Whether recorded conversions correspond to things the business actually received, whether values are accurate, whether anything is counted twice, and how platform figures reconcile with your own order or enquiry records. Examined first, because everything else is read through it.
Independent Google Ads audit
A Google Ads Audit That Tells You What Is Actually Limiting Performance
Most audits are a list of everything that could theoretically be improved, which is easy to produce and almost impossible to act on. This one is a short, ordered set of findings, each with the reasoning attached, starting with whether the numbers you have been reading can be trusted at all.
Fixed scope, no ongoing commitment, and no obligation to work with me afterwards. If the account is in reasonable shape, that is what the report will say.
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Critical
Costing money now, or making the account impossible to judge. Fix before anything else.
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Notable
Worth fixing and not urgent. Sequenced after the critical items rather than tackled in parallel.
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Working
Named on purpose. Knowing what to leave alone prevents someone improving a thing that was fine.
Three tiers rather than a score out of a hundred. A score compresses everything that matters into a number that cannot be acted on.
What a Google Ads Audit Is Supposed to Produce
A written diagnosis of what is limiting performance, ordered by likely impact, with the reasoning shown so you can disagree with it. Not a checklist of settings, not a score, and not a list of thirty items designed to demonstrate thoroughness.
The reason most audits fail to change anything is that they treat every observation as equally worth reporting. A page listing forty issues does not tell you what to do on Monday. It transfers the prioritisation problem back to you, which was the thing you wanted help with.
So the useful output is short. Usually three to six findings that matter, each stating what I found, why it costs you something, what would fix it, and who needs to do that. Anything I noticed that does not meet that bar goes in an appendix or gets left out.
Why tracking comes first
Every audit starts with conversion tracking, and not out of thoroughness. Automated bidding spends against the conversion signals it receives, so if those are wrong the account has been diligently buying the wrong thing.
It also means every other observation is read through faulty data. Analysing structure or bidding before confirming the numbers is how audits reach confident conclusions about nothing.
What a Finding Looks Like
Rather than describe the format, here is one. This is an illustration of the structure, not a result from any particular account.
Lead conversion counts a form view, not a submission
Critical
What I found
The primary conversion action fires when the contact page loads rather than when the form is submitted. Recorded conversions exceed the enquiries in your inbox by a wide margin.
Why it matters
Smart Bidding has been optimising towards people who visit a page. It has become good at finding them. The reported cost per conversion looks healthy and bears no relationship to the cost of an actual enquiry.
What would fix it
Move the conversion to the submission event, then leave the account alone for long enough to relearn. Expect reported performance to get worse and real performance to improve, and tell whoever reads the reports that this will happen before it does.
Who does it
Your developer or whoever manages Tag Manager. Roughly an hour of work, plus verification against your own records for a fixed period afterwards.
How I know
Conversion action settings, the tag firing rule, and a fortnight of recorded conversions compared against your enquiry log.
The last row matters more than it looks. Showing the evidence is what lets you push back on a finding, and being able to push back is the difference between a report you act on and a report you have to take on trust.
What Gets Examined
Ten areas, in this order. The order is the method, since each one can invalidate the analysis of the ones below it.
What a customer is worth, what margin allows, and whether the targets in the account were derived from either. This needs input from you, because it does not exist inside Google Ads.
What the account has actually been paying for over a meaningful period, as opposed to what it was asked to buy. Includes negative keyword coverage and whether it has kept pace with the account.
Whether the structure reflects the business or its own history, how budget is distributed, and whether campaigns have enough conversion volume for automated bidding to learn from.
Which strategies are in use, how each target was arrived at, and whether any of them are set tighter than the account can currently reach.
Whether ads say what the matched queries imply, asset variety where the format assembles them, and which combinations delivery actually favours.
Whether each ad group points somewhere that confirms its promise quickly, on a phone, at ordinary connection speed. Frequently where the loss is, and frequently blamed on the campaign.
What has been handed to the system, whether the inputs behind those decisions are sound, and whether anything is quietly expanding beyond what was intended.
How much of the catalogue is eligible, what is disapproved and why, and whether feed price and availability match the live site.
What has been changed and when, what reporting has told you, and whether the numbers presented to the business have been reconciled with the business.
Not every area produces a finding, and a short report is not a sign of a shallow audit. Where a campaign type carries most of the account, the review goes deeper into it: Search, Shopping and Merchant Center, or Performance Max each have their own failure patterns.
What Turns Up Most Often
These are the findings I write most frequently. None of them is exotic, and all of them are the kind of thing an account can carry for years while everyone assumes the problem is the auction.
| Severity | Finding | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | A conversion action counts something short of a sale | Automated bidding pursues whatever it was told to value, so the account efficiently buys the cheap thing |
| Critical | Purchase or lead events firing more than once | Reported performance looks strong, bidding is trained on inflated data, and nothing reconciles with the accounts |
| Critical | No target derived from margin or deal value | Results get judged on instinct, and profitable accounts get cut while unprofitable ones get scaled |
| Notable | Search terms far broader than intended | Cost accumulates on queries that were never going to buy, usually invisible in the campaign summary |
| Notable | Budget fragmented across overlapping campaigns | Each one gathers too little conversion data to learn from, so performance stays unstable |
| Notable | Ad groups pointing at a generic page | Qualified visitors arrive and leave, and the ad account takes the blame for a page problem |
| Notable | Negative keyword list untouched for months | Waste accumulates quietly because nobody owns the search term review |
| Working | Something already working well | Named explicitly, because knowing what to leave alone is part of the value |
The pattern across the critical three is the same: the account is doing exactly what it was told to do. Nothing is broken in the sense of throwing an error. The instructions were wrong, and the platform followed them efficiently.
What an Audit Will Not Tell You
Worth saying plainly, because audits are often sold as answering more than they can. Five things this will not do.
- Promise a result. I cannot tell you what performance will be after the findings are implemented, because that depends on your competitors, your prices, your site and the auction.
- Quantify the waste precisely. I can show you spend on queries that never converted. Calling that a recoverable saving would be a guess, since some of it may have contributed in ways the data does not show.
- Fix anything. An audit is a diagnosis. Implementation is separate work, and some findings need your developer rather than either of us.
- Settle questions the data cannot answer. If conversion tracking has been wrong for a year, the history is unreliable and no amount of analysis recovers it. Sometimes the honest finding is that you need three clean months before anyone can judge the account.
- Find something dramatic every time. Some accounts are competently run and constrained by margin, market or product rather than by the account. That is a real finding and it is the one nobody wants to hear.
What You Receive
- A written report with each finding in the format shown earlier, ordered by severity rather than by the area it came from.
- A sequence saying what to do first, second and third, and what to leave until the earlier items have settled.
- Owner and effort against each item, so you can tell what needs a developer, what needs the account, and what needs a decision from the business.
- A note on what is working, so nobody improves something that was fine.
- A call to go through it, because a document nobody discusses tends to become a document nobody implements.
The report is written for you rather than for another specialist. Where a finding is technical, the reasoning is written so a developer can act on it and a business owner can understand why it matters. Those are two different audiences and both need serving.
Access needed
- Read-only access to the Google Ads account
- Analytics access, where it exists
- Merchant Center, for retailers
- A short conversation about margins and what a customer is worth
- Your own record of orders or enquiries for a recent period
Read-only throughout. Nothing in the account gets changed during an audit, so there is no risk to current performance and nothing to undo if you decide against acting on it.
How It Runs
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01 Scope
Agree what is included
A short conversation about the account, what you sell and what is bothering you. Scope and price fixed before anything starts, based on account size and how many campaign types are running.
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02 Access
Read-only, plus your records
Account access arranged, along with the business figures the account cannot supply. The margin conversation is short and it changes most of the analysis.
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03 Examine
Ten areas, in order
Tracking reconciled first, then the rest read through what that reveals. Findings written as they are established rather than assembled at the end.
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04 Deliver
Report, then a conversation
The document, then a call to work through it and answer challenges. You keep the report and you are free to hand it to anyone, including whoever currently manages the account.
On timing, I would rather not publish a fixed turnaround. It depends on account size, how many campaign types are running, and how quickly access and your own figures arrive. I will give you a date when scoping, and it will be a date I can keep.
When an Audit Is the Right Next Step
Worth doing when
- Spend has risen and business results have not followed
- Google Ads figures and your own accounts disagree, and nobody can say which to trust
- You are considering changing who manages the account and want an independent read first
- Reports arrive, metrics get cited, and nobody can explain what changed or why
- You are about to increase budget and want to know whether the account can absorb it
- Leads arrive in volume and the sales team does not think much of them
Probably not yet when
- The account launched very recently and has not gathered enough data to read
- You already know what is wrong and need it fixed rather than diagnosed
- Nobody will have capacity to implement anything for the next few months
- The website cannot convert traffic, which is a different problem and a bigger one
- What is wanted is evidence to justify a decision already taken
That last item is worth being direct about. If an audit is being commissioned to support a conclusion someone has already reached, it will either say the wrong thing or be ignored. Better to say what the decision is and have the conversation instead.
What Happens After
Nothing, unless you want it to. The report is yours and it is written to be actionable by someone other than me, which is deliberate.
Your team implements
The most common outcome, and a good one. Findings state what to change and who does it, so an in-house marketer or developer can work through them without needing me to translate.
Your current provider implements
Also fine, and more common than you might expect. A specific written finding is easier for an agency to act on than a vague sense that things could be better. I have no interest in whether they keep the account.
I implement
Available, not assumed. If the findings suggest work that needs doing hands-on and you want me to do it, that becomes ongoing management on separately agreed terms.
Nothing changes
Sometimes the finding is that the account is fine and the constraint is elsewhere. That is a legitimate result. It is cheaper to learn it from an audit than from another six months of adjustments.
Google Ads Audit: Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Google Ads audit?
A structured review of an account producing a written diagnosis of what is limiting performance, ordered by likely impact. It covers conversion tracking accuracy, account economics, search terms, structure, bidding, ad relevance, landing pages, automation settings, product data for retailers, and reporting history. The output is findings with reasoning, not a checklist of settings.
How is this different from a free audit tool?
Automated tools check settings against general best practice, which is genuinely useful for spotting obvious gaps. What they cannot do is reconcile your conversion data against your own order records, or judge whether a target makes sense given your margin, because neither of those exists inside the account. Most of the findings that matter come from exactly that comparison.
How much does an audit cost?
Fixed scope, quoted after a short conversation, because the work varies with account size and how many campaign types are running. A single-campaign account is a very different job from one running Search, Shopping and Performance Max across several markets. I would rather quote something I can deliver than publish a number and then discover the account is three times the expected size.
How long does an audit take?
It depends on account size, how many campaign types are involved, and how quickly access and your own figures arrive. I give a date at the scoping stage rather than publishing a turnaround here, because a promised timeline that ignores those variables is not worth much. The margin conversation and your order records are usually what determines the pace.
Do you need access to my account?
Yes, read-only, plus analytics and Merchant Center where they apply. Nothing gets changed during an audit, so there is no risk to current performance and nothing to undo afterwards. I will also ask for your own record of orders or enquiries for a recent period, since that comparison produces the most valuable findings.
Will you tell me how much money I am wasting?
I will show you spend on queries and placements that produced nothing, which is a real and specific number. Calling that a recoverable saving would be overstating it, because some of that spend may have contributed in ways the data does not capture. Anyone quoting you a precise waste figure from an audit is guessing with confidence.
What if my account turns out to be fine?
Then the report says so, and names what is working so nobody improves it by accident. Some accounts are competently run and constrained by margin, market or product rather than by anything in Google Ads. That is a genuine finding, and it is cheaper to learn it from an audit than from another six months of adjustments.
Do I have to work with you afterwards?
No. The report is written so your team or your current provider can act on it without me, which is deliberate. If you want me to implement the findings, that is available as separate work on separately agreed terms. I have no interest in whether your existing agency keeps the account.
Can you audit an account another agency manages?
Yes, and it is common. Read-only access is enough, so nothing they are doing gets disturbed. A specific written finding is usually easier for an agency to act on than a general sense that results could be better, and plenty of audits end with the current provider implementing them.
Why does conversion tracking come first?
Because automated bidding spends against the conversion signals it receives, so if those are wrong the account has been efficiently buying the wrong thing. It also means every other observation is read through faulty data. Analysing structure or bidding before confirming the numbers produces confident conclusions about nothing.
What will the report actually contain?
Each finding states what I found, why it costs you something, what would fix it, who needs to do that, and the evidence behind it. Findings are ordered by severity across three tiers rather than scored out of a hundred, since a score compresses everything that matters into a number nobody can act on. Usually three to six items, not thirty.
Is an audit useful before increasing budget?
Often the most useful time to run one. More budget applied to a working account produces more results; applied to one with an unresolved problem it produces the same problem at greater cost, plus pressure to justify the outcome. Knowing whether the account can absorb the increase is worth more than the audit costs.
Want an Independent Read on Your Account?
Tell me what you sell, roughly what you are spending, and what is bothering you about the account. I will tell you whether an audit would be useful and what it would cost. If I think you already know what the problem is and just need it fixed, I will say that instead.