How We Audit a Google Ads Account: Eight Points We Start With

Auditing a Google Ads account comes down to finding out two things. Is the money going to searches that can turn into business, and can you trust the numbers in the account? Here I describe the eight points I always go through first when we look at an account, and in what order.

The order matters because the points depend on each other. An error in measurement makes the whole account look better or worse than it is. If you start with the keywords, you risk fixing the wrong thing.

My recommendation is that you start with measurement and hold off on changes until all eight points have been reviewed. That way you can see which problems are connected and deal with them in the right order.

Read-only access is enough to start

We ask for read-only access. That is the access level in Google Ads that shows campaigns and reports without allowing anything to be changed.

I read the last 90 days and compare them with the same period the year before. The change history also shows who changed what and when.

Here are the points in brief.

Point	What we want to know
Measurement and conversions	Does the account count what matters to the business, and only once?
Account structure	Can the budget be steered towards what you sell?
Keywords and search terms	What did people type when the ad was shown?
Exclusions	Are searches that never lead to business kept out?
Ads and assets	Does the ad answer what was searched for?
Bid strategies	Does the strategy suit the goal and the amount of data?
Budget	Is there enough money for what works?
Landing pages	Does the page work and does it deliver what the ad promises?

1. Measurement and conversions

A conversion is what you count as the result of an ad. It can be a purchase or an enquiry. According to Google's help page on conversion goals, the bid strategies that optimise for conversions use the conversion actions that are marked as primary. Secondary actions only appear in the All conversions column. If the wrong thing is counted, Google learns to look for the wrong visitors.

This is what I look at first.

1. Which conversion actions are primary and whether they correspond to real purchases or enquiries.
2. Whether the same thing is counted twice. This happens when a purchase is measured both with the Google Ads tag and with an imported event from Google Analytics 4, and both are primary.
3. Whether the count setting fits. Google recommends one conversion per click for enquiries and every conversion for purchases.
4. Whether the number of conversions in Google Ads is close to the number of enquiries or orders you have actually received.
5. Whether consent is set up correctly so that measurement works when a visitor makes a choice in the cookie banner.

The last point has its own post about what Consent Mode does to your numbers. If measurement is missing or page views are counted as conversions, that is the first thing to fix. The other findings then have to wait until measurement is right.

2. Account structure

The structure is how campaigns and ad groups are divided up. It determines how well you can move budget and bids towards what you actually sell.

1. Do the campaigns follow your services or product groups so that budget can be moved to where the business is?
2. Are searches for your own brand in a campaign of their own? They often cost little and convert well, and otherwise they can hide how the rest of the account is doing.
3. Are Search partners and the Display Network switched on in the Search campaigns? According to Google, Search partners are included by default. Both networks should be an active choice.
4. Are the ads shown only to people who are in your area, or also to people who have shown interest in the area? In the location options the choices are called Presence and Presence or interest.

3. Keywords and search terms

Keywords are what you choose to appear for. Search terms are what people actually typed when the ad was shown, and the difference between them shows how broad the matching is in practice.

I sort the search terms report by cost and read the most expensive rows first. An example: a removal company advertising on removal company may end up paying for removal company jobs and free moving boxes. Neither of them leads to a move.

1. How much of the cost goes to search terms that have never produced a conversion?
2. Are there search terms that convert but lack their own keyword and their own ad?

Google does not show every search term. According to Google's help page on search terms, searches made by too few people are left out for privacy reasons.

4. Exclusions

Negative keywords stop the ad from showing on searches that contain them. They are the quickest way to stop costs that never lead to business.

1. Are there negative keywords at account level or in lists that apply to all the campaigns where they are needed?
2. Does any negative keyword block a keyword you actually want to appear for?
3. Do the negative keywords cover spelling variants and plurals? According to Google, negative keywords do not match close variants in the same way as ordinary keywords.

Negative keywords need to be topped up all the time. I describe how a short review every morning works in the post about negative keywords as a daily routine.

5. Ads and assets

The ad should answer what was searched for. In a responsive search ad you write up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, which Google then combines.

1. Does each ad group have its own copy that fits the keywords in the group?
2. Does the ad match the landing page? Prices and offers should be the same in both places.
3. Are assets in place? Assets are the additions to the ad, and they include sitelinks and callouts.
4. Has Google created its own headlines or assets automatically? Read them and check that they only promise what you stand behind.

Ad strength is Google's rating of how well the ad follows Google's advice on variety and relevance. My assessment is that it says more about variety than about how well the ad sells. How to write the copy for each search is covered in the post about one ad text per search intent.

6. Bid strategies

The bid strategy determines how Google sets the bids in each auction. It should suit both the goal of the campaign and how much conversion data the account has.

1. Does the strategy steer towards what matters to the business? A strategy that only brings clicks rarely suits an account with working conversions.
2. Does the campaign have enough conversions for Google to learn from?
3. Are the targets realistic? A cost-per-conversion target far below what the campaign can achieve leads to fewer impressions.
4. Has the strategy had time to learn since it was introduced or the conversion goals were changed?

I go through the choice between strategies in the post about bid strategies in Google Ads.

7. Budget

The budget should cover the campaigns that bring in business. Two metrics show how much of the possible impressions a campaign has missed.

• Search lost IS (budget) shows how often the ad was not shown because the budget ran out.
• Search lost IS (rank) shows how often the ad was not shown because the bid or the quality was not enough.

If a campaign with good results is limited by budget while a weaker campaign has money left over, that is a clear finding. With a daily budget, Google can also spend up to twice that amount on a single day. According to Google's budget rules, the cost for the month will still never be higher than the daily budget multiplied by the average number of days in a month.

8. Landing pages

The landing page is the page the ad leads to. It decides whether the click becomes business and also affects the Quality Score. That is Google's rating from 1 to 10 for each keyword, and the landing page experience is one of the three parts of the rating.

1. Do all the pages the ads lead to work? A page that does not respond makes Google stop the ad.
2. Does the page load quickly on mobile and can the form be submitted?
3. Does the page deliver what the ad promises?
4. Do several ad groups lead to the home page when there are pages that fit the search better?

Google Ads has a separate report for landing pages. It shows which pages get the clicks and how they convert.

How we put the findings in order

Once all eight points have been reviewed, I sort the findings by what they affect.

1. Measurement first. Wrong conversions make the bidding and every report steer in the wrong direction.
2. Then whatever costs money without giving anything back. That means search terms without negative keywords and networks that do not fit. Broken landing pages belong here too.
3. Last, whatever can bring more. That means new keywords and better ads. More budget for the campaigns that already bring in business belongs here too.

The order also makes it possible to see what each change achieved.

What we can do for you

We do this review when we audit an account as part of our Google Ads work. Read-only access to the account is enough. Afterwards we go through the findings with you and suggest the order in which they should be dealt with. You can then make the changes yourselves or let us make them.

When did you last check which conversions drive the bidding in your account?