Google Ads Audit: What It Includes (+ Free Checklist)

Google Ads will spend whatever budget you give it - it just won't always spend it well. One study of around 15,000 accounts reported by PPC Land found the average account wastes over $1,100 a month, and most of that waste is hiding in plain sight in reports nobody opens.

A Google Ads audit is how you find it. This guide walks through what a proper audit checks, in the order that actually matters, and how to run one yourself. It's built around the S.T.A.B. method we use on every Google Ads account we manage, and you can download the full checklist free at the end.

If you'd rather have someone else look, our free PPC audit does exactly this on your account.

What Is a Google Ads Audit?

A Google Ads audit is a structured review of your account that checks whether your tracking is accurate, where your budget goes, which searches trigger your ads, and how your ads, landing pages and bidding perform. The output is a prioritised list of fixes, starting with whatever is costing you the most money.

It's worth being clear on what an audit isn't. Google shows an optimisation score in every account, and plenty of business owners assume a high score means a healthy account. It doesn't - the score mostly reflects how many of Google's own recommendations you've applied, and applying or dismissing them moves the number either way.

An audit asks a different question: is this account turning ad spend into leads and sales, and if not, why not?

When Should You Audit Your Google Ads Account?

Audit your Google Ads account when you take it over, when results drop, or when costs rise without a clear reason. If you're getting clicks but no enquiries, or nobody has looked at the search terms report in months, an audit is overdue.

The warning signs we see most often:

• Clicks but no leads. Traffic is arriving but nothing is coming through, which usually points to tracking, targeting or landing page problems.
• Cost per lead creeping up month on month with no change in the market.
• Only automated campaign types. Accounts running purely on Performance Max or Dynamic Search Ads often have very little visibility of what the money is buying.
• A change of hands. A new agency, freelancer or in-house marketer is the right moment to check what you've inherited.
• Auto-applied recommendations. Google can apply its recommendations automatically, and many accounts have this switched on without the owner knowing.

Any one of these is reason enough. Two or more and the account is almost certainly leaking budget.

The Google Ads Audit Checklist: Tracking First, Then S.T.A.B.

A good Google Ads audit checks conversion tracking first, then works through four areas in order: Spending and segmentation, Targeting, Ads and landing pages, and Bidding. We call this the S.T.A.B. method, and it finishes with a set of quality control checks.

Step zero: conversion tracking

Every other number in the account depends on tracking, so it comes before anything else. If conversions are double-counted, missing or measuring the wrong thing, Google's bidding is optimising towards bad data - and so are you.

Check that each conversion action is firing and recording real enquiries or sales, that GA4 is linked, and that enhanced conversions are set up. For UK advertisers, consent mode also needs to be in place, or Google loses the signals it needs to measure and match conversions.

When we took on Rainbow Garden Buildings, fixing the tracking was the first job, before a single bid changed. That account went on to a 2,899% return on ad spend - and you can only see a number like that when the measurement underneath it is right. Our guide to what ROAS is and how to calculate it explains what to look for once tracking is sound.

S - Spending and segmentation

Start by comparing spend with results, campaign by campaign and then ad group by ad group. You're looking for two things: campaigns that convert well but are held back, and campaigns spending money with little to show for it.

Tip: a campaign with strong conversion figures and a search impression share below 65% is usually ready for more budget. Ad groups that convert well but get little spend often deserve a campaign of their own, so they stop competing with weaker ad groups for the same budget.

T - Targeting

This is where most wasted spend hides. Open the search terms report and read what people actually typed before they clicked. Add irrelevant searches as negative keywords, and add strong, converting searches as new exact match keywords.

Waste tends to cluster. Doctor Ads' analysis of 32 accounts found the most expensive 10% of non-converting search terms held around half of all wasted spend, so the top of that report is where to start. It's also worth knowing Google doesn't show you every search - Adthena estimated that around half of spend sits on terms grouped as "other", which is why a solid negative keyword list matters even for searches you can't see.

Beyond search terms, check:

• Keywords with a cost per click or cost per conversion well above the account average
• Quality Score below 5 out of 10, plus "below first page bid" and "rarely shown" warnings
• Locations, including clicks from places you don't serve
• Devices, audiences and demographics, for segments that spend without converting

A - Ads and landing pages

Check that no ads are disapproved or limited, then look at your split tests. Where one ad has a clearly lower click-through rate and conversion rate, pause it, then duplicate the winner and change one thing so the next test teaches you something.

Review your ad assets - sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, call and location assets - and replace the ones that underperform. Then compare conversion rates by landing page. A page that converts at half the rate of the others is costing you on every click it receives, however good the ad in front of it.

B - Bidding

Check whether the bid strategy suits the data the account has. Smart bidding such as Maximise Conversions needs enough conversions to learn from - as a rule of thumb, at least one primary conversion a day over the last 30 days, with conversions rising over the past four to six weeks.

If you already use a target CPA or target ROAS, check whether the target is now holding the campaign back. Falling conversions, falling spend or a sharp drop in impressions are the usual signs the target is too tight. Our guide to Google Ads costs in the UK covers how budgets and bids interact.

Quality control checks

Finish with the basics that quietly break accounts:

• Are all conversion actions still recording?
• Is the budget on track for the month?
• Is the payment method working?
• Are any auto-apply recommendations switched on?
• Are there any notifications from Google that need action?

If you run Performance Max, add its own checks: review the search term insights report, add brand exclusions where it's spending on your own or competitors' brand names, and exclude irrelevant URLs. Our Performance Max campaign guide goes through these in more detail.

How to Do a Google Ads Audit Yourself

To audit a Google Ads account yourself, you need admin or read-only access to Google Ads and GA4, a comparison date range of at least 30 days, and a few hours. Work through tracking first, then the S.T.A.B. areas in order, writing down each problem and what it costs.

A practical order of work:

1. Set the date range. Compare the last 30 or 90 days with the period before, so you can see what changed.
2. Check tracking. Use Google Tag Assistant and the conversions page to confirm each action is firing, then compare Google Ads conversions with GA4.
3. Open the change history. If performance dropped on a particular date, this shows who changed what.
4. Work through S.T.A.B. Spend first, then the search terms report, then ads and landing pages, then bidding.
5. Prioritise by cost. List every issue with the spend it affects, and fix the most expensive first.

Tip: keep notes as you go. The note column in our checklist exists for exactly this, and it becomes your record of what you changed and why - which is what makes the next audit faster.

What a Google Ads Audit Found: Westpoint Exeter

Westpoint Exeter, the South West's largest indoor arena, came to us with an account that looked busy but wasn't working hard. It ran on Performance Max and Dynamic Search Ads, with no negative keyword strategy and no clear conversion tracking, so budget was going out with very little visibility of which searches were triggering ads.

The audit showed money going on searches that were never going to book an event space - wedding venues, "what's on" tourist searches, competitor venues, coworking spaces and hotels. We rebuilt the account around intent-based Search campaigns, added more than 150 negative keywords and set up proper tracking.

Monthly clicks went from 112 to 555, conversions tripled and cost per lead fell by 45%. The budget didn't need to grow - it needed structure. You can read the full Westpoint Exeter case study for the detail.

DIY Audit vs Agency Audit: What You Get

You can check tracking, search terms and settings yourself with the checklist below, and for a small account that's genuinely worth doing. An agency audit adds experience of what normal looks like across many accounts, which makes it faster to spot problems that aren't obvious from inside one account.

The checks that tend to need a specialist are the ones where the cause isn't visible on the surface: tracking set up in Google Tag Manager that counts the wrong thing, Performance Max spending on your own brand name, or bid targets quietly throttling a campaign. These don't show up as errors, so they're easy to miss.

Our free PPC audit covers your Google Ads or Microsoft Ads account using this same process. You'll get a short list of where money is slipping away and which fixes we'd start with, with no obligation to work with us afterwards.

Download the Free PPC Audit Checklist

Our PPC audit checklist is the S.T.A.B. method in a Google Sheet, with separate tabs for Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display and Video. Each task is marked as a weekly, monthly or 90-day job, with a notes column to record what you changed.

Use it in two ways. The first time through, treat it as a full audit and work every line. After that, the weekly, monthly and 90-day columns turn it into a maintenance routine - the audit finds the problems, and the checklist stops them coming back.

Conclusion

A Google Ads audit doesn't need to be a 100-point marathon. Three things matter most:

• Fix tracking first. If the conversion data is wrong, every other decision in the account is built on it.
• Read the search terms report. It's where most wasted spend sits, and a strong negative keyword list is the quickest saving you'll make.
• Audit in order, then keep checking. Work through S.T.A.B., then use the weekly, monthly and 90-day rhythm so problems don't creep back.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes, book a free 30-minute strategy call and we'll talk through what the audit found and what we'd fix first. And if you want to know whether AI assistants like ChatGPT can find your business as well as Google can, our free Answer Engine Optimisation report checks that too.