer is clearly stronger, bidding changes will not fix it.
- Review the bid strategy. A strategy optimizing for clicks, or a target set unrealistically, can steer spend away from buyers.
- Check volume. Too few clicks can simply mean not enough data yet. Judge conversion rate over enough clicks to be meaningful.
Google Ads audit tools worth using
Most of the audit uses tools already inside Google's ecosystem, with a third-party Google Ads audit tool as an optional extra for large accounts.
- Change history: shows who changed what and when, which explains most sudden shifts in performance.
- Google Ads Editor: the fastest way to review settings, match types and ads across many campaigns in one view.
- Google Tag Assistant and GA4 DebugView: confirm that conversion tags fire once, with the right values.
- Merchant Center diagnostics: item-level feed issues that limit Shopping and Performance Max.
- Google Ads scripts and third-party tools such as Optmyzr: useful for spotting anomalies, broken URLs and budget pacing across large accounts.
What to do with your audit findings
Rank each issue by money at stake and effort to fix. Tracking fixes and obvious waste (irrelevant search terms, wrong networks, wrong locations) come first. Structural changes and new bid strategies come later, and one at a time, so you can see what each change did. Log every change with a date so the next audit starts from facts rather than memory. The same discipline applies to organic search, where an SEO audit checklist plays the same role.
A simple Google Ads audit template
A spreadsheet with seven columns is enough: the finding, the checklist area it belongs to, the evidence (a screenshot or report link), estimated monthly spend at stake, effort to fix (low, medium or high), the owner, and the date it was fixed. Sort by spend at stake, work from the top, and keep the sheet as your change log for the next audit. The same sheet works for a PPC account audit on Microsoft Advertising.
If you would rather have a senior practitioner run this for you, our Google Ads management team starts every engagement with this audit. You can also request a free Google Ads audit of your account and get the top issues in writing. Our blog has more paid search guides.