When a business owner asks me for a Google Ads audit, they usually already suspect something is wrong. The spend goes out every day, the dashboard reports conversions, and the bank account does not agree. A good audit explains that gap in plain language and tells you what to fix first.
I run RobbP Media, a paid ads agency in Los Angeles, and auditing someone else's Google Ads account is how most of our Google work begins. This post covers what a Google Ads audit should actually find, the order to check things in, how long it takes and what to do with the results.
What a Google Ads audit is for
An audit is not a list of best practices. It is a short, specific answer to three questions about your account: can you trust the numbers, where is money going that will never come back, and what would make the biggest difference if you changed it this week. If the findings could have been written about any business, it was not an audit. It was a brochure.
That is why we always end with the three fixes we would make first. A list of forty small issues is hard to act on. Three fixes in order are not.
Start with conversion tracking
Everything else in the account depends on this. Google's automated bidding optimises toward whatever you tell it is a conversion, so if tracking is wrong, every bid is chasing the wrong goal.
Which conversions are set as primary, and are they the ones that matter to you, such as a purchase, a booked appointment or a qualified lead? Page views and button clicks should be secondary or removed. Does each conversion fire once, or is one form fill counted twice? Do purchases send a value, so Google can tell a large order from a small one? And the most important check of all: do the conversions Google reports roughly match what your store or CRM shows for the same period?
If those numbers are far apart, stop there. Fixing tracking comes before any change to keywords, bids or budgets, because until it is fixed you cannot tell whether any other change helped. This is the first step on our Google Ads agency in Los Angeles page for the same reason.
Read the search terms, not just the keywords
Keywords are what you bid on. Search terms are what people actually typed before your ad appeared. In most accounts I audit, this is where the quiet waste lives: searches for jobs, free versions, a competitor by name, a different service, or a city you do not serve.
A good audit pulls the search terms report for the last few months and sorts it by cost. The question for each expensive search is simple: would someone typing this ever buy from you? If not, it belongs on a negative keyword list. We repeat this review every two weeks, because new waste shows up every month.
Check broad match too. It works only where smart bidding has enough real conversion data to steer it; on an account with broken tracking it spends fast on the wrong searches.
Check the structure and where the budget goes
Next, look at how the account is built. Too many small campaigns splitting the same budget means none of them gets enough data to learn. Campaigns grouped by what they sell and what margin they carry let the budget follow profit instead of spreading evenly across everything.
Two specific things I always check. First, how your brand name is handled. If brand searches run inside Performance Max or a general campaign, they make results look better than they are, because people searching your name were probably going to find you anyway. Brand should either have its own campaign or be excluded from Performance Max. Second, for ecommerce, the Merchant Center feed. Shopping and Performance Max are only as good as the titles, prices and images in that feed.
Then the budget itself: is money moving toward the campaigns that pay back, or does every campaign get what it got six months ago?
Look past the ad to the page
An audit that stops at the edge of Google Ads misses half the problem. A strong ad that sends people to a weak page buys expensive bounces. Check that the page says the same thing as the ad, loads in a few seconds on a phone, shows the offer and the next step without scrolling, and asks for as little as possible in the form. For practices, also check what happens after the form: who follows up, how fast, and whether you can see who actually booked. I wrote more about this in landing pages that book consults.
How long a Google Ads audit takes
You can run the basics yourself in about an hour with our free ad account self-audit checklist, which covers the 43 checks we run on every Meta and Google Ads account, including a section just for Google. When we do it for you, Robb, Hillary or Marta goes through the account against that same list and sends back the three fixes we would make first.
Run a full audit every quarter and whenever results drop suddenly. The search terms report is worth reading every two weeks in between.
What to do with the results
Work through the fixes in order: tracking, then search terms, then structure and budget, then ads and landing pages. Raise budget only on campaigns that are hitting the number you agreed, whether that is return on ad spend, cost per lead or cost per booked consultation.
If the audit was done by an agency pitching for your business, judge the agency by how specific its findings were. That is one of the questions in how to choose a Google Ads agency. If you also run Meta, audit both accounts together, because the two channels often claim the same sale. I cover that in running Meta and Google Ads together.
Questions people ask
What is included in a Google Ads audit?
A useful Google Ads audit checks conversion tracking, the search terms report and negative keywords, campaign structure and brand handling, budget allocation, the Merchant Center feed for Shopping and Performance Max, ad extensions and the landing pages the ads send people to. It should end with a short list of what to fix first.
How much does a Google Ads audit cost?
Ours is free. Send us read access to your account and we will tell you where the money is going and the three fixes we would make first, yours to keep whether or not we work together. If we then manage the account, Google Ads management starts from $1,500 a month on top of ad spend, for accounts spending at least $2,000 a month.
Can I audit my own Google Ads account?
Yes. Start with tracking, then read the search terms report sorted by cost, then check structure, budget and landing pages. Our free self-audit checklist walks through every step and comes as a printable PDF.
How often should a Google Ads account be audited?
A full audit every quarter, and straight away if results drop suddenly. Search terms should be reviewed every two weeks, because new wasted searches appear every month.
Let's talk
If your Google Ads account spends every day but you are not sure it pays back, send me read access or a short note about what you sell and spend at info@robbp.com. I will tell you whether the tracking can be trusted, where the money is leaking and what I would fix first. You can see the full scope of our Google Ads management service before you decide anything.
