Audit Google Ads in an Order That Produces Evidence
A useful audit does more than list unusual settings. It verifies measurement, reconstructs where money went, compares results with business economics and recommends changes in a sequence that can be evaluated.
Do not optimise against data you have not verified
Begin with conversion definitions, values and attribution. Next reconcile spend and outcomes by campaign, search term, product, market and device. Only then assess whether targeting, bidding or creative changes are justified. This order prevents a common audit failure: producing dozens of recommendations from reports that contain duplicated revenue or low-quality leads.
The final output should name the evidence, the suspected problem, the proposed change, the expected direction of impact and the period or threshold used to review it.
Audit sequence
- Define the commercial outcome.
- Verify conversion actions and values.
- Reconcile spend with platform and business records.
- Locate waste and winners at the lowest useful level.
- Check campaign eligibility, scope and overlap.
- Review bidding constraints and recent changes.
- Inspect landing-page and offer friction.
- Prioritise changes by confidence, impact and reversibility.
Build the evidence pack
Google Ads Audit Checklist
A complete account review organised by measurement, structure, queries, bidding, ads and landing pages.
Conversion Tracking
Separate ecommerce and lead-generation setups, primary and secondary actions, values and quality feedback.
Wasted Spend
Define waste against business economics instead of labelling every non-converting click as a failure.
Ad Waste Calculator
Model the effect of CPA, CPC and landing-page conversion gaps using your own inputs.
Follow the symptom to the right report
Spend but No Conversions
Distinguish a tracking failure from low intent, weak offer, insufficient data or landing-page friction.
High CPC
Decompose CPC into auction pressure, query mix, match behaviour, relevance, device and bidding effects.
Shopping Underperformance
Check eligibility, feed matching, product allocation and product-page outcomes before changing targets.
PMax Budget Pressure
Investigate campaign overlap, targets, conversion quality and product mix.
Paid Traffic Does Not Convert
Trace the break between click quality, promise, page experience, form or checkout and tracking.
Improve Conversion Rate
Prioritise hypotheses and test changes without confusing a mix shift with a site improvement.
Audit the working relationship as well as the account
Account Access
What to document, how to secure business-owned assets and how to plan a controlled handover.
Reviewing an Agency
Separate poor outcomes from poor process, evidence quality and unresolved governance risk.
Operating Model
Compare capacity, incentives, specialist coverage and total cost for three management models.
Want an audit that ends with priorities?
We will review the account evidence and explain what we would fix first, what we would leave alone and how we would judge the result.