How to Conduct a Google Ads Audit That Actually Finds Problems

A Google Ads audit is a systematic review of an advertising account to identify inefficiencies, misconfigurations, and missed opportunities. Done thoroughly, an audit can uncover thousands of dollars in wasted spend that routine optimization overlooks.

The difference between an audit and regular account management is scope. Day-to-day optimization focuses on incremental improvements: adjusting bids, pausing underperformers, testing ad copy. An audit steps back and evaluates whether the entire account is structured and configured to succeed.

This guide gives you a Google Ads audit checklist you can run on any account from top to bottom, a template for the audit report, and the extra steps that turn it into a full PPC audit when a client advertises on more than one platform.

When to Conduct a Google Ads Audit

Not every account needs an audit every month, but certain situations make one essential.

Onboarding a new client. Before making changes to an account you did not build, an audit establishes a baseline and identifies quick wins that build early credibility.

Performance plateau or decline. When incremental optimization stops moving the needle, structural issues may be the root cause. An audit can surface problems that bid adjustments alone cannot fix.

Before scaling spend. Increasing budget in a poorly structured account amplifies waste. Audit first to ensure the foundation supports higher spend levels.

Periodically as preventive maintenance. Even well-managed accounts accumulate inefficiencies over time. A quarterly or semi-annual audit keeps accounts clean and aligned with current best practices.

As part of a pitch. For agencies, an audit of a prospect's account shows expertise and puts a dollar figure on the cost of doing nothing. It is one of the most convincing sales documents an agency can produce.

Before You Start: Business Context and Access

An audit without business context is just a list of technical findings. Spend the first hour on these questions before you open a single report.

Business objectives. Is the account there for revenue, leads, or awareness? What CPA or ROAS makes a sale profitable? Judge the account against these targets, not against abstract benchmarks.

Historical context. How long have the current campaigns been running? What changed recently? Seasonality, product launches, and past restructures explain a lot of data that otherwise looks like a problem.

Conversion definitions. Which actions count as a conversion, and which of them actually matter to the business? A lead form and a newsletter signup should not carry the same weight.

Access. Confirm you can see the Google Ads account, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and ideally the CRM or sales data. Without access to what happens after the click, you can't verify conversion tracking, and incomplete access means an incomplete audit.

The Google Ads Audit Checklist

Work through each section in order. Document your findings as you go, noting both issues and their estimated impact so you can prioritize fixes.

1. Account Structure

Account structure determines how effectively you can manage bids, budgets, and targeting. Poor structure creates cascading problems that affect everything downstream.

Campaign organization. Are campaigns organized by theme, product line, match type, geography, or funnel stage? There is no single correct structure, but the chosen approach should be consistent and logical. Look for catch-all campaigns that combine unrelated products or services.

Ad group granularity. Each ad group should contain tightly related keywords that can be served by the same set of ads. Ad groups with more than 15-20 keywords usually indicate insufficient segmentation. Check whether ad group themes are distinct or overlapping.

Naming conventions. Consistent naming makes accounts manageable at scale. Look for inconsistent capitalization, abbreviations, or naming patterns that make it hard to understand what each campaign or ad group targets.

Campaign type alignment. Verify that Search, Display, Shopping, Video, and Performance Max campaigns are separated appropriately. Blended campaign types make performance analysis and optimization difficult.

Stale campaigns and experiments. Look for campaigns, ad groups, and experiments that nobody has reviewed in months. Forgotten campaigns with outdated targeting or ads keep spending on autopilot.

2. Campaign Settings

Settings errors are among the most expensive mistakes in Google Ads because they silently waste money without surfacing obvious performance issues.

Network settings. Check whether Search campaigns include Search Partners and Display Network opt-ins. Many advertisers unknowingly serve ads on the Display Network through Search campaigns, which typically produces lower-quality traffic at higher cost.

Location targeting. Verify that location targeting uses "Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations" rather than the default "Presence or interest," which shows ads to people who search about your locations but may live elsewhere.

Language settings. Confirm languages match your target audience. Overly broad language targeting can serve ads to users who cannot read them.

Bid strategy alignment. Is the bid strategy appropriate for the campaign's goals and data volume? Automated bidding strategies need sufficient conversion data to work effectively. Campaigns with fewer than 30 conversions per month often do better with manual CPC or Maximize Clicks until they build up conversion history.

Ad rotation. Check whether ad rotation is set to "Optimize" (Google selects the best-performing ad) or "Do not optimize" (ads rotate evenly). For active testing, even rotation is preferred. For set-and-forget campaigns, optimization makes sense.

Budget allocation. Are budgets distributed according to performance potential? Look for high-performing campaigns that are budget-constrained while low-performing campaigns have excess budget. Check for shared budgets that may cause high-priority campaigns to compete with low-priority ones for the same pool.

3. Keyword Analysis

Keywords are the targeting foundation of Search campaigns. Keyword issues are among the most common findings in Google Ads audits.

Match type distribution. Review the balance between broad, phrase, and exact match keywords. Over-reliance on broad match without proper negative keywords leads to irrelevant traffic. Conversely, using only exact match can limit reach unnecessarily.

Search term analysis. Pull the search terms report for the past 90 days. Look for irrelevant queries that triggered your ads, high-spend queries with no conversions, and valuable queries that should be added as keywords.

Negative keyword coverage. Evaluate the negative keyword lists for completeness. Are there obvious irrelevant terms missing? Are negatives applied at the appropriate level (campaign vs. ad group)? Check for conflicts where negative keywords block valuable traffic.

Keyword overlap and cannibalization. Identify cases where the same keyword appears in multiple ad groups or campaigns. Overlap forces your ads to compete against each other and makes performance data unreliable.

Low Quality Score keywords. Filter for keywords with Quality Scores below 5. These keywords pay a premium per click and drag down overall account performance. For each low-QS keyword, determine whether the issue is ad relevance, landing page experience, or expected CTR.

Keyword to ad group ratio. Ad groups with too many keywords cannot serve highly relevant ads. Groups with too few keywords may not generate enough volume. Look for the balance point.

4. Ad Copy and Creative

Ads are what users actually see. Weak ad copy wastes every dollar spent getting the click.

Ad count per ad group. Each ad group should have at least 2-3 responsive search ads to enable testing and optimization. Ad groups with only one ad have no room for improvement through testing.

Headline and description utilization. Responsive search ads allow up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Check whether ad groups are using the full allocation. Under-utilizing headline slots limits Google's ability to assemble high-performing combinations.

Keyword insertion and relevance. Do ads include the target keywords or close variants in headlines? High relevance between search query, keyword, ad copy, and landing page is the foundation of Quality Score.

Call-to-action clarity. Every ad should include a clear call to action. Vague ads that describe features without directing the user to take action typically underperform.

Ad strength indicator. Google provides an ad strength rating for responsive search ads. While not a perfect metric, ads rated "Poor" or "Average" are worth reviewing for improvement opportunities.

Pin usage. Check if headlines or descriptions are pinned to specific positions. Excessive pinning limits Google's optimization flexibility. Strategic pinning (like keeping your brand name in headline 1) is fine, but pinning everything defeats the purpose of responsive ads.

Creative performance and fatigue. Rank ads by CTR, conversion rate, and cost per conversion, and check when each was last refreshed. On Display and Video, gradual performance decline is often plain ad fatigue.

5. Ad Extensions (Assets)

Extensions increase ad real estate, improve CTR, and provide additional information to users. Missing extensions are free performance left on the table.

Sitelink extensions. Every account should have sitelinks pointing to relevant pages. Check that sitelinks are active, their URLs work, and the descriptions are populated and within the sitelink character limits.

Callout extensions. These short text snippets highlight key selling points. Verify they are present and relevant to current offerings.

Structured snippet extensions. These list specific aspects of your products or services. Check for relevance and completeness, and that each uses one of Google's predefined snippet headers.

Call extensions. For businesses that accept phone calls, call extensions should be active during business hours with correct phone numbers.

Location extensions. For businesses with physical locations, confirm location extensions are linked and accurate.

Image extensions. Image assets can noticeably lift CTR on Search. Check whether they are set up and approved.

Review extension performance data to identify underperformers that should be replaced.

6. Conversion Tracking

Without accurate conversion tracking, every other optimization decision is based on incomplete data. This section of the audit is arguably the most important.

Conversion actions. List all conversion actions configured in the account. Verify that each one is still relevant and firing correctly. Remove or reclassify outdated conversion actions.

Tag verification. Use Google Tag Assistant or Tag Manager to confirm that conversion tags fire on the correct pages, at the correct times, and only once per conversion event (unless counting "every" is intentional).

Reconcile with real outcomes. Compare the conversions Google Ads reports with Google Analytics, the CRM, and actual sales or leads for the same period. Large gaps usually point to duplicate firing, missing tags, or conversion actions that no longer reflect business value.

Attribution model. Check which attribution model is assigned to each conversion action. Data-driven attribution is the default for new conversion actions; older actions may still sit on last click, which undervalues campaigns that drive awareness or consideration.

Conversion value tracking. For ecommerce accounts, verify that dynamic conversion values are passing correctly. For lead generation, check whether conversion values are assigned and reasonable.

Offline conversion imports. If the business has a sales cycle that extends beyond the initial form fill or call, offline conversion imports can dramatically improve bidding algorithm performance. Check whether this is set up or should be.

Cross-domain tracking. If the user journey crosses multiple domains (e.g., a main site to a booking platform), verify that tracking follows the user accurately.

7. Quality Score Analysis

Quality Score directly affects how much you pay per click and where your ads appear. A QS audit can reveal systemic issues.

Overall distribution. Calculate the weighted average Quality Score for the account using impression-weighted averages. Benchmark against 7/10 as a healthy target. Accounts averaging below 5/10 have significant room for improvement.

Component analysis. For each low-QS keyword, examine the three sub-components: Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. This tells you whether the fix is in the ad copy, the keyword grouping, or the landing page.

Landing page assessment. Visit the landing pages associated with low QS keywords. Check for relevance to the keyword, page speed, mobile usability, message match with the ad, and clear conversion paths. A slow or irrelevant landing page undermines even the best ads.

8. Display and Remarketing Audit

Display and remarketing campaigns fail quietly: they spend steadily, report cheap clicks, and rarely show up in search term reviews. Give them their own pass.

Placement report. Review where Display, Video, and Performance Max ads actually ran. Sites, apps, and channels with spend and no conversions are candidates for exclusion. Automatic placements often include low-quality inventory, especially mobile apps.

Content exclusions. Check that sensitive content categories and inventory types that don't fit the brand are excluded at account or campaign level.

Remarketing list health. Check that each list is large enough to serve and that membership durations match the sales cycle. A 540-day list for an impulse purchase or a 7-day list for a B2B deal both misfire.

Segmentation. A single "all visitors" list leaves value on the table. Look for segments by pages visited, cart or form abandoners, and past customers, each with its own bids and messages.

Converter exclusions. Make sure people who already bought or signed up are excluded from acquisition remarketing, unless the campaign is explicitly for repeat purchases or upsells.

Frequency and overlap. Check frequency caps and whether several campaigns are chasing the same audience. Overlapping remarketing campaigns compete against each other and inflate costs.

9. Budget and Bid Analysis

Money allocation issues are where audits produce the most immediate financial impact.

Budget pacing. Check whether campaigns are regularly hitting their daily budgets. Campaigns that are limited by budget may be missing valuable conversions. Conversely, campaigns that never approach their budget may have too much allocated.

Wasted spend identification. Calculate total spend on keywords, search terms, and placements that produced zero conversions over the past 90 days. Report it as a dollar amount and as a share of total spend. This "wasted spend" figure is often the most impactful finding in an audit.

Non-converting segments. Break performance down by device, location, time of day, audience, and demographics. Not every segment without conversions is waste, since some simply lack data, but segments with significant spend and consistently zero results over 90 days warrant a bid cut or exclusion.

Bid strategy performance. For automated bidding strategies, review the bid strategy report to check whether targets are being met. Look for strategies that have been in "learning" mode for too long or that consistently miss target CPA or ROAS.

Device bid adjustments. If manual bidding, check whether device bid adjustments reflect actual performance differences across desktop, mobile, and tablet.

Geographic performance. Review performance by location. Identify regions with poor ROI that may warrant bid reductions or exclusion.

10. Growth Opportunities

An audit should not only list what is broken. Close the checklist with what the account is not doing yet.

Keyword expansion. Converting search terms that currently match through broad match deserve their own keywords. Look for themes the account doesn't cover at all.

Funnel gaps. Many accounts only run bottom-funnel search campaigns, which caps the size of the audience that can convert later. Check whether consideration and remarketing stages are covered.

Campaign types. Ecommerce accounts without Shopping or Performance Max, or local businesses without location assets, may have obvious room to grow.

Bidding upgrades. Accounts on manual bidding with enough conversion volume may benefit from automated strategies. Accounts already on automated bidding may need different targets.

Auditing Large and Enterprise Accounts

The checklist above works for a single account. An enterprise audit, or an agency audit across a whole MCC, needs a different approach because you can't read every search term in 50 accounts.

Standardize first. Use one scorecard for every account so results are comparable. The same checks, the same thresholds, the same red/yellow/green rating.

Start at the top. Check account-level and manager-level settings first: shared negative keyword lists, shared budgets, account-level exclusions, and linked conversion actions. One error there affects every campaign below it. Large accounts also run into Google's account limits and manager account limits, which is worth checking before you propose a restructure that adds campaigns or ad groups.

Sort by spend. Audit the campaigns that make up 80% of spend in depth and scan the long tail for settings errors only.

Look for patterns. In a multi-account audit, the same problem often shows up everywhere because the accounts were built from the same template. Fix the template, not just the accounts.

Google Ads Audit Template: How to Structure the Report

The report is how findings turn into action. A thorough audit loses its value if the report is unclear or overwhelming. Use this structure as your template:

Lead with the executive summary. A stakeholder who reads only the first page should understand the situation and what happens next.