Google Ads Audit Checklist: 8 Checks
Use our Google Ads audit checklist to review tracking, search terms, budgets and landing pages, then prioritise changes that help generate better enquiries.
Your Google Ads account can report plenty of clicks and conversions while your sales team sees few worthwhile enquiries. Before increasing spend or changing agency, check whether the numbers describe the business outcome you actually need.
This Google Ads audit checklist covers eight checks for businesses generating leads through Search campaigns. It gives you a way to question the account, gather evidence and decide what to fix first.
What should a Google Ads audit cover?
A Google Ads audit should examine measurement, lead quality, search terms, targeting, budgets, bidding, landing pages and account changes. Its output should be a prioritised plan connecting each issue to evidence, a proposed action and a way to judge the result.
Start with a recent reporting period that contains enough activity to assess. For a small account, review a longer period alongside the latest month. Record website launches, budget reductions, changes to the offer and seasonal demand so you can compare periods fairly. Export the starting figures before making changes.
1. Are your conversions measuring the right actions?
List every conversion action and write down what triggers it. A completed enquiry, a booked appointment and a click on a telephone link are different events. Check which goals each campaign uses, which actions are primary, and whether the same enquiry is being counted through more than one measurement route.
Google normally uses primary actions for bidding when their standard goal is selected. Secondary actions are generally observational, although actions included in a custom goal can still be used for bidding. An audit therefore needs to inspect campaign goals as well as the label attached to each action.
- Test the journey from landing page to successful submission; a button click alone does not establish that the form was sent.
- Check for duplicated tags or duplicate conversion actions representing the same result.
- For call tracking, distinguish a click to call from a connected conversation.
- Investigate tracking changes around website launches before concluding that performance improved or deteriorated.
A useful finding states the exact measurement problem and how it will be tested. 'Tracking needs attention' leaves too much unanswered.
2. What happens after an enquiry arrives?
Join advertising results to the sales process. For lead generation, review how many enquiries were suitable, how many became appointments or quotations, and how many became customers. Record unsuitable enquiries separately, including job seekers, suppliers and requests for services you do not offer.
Ask how brand searches contribute to the account. Someone searching your company name has a different starting point from someone discovering you through a service search. Assess both, while keeping their roles clear when judging whether advertising is creating new demand or capturing existing interest.
Suppose two campaigns generate the same number of enquiries. One produces conversations with buyers; the other mainly attracts people asking for jobs. Their reported cost per enquiry may look similar, but their commercial value is very different. This is an illustrative example, not a benchmark.
3. Which searches are using your budget?
Review the search terms report alongside spend, conversions and available lead-quality information. Keywords describe your targeting; search terms show the actual searches that triggered ads. Look for a pattern of irrelevant intent, not just a few awkward-looking phrases.
For a cleaning business, for example, recruitment searches may be wasteful if the campaign exists to win contracts. That does not mean every account should exclude the word 'jobs': the decision depends on what the business sells and what the campaign is intended to achieve.
Check negative keywords and match types against these findings. Avoid excluding relevant demand merely because it has not converted after a handful of clicks. Google also omits some low-volume queries for privacy reasons, so the visible report does not explain every pound of spend.
4. Do your location settings match who can buy?
Inspect both the areas targeted and the location option selected. Google's 'Presence or Interest' setting can include people interested in an area as well as people located there. 'Presence' focuses on people likely to be in or regularly in the selected locations.
A business serving customers only within a practical travel area may have a reason to use Presence. A venue attracting visitors from outside the area may need a broader approach. Neither choice should be made automatically. Check where enquiries come from and whether those customers can actually be served.
Location targeting uses signals and is not perfectly accurate. Combine the geographic reports with actual customer locations, then document any exclusions or targeting changes you propose.
5. Is the account short of budget or losing auctions?
For Search campaigns, inspect impression share alongside its budget and rank measures. Search lost impression share due to budget estimates missed visibility caused by insufficient budget. Search lost impression share due to rank relates to Ad Rank in the auction.
These point to different questions. A campaign constrained by budget may have room to grow if it already produces suitable enquiries at an acceptable cost. A rank problem needs investigation of bids, relevance, landing page experience and the auction. Any spending recommendation should explain how those findings affect the decision.
Put the commercial test first: which campaigns or services have evidence of worthwhile outcomes? An audit should show where additional spend could be tested, what result would justify it, and which weaknesses need fixing before expansion. Missing impressions alone do not prove that more budget will be profitable.
6. Does bidding reflect your goal and the data?
Write down the bid strategy, any cost or return target, and the conversions it is trying to achieve. Check whether that combination fits the business. A target based on weak or duplicated conversion signals cannot give you a reliable view of acquisition costs.
Review target changes alongside performance. Allow for the time between an ad click and an eventual enquiry or sale when reading recent results. A campaign that generates enquiries after several days should not be judged as though every outcome happens immediately.
Ask the auditor to explain the proposed change, the evidence behind it and the review point. Making several major changes at once can leave you unable to tell which one helped. Urgent repairs, such as correcting broken tracking, may still need to happen together; record them clearly.
7. Does the landing page fulfil the ad's promise?
Open the actual landing page on a phone and complete the enquiry journey. If the ad promotes one service, the page should explain that service clearly. Visitors should be able to understand the offer, assess relevant proof and find the next step without searching through unrelated content.
- Check that the advertised service, area and offer match the page.
- Test forms, booking links and phone links on the devices your customers use.
- Look for unclear eligibility, missing service information or unnecessarily difficult forms.
- Review loading and usability problems before attributing every lost enquiry to campaign targeting.
Record a specific friction point and a testable improvement. For example, a booking link that fails on mobile needs a repair; a vague proposition needs clearer copy. Each deserves a different response.
8. Can recent changes explain the result?
Use change history to examine what happened around a performance shift. Review changes to budgets, bidding, targeting, ads and conversion settings. Add website and sales-process changes to the same timeline because those can sit outside the advertising account.
Check access and ownership while reviewing the account. The business should understand who can make changes, which manager accounts are connected and how it will retain access if suppliers change. Give an auditor the appropriate access for the agreed scope; an initial review does not automatically require permission to edit campaigns.
Ask for a written distinction between observations and actions already taken. An audit should not leave you guessing whether a recommendation has been implemented or is still awaiting a decision.
What should the audit report give you?
Expect a short plan that you can act on. For each finding, ask for the affected campaign or journey, the evidence, the recommended action, the person responsible and the measure used to review it. Separate verified faults from ideas that need testing.
- Fix first: broken measurement, failed enquiry journeys and clearly irrelevant targeting.
- Test next: bidding, messaging or budget changes supported by enough evidence.
- Investigate further: issues where the account or sales records do not yet provide a reliable answer.
A useful report also acknowledges what is working. Rebuilding campaigns that already generate suitable business can create unnecessary disruption. Preserve the evidence behind good performance while tackling the parts of the account that need attention.
Get a clear view of your next PPC decision
If you are comparing PPC agencies in Somerset, ask how each team would investigate these eight areas and communicate the findings. You should understand what is being measured, what needs changing and how success will be assessed.
The Digital Cogs is based in Somerset and supports businesses across the UK. Our paid-search work includes account audits, conversion tracking, campaign planning and ongoing optimisation. Tell us what your campaigns are meant to achieve and where the results fall short, and we can discuss an appropriate review.
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Read our guide to choosing between SEO and PPC
Google documentation used for this checklist
Primary and secondary conversion actions
Understanding the search terms report