A Google Ads audit is a full review of an ad account to answer one question: does every euro you spend bring back more than it costs? In practice, you check, in this order, conversion tracking, the searches that trigger your ads, campaign structure, bidding, and finally the ads and landing pages. The order matters: there's no point polishing ads if the account is measuring the wrong thing.
In this article: the 10 checks I run when I take over an account, what each one can cost you, and a 15-minute test to tell whether yours needs an audit.
Why the order of an audit matters more than the number of checks
A PPC audit (or AdWords audit, as it used to be called) usually comes as a checklist or template, and the ones you find online often list 70 or even 200 items. They're useful as a safety net, but they treat everything as equally important: a missing ad asset weighs as much as broken conversion tracking. For a business owner, that's not something you can act on.
I rank the checks by how much money they lose you. The first three distort every decision made afterwards. The next ones waste budget. The last ones make a healthy account more efficient.
1. Conversion tracking: are you measuring the right thing?
If your Google Ads aren't converting, start here. This is the first thing I check, and the one I most often find broken (I go into it in detail in my article on hiring a freelance Google Ads consultant). Two questions:
- Does the conversion actually matter to your business? A purchase, a quote request, a booked call. Not a page view or a button click. Those signals can still be tracked, but as secondary actions, so they don't drive bidding.
- Is it recorded correctly? No duplicates, no missing sales, order value passed through. I always run an end-to-end test: a real action, then a check of what Google actually records.
If this is wrong, the rest of the audit is wrong too. Google explains how conversion tracking works in its help centre.
On a B2B website I audited, the tracked conversion was a simple page view. Google's algorithm was therefore looking for people who open a page, not for prospects, and the budget was going on low-quality traffic. I moved the conversion point further down the funnel, to the contact form submission. Cost per click goes up, and that's expected: Google is now targeting rarer, more valuable people. But it finally knows what to optimise for, the traffic is better qualified and, in the end, each real lead costs you less.
2. Do your Google Ads numbers match your actual sales?
Second check: compare the conversions reported by Google Ads with the sales or leads you actually recorded (in your store, your CRM, your calendar). A gap of a few percent is normal. Reporting twice as many conversions as you really had is not.
Since cookie consent became the norm, part of your conversions can no longer be observed directly. Consent mode and enhanced conversions help recover some of them. Without them, your campaigns learn from incomplete data.
3. Are your targets tied to your margin?
An account can show a healthy return on ad spend and still lose money. If your margin is 30%, one euro of advertising has to bring in far more than one euro of revenue to break even. I check that campaign targets (target CPA, target ROAS) were worked out from your real margin, not copied from a "good ROAS" figure found online.
4. Search terms: what are you really paying for?
The search terms report shows the exact queries people typed before clicking your ad. This is often where the budget leaks: job searches, people looking for free tutorials, products you don't sell, or a competitor's name.
What I look at: the share of spend going on searches unrelated to your offer, and whether there's a maintained list of negative keywords. An account with no negative keywords is almost always wasting money.
5. Account structure: are brand and non-brand separated?
A sound account at least separates searches for your brand (people who already know you, cheap and highly profitable) from generic searches (people you still have to convince). When the two are mixed, strong brand results hide weak performance everywhere else.
For online stores, I also check that Performance Max and Shopping aren't competing for the same products, and that Performance Max isn't getting most of its volume from your own brand name.
6. Bidding: does the strategy fit the goal?
Automated bidding works well, provided it has enough conversions to learn from and a consistent target. I check the strategy in use, the target set, and whether conversion volume is high enough for the algorithm to do its job. A target CPA set too low chokes delivery; no target at all lets Google spend the whole budget.
7. Budget: where is the money going?
I look at how budget is split across campaigns compared with what each one brings in. Two common red flags: a profitable campaign held back by its budget while a loss-making one spends freely, and spend concentrated on times, devices or locations that don't convert.
8. Ads and Quality Score
Quality Score, a 1-to-10 rating per keyword, tells you whether your ads and landing pages match what people searched for. It affects how much you pay per click. I check that each ad group has ads that echo the words people search with, and that assets (sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets) are filled in.
9. Landing pages: does the page deliver what the ad promised?
An ad promising a specific price or product should land on a page that shows it straight away. I check that the ad and the page match, how fast the page loads on mobile, and how simple the form or checkout is. This is often what separates an "okay" account from a profitable one: the ad brings the visitor, the page makes the sale.
10. Product feed and Shopping campaigns (e-commerce)
For an online store, the Merchant Center feed is the raw material for Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. I check for disapproved products, title quality (the term people search for should be in the title), and whether products can be grouped by margin.
The 15-minute optimization checklist: does your account need an audit?
You can run these checks yourself, no expertise required:
| Question | Where to look | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| What counts as a conversion? | Goals > Conversions | A page view or a click set as a primary action |
| Do conversions match your sales? | Compare last month with your store or CRM | A gap of more than 20 to 30% |
| Which searches are you paying for? | Keywords > Search terms | Irrelevant searches among the most expensive ones |
| Is brand traffic separated? | Campaign list | A single Search campaign that mixes everything |
| Who has admin access? | Admin > Access and security | Only your agency or a former provider |
Two red flags or more: a full audit will most likely pay for itself.
What a good Google Ads audit service should give you
A useful audit isn't a score out of 100 or a list of 150 comments. It should give you:
- a diagnosis backed by numbers: what the account really brings in, reconciled with your sales and margin;
- a prioritised list of fixes, with the expected impact of each one;
- a clear action plan you can hand to your team, your agency or a freelancer.
My Google Ads audit follows this approach. How long it takes depends on the size and age of the account. You get a written report, and I walk you through the findings on a video call, in plain language, so you know what to fix first and why. Then it's your call: apply the fixes with your team or agency, or have me do it. The audit is quoted per project, based on the size of the account.
If you need someone to run Google Ads alongside your other channels (SEO, website, CRM), work with a digital marketing consultant who sees what happens both before and after the click. For online stores, see also my e-commerce approach.
FAQ
Is a free Google Ads audit worth it?
A free first look can catch the most visible problems: conversion tracking, search terms, account structure. A full audit takes longer, because the account's numbers have to be reconciled with your actual sales and margin. Be wary of automated free audits that score your account out of 100: they measure how closely you follow Google's recommendations, not whether you make money.
How often should you audit a Google Ads account?
For most small and mid-sized businesses, a full audit every 6 to 12 months is enough, plus one after any major change: a new website, a new offer, a new agency, or a sudden drop in results. In between, a monthly look at search terms and conversions prevents most problems from building up.
Do I need to give access to my account for an audit?
Yes, but read-only access is enough. It lets the auditor see everything without changing anything. Always keep admin access inside your own company.
What if the audit shows my agency isn't doing a good job?
Start by sharing the findings with them: some issues come from missing information (your margin, priorities, sales tracking) rather than poor work. If nothing changes within a month or two, the audit gives you a factual basis to switch providers without losing your account history.
