How to audit a Google Ads account: a five-layer checklist

Why does an audit come before optimisation?

An account may have a weekly optimisation routine, but optimising on the wrong foundation only speeds up the mistake. The purpose of an audit is not to change settings but to collect evidence about which settings need to change. That is why nothing should be changed during the audit; get the full picture first.

An audit is also a prioritisation tool. Most accounts have dozens of opportunities for improvement, but three or four of them decide most of the result. A good audit report doesn’t say “fix everything”; it names the three highest-impact actions, each with a date and an owner.

Layer 1 (measurement): can you trust the conversion data?

The first layer is always conversion tracking. Verify with a real test transaction that the primary conversion actions represent business results, that values are sent dynamically and in the right currency, and that deduplication with a transaction ID works. In an audit, “the tag looks active” is not evidence.

The measurement layer also covers whether imported Google Analytics 4 key events clash with the Google tag, the conversion window settings and any site changes in the last 90 days that affected measurement. If this layer turns up a serious error, the rest of the audit goes ahead with a note that it will be re-evaluated once measurement is fixed. The checks for this layer are listed in our Google Ads conversion tracking checklist.

Layer 2 (structure): can you read each campaign’s job separately?

In the structure review the question is: does the way this account is organised let you read the performance of different jobs separately? Brand and non-brand searches in the same campaign, a handful of keywords scattered across dozens of ad groups or, at the other extreme, everything squeezed into one campaign are the most common structural problems.

Having few or many campaigns isn’t a problem in itself; the problem is when budget and bidding decisions can’t be made job by job. Brand protection, high-intent category searches, generic discovery searches and remarketing should each be measured against different expectations.

Layer 3 (search terms): where is the budget leaking?

The search terms report (Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms) is the most honest report in the account: it shows which searches the money actually went on. In the audit, sort the last 30–90 days of terms by spend and flag irrelevant searches, leaks from single-word broad match keywords and terms that spend without converting.

On the negative keyword side, check for both too few and too many: missing negatives leak budget, while overly aggressive negative lists can quietly block searches that would have converted. Traffic crossing between campaigns, such as brand searches triggering ads in a generic campaign, is also caught at this layer.

Layer 4 (bidding and budget): does the strategy fit your data?

The bid strategy review asks whether the chosen strategy fits the account’s data volume. In a campaign producing a handful of conversions a month, an aggressive target-based automated strategy creates volatility; in a high-volume campaign, manual bidding misses opportunities. Check whether target ROAS and target CPA values come from product economics, such as your break-even ROAS, or from habit.

On the budget side, look at winning campaigns that are Limited by budget, campaigns that can’t spend their budget and why impression share is being lost, to budget or to rank (the Search lost IS columns). Accounts where budget is spread by habit rather than by the priority of each job are among the most common findings.

Layer 5 (ads and landing pages): does the page deliver what the search promised?

The last layer is what the user sees: does the ad copy match the intent behind the search, do strong and weak headline variations separate clearly, and are sitelinks and other assets up to date? The same copy running for months without a single test is the most common sign of stagnation on the ad side.

For the landing page, compare the search that was clicked with the promise of the page that opens. Sending a category search to the home page, showing an out-of-date price on a promoted product or a page that loads slowly on mobile all lower the conversion rate, whatever the campaign settings.

What should an audit deliver: findings or an action plan?

An audit’s value lies not in the thickness of the report but in the decisions it produces. Write every finding with three pieces of information: the evidence (which data shows it), the estimated impact (what it could change, and by how much) and the action (who does what, and when). Then rank the findings by impact and effort, and give the first two weeks to the three highest-impact actions only.

• Measurement: has a test transaction been verified end to end?
• Structure: are brand and non-brand separated, and can each job be read on its own?
• Search terms: have the 50 most expensive terms of the last 90 days been reviewed?
• Negatives: have you checked for leaks and for over-blocking?
• Bidding: do the strategy and targets fit the data volume and product economics?
• Budget: is a winning campaign limited by budget?
• Ads: has a meaningful copy or asset test run in the last 90 days?
• Landing pages: have query-to-page fit and the mobile experience been checked?
• Output: are the first three actions written down with a date and an owner?