Google Ads Audit Checklist, What to Check First and Where to Click

The first check in any Google Ads audit checklist is whether you own the account. The second is conversion tracking, because every check after it reads its numbers. If the account is counting the wrong thing, every judgement you make after that is wrong too.

All it takes is your own login, a spare afternoon and the fourteen checks below, each with where to click and what a problem looks like. Shops get four more.

Three of the settings on the list are Google’s defaults. Broad match, search partners and the widest location option are all on unless someone turns them off, so money can leak without anyone making a mistake.

How do I conduct a Google Ads audit?

Work down the list in order, with the money leaks first and the slow fixes last. Note what you find as you go, and fix it afterwards in the same order, so one change doesn’t muddy the next check.

Set the date range to the last three months first, so one odd week doesn’t skew what you see.

The Google Ads audit checklist at a glance

Here’s the whole audit as a template to copy. The middle column uses Google’s own menu names, which it changes now and then.

1. Do you own your Google Ads account?

If an agency or a former staff member set up your Google Ads, find out who can get into it before the audit proper. It takes two minutes.

Open the Admin menu and go to Access and security. Everyone with access is listed with their level: Admin, Standard, Read only, Billing or Email only.

You want your own Google login on that list, as an Admin. Only an Admin can change anyone’s access level. A second admin is a sensible backup if that person becomes unavailable.

Access and security also lists the managers linked to your account, the kind agencies use. If a manager account has ownership, its admins can edit user access, managers and product links in your account.

That isn’t sinister, but you want to know now, not the week you decide to move.

2. Is your conversion tracking counting the right thing?

Smart Bidding bids for whatever the Conversions column counts, so a wrong count spends real money.

Open the Goals menu, then Conversions, then Summary. Each conversion action is listed with its status and whether it’s Primary or Secondary.

Is it counting enquiries, or things that only look like one?

Only Primary actions go into the Conversions column. Secondary actions are for watching.

So read the Primary list and ask whether each one is a real enquiry or sale. A page view isn’t. Neither is a click on your email address or a visit to the contact page.

If one of those is Primary, the account is reporting enquiries that never happened, and any Smart Bidding campaign is spending your money to get more of them. To change it, click Edit goal on the goal that holds it and set it to Secondary under Conversion action optimisation.

Check the status column too. Google’s conversion tracking troubleshooter lists Active, Needs attention, Misconfigured, Awaiting conversions and Removed, though some help pages still use the older Inactive and Unverified. On a tag that has been live for months, Needs attention or Misconfigured means it isn’t recording properly. Awaiting conversions means none in the last seven days, which is normal on a brand new tag.

For a shop, Primary should be the purchase, with its value.

Are phone calls counted as well as forms?

If your customers ring rather than fill in forms, an account that only counts forms is judging every campaign on part of the work it brings in.

Look for these three kinds of call conversion.

• Calls from ads. Someone taps the call button or your number in the ad itself.
• Calls from your website. Someone clicks an ad, lands on your site and rings a Google forwarding number shown there.
• Taps on your number on your mobile site. This counts the tap, not the call, so it can’t tell you whether anyone got through.

The first two need Google forwarding numbers. For calls from ads, call reporting has to be on.

If calls aren’t tracked at all, add a phone call conversion from Summary in the Goals menu.

Check the minimum call length too. Set it too high and short calls never count, including the ones where someone books a job in half a minute.

Is one enquiry being counted twice?

Click the name of a form conversion, then Edit settings, then Count. It says One or Every.

Every counts each form someone sends after a click. One counts a single conversion per click. Google says One is a good choice when what matters is whether a lead came in, not how many forms it filled.

For an enquiry form, that’s you.

3. Which searches are you actually paying for?

Your keywords are what you told Google. The search terms report is what people actually typed, and you paid for every click on it.

In the Campaigns menu, open Insights and reports, then Search terms. Sort by cost, highest first, and read down. You’re looking for searches that were never going to buy, and each of those clicks can cost as much as one from a customer.

• A plumber paying for “plumbing courses”.
• A solicitor paying for “solicitor jobs Cork”.
• A dentist paying for “free dental care for children”.

Tick the bad ones and add them as negative keywords, so your ads stop showing for them. You can also add negatives by hand under Audiences, keywords and content, then Search keywords, on the Negative search keywords tab.

Our piece on Google Ads negative keywords covers the match types and where to put them.

Google leaves some low-volume searches out of the report for privacy. And a negative that overlaps one of your own keywords stops that keyword’s ads showing at all, which is how an account loses good traffic along with the bad.

4. Are your keywords on broad match without Smart Bidding?

Broad match is Google’s default. Add a keyword without any symbols and it’s broad, which lets your ad show on searches related to your keyword, including ones that don’t contain its direct meaning.

Google recommends broad match with Smart Bidding, which sets a bid for each search based on how likely it is to convert. On manual bids, broad match bids the same for a vague search as for a good one.

On the Search keywords page, under Audiences, keywords and content in the Campaigns menu, the symbols around each keyword tell you its match type.

• No symbols, as in plumber navan, is broad match.
• Quotation marks, as in “plumber navan”, is phrase match. The search has to include the meaning of your keyword.
• Square brackets, as in [plumber navan], is exact match. The search has to mean the same thing.

Then look at the campaign’s bid strategy. Broad match on Manual CPC or Maximise clicks is a leak with two fixes. Either move those keywords to phrase or exact, or move the campaign to Smart Bidding once it has the conversions to support it, which is check 10.

Keywords with plus signs, like +plumber +navan, are broad match modifier. Google stopped new ones in July 2021, and the old ones now behave as phrase match. Our post on broad match modifier explains what changed.

One more setting overrides the symbols. A campaign with its Broad-match keywords setting switched on turns every keyword in it into broad match.

5. Are your ads reaching people who aren’t near you?

A new campaign starts on Google’s default location option, Presence or Interest. Google describes it as reaching people in, regularly in or who’ve shown interest in your targeted locations. For a local business, the last part is the expensive one.

Google counts interest from the words in a search, from a recent visit and from content a person views about the place, whichever Google domain they search on. So a Galway electrician targeting Galway can be shown to someone in Manchester who searched for Galway, or stayed there on holiday.

Now and then that’s a customer. A son in London sorting out a job at his mother’s house in Tuam is worth having. But a holidaymaker’s click can’t turn into a rewire, and a business that only serves people nearby pays full price for it.

Presence alone fits a business that only wants people in its targeted locations, not people elsewhere who are interested in them. That describes a plumber, an electrician, a dentist or a driving school. Expect fewer impressions after you switch.

1. See what the default has been costing. In the Campaigns menu, open Insights and reports, then When and where your ads showed, and select the Matched locations tab. It shows where your ads matched, whether people were there or only interested.
2. Open Campaigns, click the Settings tab, click the campaign’s name, open Locations and choose Location options.
3. Choose Presence, which reaches people in or regularly in your targeted locations, and save. Check every campaign, not only the first one.

The exception is a business that sells to people coming to Ireland. A hotel, a tour or a wedding venue wants that interest, and should leave the default alone.

6. Is your Search campaign showing on sites that aren’t Google?

A Search campaign can show in three places: Google Search, Google’s search partners and the Display Network. When you picture your ad, you’re picturing the first one.

Search partners are other sites that show search ads, from site directories to YouTube search results. They’re included by default in every new Search campaign, and your ad can show on thousands of different sites. You pay for those clicks too.

Google’s search partners placement report lists the sites your ads showed on, with impressions but no clicks or cost. It sits inside the Content suitability report. Open the Report editor under Insights and reports, scroll to When and where ads showed and select Content suitability.

With Display Expansion on, Google can show your Search ads on websites and apps when it predicts you have Search budget left over. Someone reading a news site wasn’t searching for you.

Either can pay its way, but someone should decide that from the numbers. In the Search terms report, the Segment button splits the figures by network, so you can see what each one costs and what it brings in. To switch them off:

1. Open Campaigns, hover over the campaign and click the gear icon.
2. Open Networks, untick ‘Include Google search partners’ and ‘Include Google Display Network’, and save.

7. Has Google been changing your account without asking?

Google Ads can apply its own recommendations for you, regularly, without anyone clicking yes each time.

The list of what it can apply includes adding broad match keywords, adding search partners, switching on Display Expansion and changing your bid strategy. So it can quietly undo checks 4 and 6.

Open Campaigns, then Recommendations, and click Auto-apply at the top right. The Manage tab shows what’s on. The History tab shows when each one was switched on, when it last applied and how often it applied in the past week.

To see who switched it on, open Change history in the Campaigns menu. It lists changes to the account for the past two years, and its User column shows the email address of whoever made each change in Google Ads.

Untick anything nobody chose on purpose. Google says auto-apply won’t raise your budget. It can still change the keywords, networks and bidding that decide what the budget buys.

8. Are your ads running when nobody can answer the phone?

A new campaign shows ads all day, every day. For an online shop that’s fine.

For a business that has to pick up the phone, an ad at two in the morning buys a call nobody answers, or a form that waits until nine while the customer tries someone else.

The chart on the Ad schedule page, in the Campaigns menu, shows when your clicks came. Pick Cost from the Clicks drop-down, then the Day and hour tab, to see when the money went. Hold it up against these two.

• The hours match when you can answer. If you take calls from the ad, schedule your call asset to your opening hours too.
• The hours are on the right clock. Ad schedules follow the account’s time zone. If yours isn’t on Irish or London time, set the hours to match its clock.

9. Is your budget pacing the way you think it is?

Google lets a campaign spend up to twice its daily budget on any one day. Over a month it won’t go past 30.4 times the daily budget.

What changed on 1 June 2026 is how that works with ad schedules that switch off whole days. A campaign switched off on some days now paces towards the full 30.4 days of budget, spent on the days it runs. Before, it paced towards the daily budget times the days it was on. Schedules that only switch off hours are unaffected.

Worked from Google’s pacing rules, for a campaign with enough searches to spend it. The ceiling is 30.4 times the daily budget for a campaign that runs 16 days or more. For one scheduled for 15 days or fewer, it is twice the daily budget for each active day.

If you set your daily budget by dividing a monthly figure by the days you run, you may now spend more than you planned. Divide by 30.4 instead. To hold a weekday-only campaign at €440 a month, set it to €14.47 a day.

Then filter your campaigns by the Limited by budget status. It isn’t always a problem. Maximise conversions and Maximise conversion value are limited by budget by design, because Google built them to spend all of it. On Manual CPC or Maximise clicks, it tells you the budget runs out before the searches do.

Before you raise it, clear the waste from checks 3 to 6. For what a click costs in your trade, see how much Google Ads cost in Ireland, or put your own figures into our Google Ads budget calculator.

10. Does your bidding strategy have enough conversions to work with?

Smart Bidding learns from your conversions, and the fewer it gets, the longer any change takes to settle.

Google’s learning figure is up to around 50 conversion events or three conversion cycles after a change.

So put each campaign’s strategy beside its numbers. You’ll find the strategy in the campaign settings, and shared ones under Tools, then Budgets and bidding, then Bid strategies. A campaign on Target CPA that records eight conversions a month is judging itself on very little, and takes over six months to reach 50.

• Is the target realistic? Google warns that a Target CPA set too low can cost you conversions, because the strategy passes up clicks that would have turned into enquiries.
• Has anyone been tinkering? Google shows a Learning status when a strategy’s settings change or campaigns, ad groups or keywords are added or removed, and says to let it settle after a major change. Change history shows whether someone has been nudging the target every few days.

11. Which keywords are you quietly overpaying for?

Quality Score rates each keyword from 1 to 10, comparing your ads with other advertisers’ on the same searches over the last 90 days.

Google says higher quality ads typically cost less per click, and that a low quality ad can pay close to its maximum bid even when there’s little competition. The score itself isn’t used in the auction. It’s a summary of the ad quality that is.

Open Search keywords, click the columns icon and open the Quality score section. Add Quality Score, Landing Page Exp., Exp. CTR and Ad Relevance.

Then sort by cost, highest first. Don’t average the scores across the account. Google says Quality Score shouldn’t be aggregated. A 3 on a keyword nobody searches for costs you nothing. A 4 on the keyword taking a fifth of your spend costs you every day.

The three components on each keyword tell you what to fix.

12. Do your landing pages work on a phone?

The Landing pages report, under Insights and reports in the Campaigns menu, lists every page your ads send people to, sitelinks included, with clicks and a Mobile-friendly click rate. Anything under 100% means Google didn’t find the page mobile-friendly every time.

Then do the test Google can’t. Open your top pages on your own phone, the way a customer would.

• Does it load before you lose patience?
• Does the first screen say what the ad promised?
• Can you ring from it with one tap?
• Could you fill in the form with your thumb, standing at a bus stop?

Match the page to the ad. An ad for boiler servicing that lands on your home page makes the customer search all over again. Landing Page Exp., in check 11, is Google’s rating of how relevant and useful the page is.

13. Are your ads using every asset that fits your business?

Assets are the extra pieces under an ad: sitelinks, callouts, a call button, your address. They cost nothing to add, and a click on one is charged like any other click.

Open Assets in the Campaigns menu. Google suggests four or more asset types, such as sitelinks, callouts, images and one more of your choice.

For a local business, two matter more than the rest. A call asset lets someone ring straight from the ad, and it’s what the calls from ads in check 2 are counted from.

A location asset shows your address, and it’s what lets your ads show your business on Google Maps, as our post on advertising on Google Maps explains.

14. Does the account structure match what you sell?

Google Ads has three layers. The account holds the billing. Campaigns hold the budget and the settings. Ad groups hold the keywords and the ads.

That makes structure a money question. Budget and location are set per campaign, so if emergency call-outs and bathroom refits share one, you can’t give the call-outs more money or a tighter area.

Then open Ad groups. Each should be one theme that one ad can answer. Google’s advice, when ad relevance is below average, is to split ad groups whose keywords are too varied for the same ad.

It’s the slowest fix on the list, so it comes last. Restructuring adds campaigns, ad groups and keywords to a Smart Bidding strategy and takes others out, which puts it back into learning. Do it once, after the quick fixes have shown you what’s worth keeping.

Running an online shop? Four more checks

Is the purchase counted, with its value?

Back in the Goals menu, the Primary action should be the purchase, counted once per order, with its value. If the value includes VAT, your return looks better than it is. The VAT was never yours.

What does Merchant Center say needs attention?

Open Products in Merchant Center and select Needs attention. Older advice calls it Diagnostics. A product Google hasn’t approved can’t show in free listings or ads, and no bid changes that. Fix the High click potential ones first, in the order set out in Google Shopping feed optimisation. If the whole account is flagged, getting approved on Merchant Center starts with your website.

Does Performance Max have enough sales to learn from?

Performance Max bids automatically, towards sales or sales value, and learns from your purchases. Check last month’s purchase count in the Campaigns list. A shop making a handful gives it little to go on, and Standard Shopping lets you set the price per click by product group, as our post on Standard Shopping against Performance Max explains.

Which products make you money?

A click price tells you little. What counts is what each sale leaves you after the product, packaging and card fee, against what the clicks cost. Break-even return is one divided by your margin, so a 40% margin needs €2.50 back for every euro of ads.

How to turn a Google Ads audit into a report you can act on

Write each finding on one line, with three things beside it.

1. Where it is. The campaign and the menu, so you or anyone else can find it again.
2. What it’s costing. The spend on bad searches, the clicks from outside your area, the partner traffic. Rough is fine.
3. The fix. One change, in plain words.

Then fix them in the order you found them, tracking first, one change at a time where you can, and write down the date. Change history shows what changed. It won’t tell you why.

Questions people ask about Google Ads audits

Does Google do audits?

Not an independent one. Google gives every account a Recommendations page with an optimisation score.

It’s worth a look, but the optimisation score reaches 100% once you’ve applied or dismissed every recommendation. It measures how many suggestions you’ve dealt with, not whether your money is well spent.

Is an audit from a software tool or an agency worth having?

Yes, if you know what you’re getting. An audit from a software tool is usually an automated report, or it is the first conversation with an agency that would like to run your account. Both can find real problems.

Whoever does it, give them read-only access, not Admin. The Read only level lets them see your campaigns and run reports, but not edit them. Remove it from Access and security when they’re done.

The other route is our paid Google Ads audit, built to be useful whether or not you hire us.

Is there a Google Ads audit tool?

Google’s own tools cover most of it. The Recommendations page flags settings, the Quality Score columns flag weak keywords, and Change history shows who changed what.

Google says Ad Preview and Diagnosis, in the Tools menu, shows your ads without adding impressions to your figures. Paid audit tools are quicker across big accounts, but none of them knows you can’t take calls on a Sunday.

How often should you audit a Google Ads account?

Read the search terms every week or two while a campaign is new, and monthly after that. Run all fourteen checks every quarter, and again whenever someone new takes over the account.

Can you check if someone is running Google Ads?

Yes. Google’s Ads Transparency Center shows the ads a business has run on Google. Look up your own business while you’re there, to see what your customers see.

If you’d like to go through your account with us

Some of these checks take five minutes. Others, like deciding whether eight conversions a month can carry Target CPA, are easier with a second pair of eyes. If the audit leaves you wondering whether the ads should run at all, our post on whether Google Ads are worth it works through the sum.

If you’d rather we ran it, our Google Ads audit service goes through more than 150 checks, including your click prices against the going rate for your trade in your county. Five working days after you give us read-only access, you get a written report and an action plan, then a call to go through them.

It’s €295 plus VAT, with a full refund if you’re not 100% happy, and the €295 is credited against management if you hire us. For a shop, the audit also covers Merchant Center, the product feed, Shopping, Performance Max and purchase tracking.

Tell us your trade and your county, and we will tell you what a click costs. No obligation.

We’re a Google Partner, in the top 3% of Google Partners in Ireland. Our Google Ads management starts at €450 a month plus VAT.