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.
Paid · Independent · Fixed-Scope Google Ads Audit
Independent Google Ads Audit Service to Find What Is Limiting Performance
I review your live Google Ads account to find where performance is being limited, whether that comes from conversion tracking, campaign structure, search terms, bidding, budgets, Shopping, Performance Max, landing pages or the way results are being measured. You receive a prioritised findings report that shows what needs attention first, why it matters and what should happen next.
This is a paid, fixed-scope review completed with read-only access. There is no ongoing management commitment. If an area of the account is already working well, I will say so rather than recommending changes simply to make the report look more substantial.
- Read-onlyNo account changes during the audit
- Fixed scopeFee agreed before work starts
- PrioritisedFindings ordered by what matters first
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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, but not before the critical items. Sequenced rather than tackled all at once.
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Working
Named on purpose. Knowing what to leave alone prevents unnecessary account changes.
Three tiers rather than a score out of a hundred. A score compresses different problems into one number and does not tell you what to do first.
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.
An audit becomes less useful when every observation is presented as equally important. A page listing forty issues does not tell you what to do first. It transfers the prioritisation problem back to you, which is the problem the audit should have solved.
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. Campaigns using conversion-based Smart Bidding optimise toward the conversion goals selected for bidding. If those goals count the wrong action, the bidding system can become efficient at producing a result the business does not actually value.
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
Make the successful form submission the conversion used for bidding, keep page-view activity as observation-only if it is still useful, then allow enough time for the account to adjust to the corrected signal. Expect historical and post-fix reporting to be non-comparable for a period, and explain that before anyone judges the change.
Who does it
Your developer or whoever manages the tracking implementation, followed by verification against your own enquiry records for an agreed period.
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, reviewed in this sequence. Earlier findings can change how the later sections should be interpreted, which is why I do not treat the audit as ten independent checklists.
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 unnecessary fragmentation is making signal quality, budget control or performance analysis harder.
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 | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | A bidding conversion counts something short of a sale or qualified lead | Conversion-based bidding can optimise toward an action that is easy to generate but commercially weak |
| Critical | Purchase or lead events firing more than once | Reported performance is inflated, bidding signals become unreliable, and platform totals stop reconciling with business records |
| Critical | No target derived from margin, contribution or lead value | Campaign targets can look efficient inside Google Ads while making little sense for the underlying business economics |
| 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 | Signal, budget and query coverage become harder to interpret, while overlap can obscure which structure is doing the work |
| 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 | Search-term exclusions no longer reflect actual query patterns | Low-value query themes can continue spending because nobody owns the review process |
| Working | Something already working well | Named explicitly, because knowing what to leave alone is part of the value |
The common thread across the critical findings is not necessarily a hidden platform bug. The account can be functioning exactly as configured while the configuration itself does not reflect the business outcome you actually care about.
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 long period, the history may be unreliable and no audit can reconstruct data that was never collected correctly. Sometimes the honest finding is that you need a clean post-fix period before anyone can judge the account with confidence.
- 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.
Need an independent diagnosis before changing the account?
Send me the account context and the problem you are trying to understand. I will confirm whether an audit is the right scope before you pay for one.
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 has an obvious conversion problem that should be fixed before more account diagnosis
- 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 Google Ads audit is a structured review of an existing account to diagnose what is limiting performance and what should be addressed first. My review covers conversion tracking, account economics, search terms, structure, bidding, ad relevance, landing pages, automation, product data where relevant, and reporting history. The output is a prioritised findings report, not an optimisation score.
How is this different from a free or automated audit tool?
Automated tools can identify settings and patterns that deserve attention. They cannot reconcile your recorded conversions with your own orders or enquiries, judge whether a target makes sense for your margin, or understand why a business considers one lead valuable and another useless. This paid audit uses live account data plus business context to reach account-specific findings.
How much does the Google Ads audit cost?
The audit is fixed-scope and quoted before work begins. Scope depends on account size, active campaign types, markets, tracking condition and whether Merchant Center or other connected measurement systems need to be reviewed. I confirm the fee after a short scoping conversation rather than publishing one price for very different accounts.
How long does the audit take?
Timing depends on the account size, number of campaign types, tracking complexity and how quickly the required access and business records are available. I give you a delivery date when the scope is agreed.
What access do you need?
I normally need read-only access to Google Ads, plus appropriate view access to Analytics and Merchant Center where they apply. I also ask for a recent record of orders or enquiries so platform conversions can be compared with what the business actually received. No campaign changes are made during the audit.
Can you audit an account another agency manages?
Yes. The audit is independent and uses read-only access, so the existing provider can continue managing the account without interruption. You can give the completed findings report to that provider, your internal team, or someone else to implement.
Do I have to hire you for management afterwards?
No. Ongoing management is separate. The report is written so another competent Google Ads specialist, your in-house team or your developer can act on the relevant findings. If you want me to implement or manage the account afterwards, that is scoped separately.
Is an audit useful before increasing Google Ads budget?
It can be useful when you are unsure whether tracking, account structure, search quality or commercial targets are reliable enough to support more spend. Scaling does not correct a bad conversion signal or a weak account constraint; it can simply expose the same problem at a larger budget.
Independent account review
Want an Independent Read on Your Google Ads 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 is the right next step, what I would need to review, and what the fixed scope would cost. If the problem is already clear and you need implementation rather than diagnosis, I will say that instead.