Google Ads audit: understand where your budget goes
Not a list of warnings: interventions ordered by impact on cost per acquisition.
Most accounts that “don’t work” have the same three or four underlying problems, and almost always the first is measurement: without correct tracking of conversions, every attempt to improve the campaigns is blind and every report tells a partial story. The audit starts there, then goes into detail within each part of the account. I run it as the first step of campaign management, or as a standalone intervention to bring clarity to an account that spends without clear results.
First of allControl and ownership of the Google Ads account
TheGoogle Ads audit — often also called Google Ads audit — is the systematic analysis of a Google Ads account that verifies the health status of measurement, account structure, keywords, ads, bidding strategies and landing pages, to identify the causes of inefficiency and the areas for improvement. It is a complete check-up that combines technical analysis and strategic analysis: not a list of warnings, but an audit report with interventions ordered by impact on cost per acquisition and on the volume of useful conversions.
Before theanalysis of the account and campaigns, the audit verifies something that seems obvious and often isn’t: who controls the account. You need access with the right permissions and full visibility over campaigns, history and billing. Above all, the ownership of the accountmust be established: if the campaigns run on an agency’s account and not on one owned by the client, at the end of the relationship all the history is lost — conversion data, learning of the automatic strategies, change history. An account that isn’t yours is a risk, regardless of how the campaigns are going.
In the same phase, compliance with the policies of Google is checked: disapproved ads or extensions, account warnings, content at risk of suspension. The penalties for violating the rules — from the disapproval of a single ad to the suspension of the whole account — can wipe out visibility overnight, and must be caught before it happens.
ORDER MATTERS: START FROM MEASUREMENT
SMART BIDDING ON WRONG TRACKING OPTIMIZES TOWARD FAKE CONVERSIONS
What a Google Ads audit analyzes
Conversion tracking and measurement
The audit checks that the conversions are configured correctly, that they count real actions (not page views or phone clicks without a call), that there is no double counting, that conversion values are set where needed. It checks the implementation of Google Tag and Google Tag Manager, the consistency between Google Ads and GA4, and any import of offline conversions from the CRM. It is the topic of the page conversion tracking.
Account structure
The audit assesses whether campaigns and ad groups are organized by intent and by business goals, or whether they mix different things; whether network, language and area settings are correct; whether there are configuration errors or redundant campaigns competing with each other for budget. A messy structure is one of the most frequent causes of inefficiency.
Keywords, search terms and exclusions
The audit analyzes the active keywords and the match types used, and above all the search terms report: which real queries you pay clicks for, how many are off-topic, which negative keywords are missing. This is often where the biggest waste is found.
Ads and quality: quality score, CTR and CPC
The audit checks whether each group has enough tested ads, whether messages are consistent with keywords and with the landing page, whether assets (extensions, images and video) are complete. It reads the quality score in its components — keyword relevance, landing page experience, expected CTR — because a low quality score raises the CPC and position worsens at equal bid.
Bidding strategies and budget
The audit assesses whether the bidding strategy fits the goal and the amount of conversion data: manual CPC, Smart Bidding with target CPA or ROAS, maximize conversions. The audit checks thebudget optimization: whether it is allocated where it performs, whether some campaigns are limited by budget while others waste. It is the link with Smart Bidding and manual bids.
Landing page analysis
It checks where the traffic goes: dedicated pages consistent with the ad or the undifferentiated home; speed and clarity; presence of a conversion path. Thelanding page analysis ties into the Core Web Vitals: a slow page lowers quality score and conversion together.
Automation and Performance Max
The audit checks whether automatic campaigns — Performance Max, smart bids — have clear goals , sufficient conversion data, adequate audience signals and exclusions, or whether they are optimizing toward easy metrics and low-intent placements.
Audience, targeting and remarketing
The audit analyzes how campaigns reach people: the targeting by area, device and time; the use of audience segments as a signal or as a restriction; the remarketing campaigns and the audience lists — whether they are up to date, whether time windows make sense, whether the message differs from that for cold traffic. Badly set-up remarketing shows ads to people who have already bought, burning budget.
Campaign types: Search, Shopping, Display, Local
The audit checks every type of Google campaign with its own criteria. Search network: intent and quality of ads in the search results.. Shopping campaigns and Google Shopping: product feed quality, ROAS per group, and use of the free listings of Merchant Center alongside the paid part. Display campaigns: placements, exclusions, often overly broad targeting, cost per thousand impressions (CPM) out of control. Local campaigns and local inventory ads: alignment with the business listing and with the local SEO. A recurring mistake is the Display network turned on together with search in a Search campaign, which scatters budget without anyone noticing.
Technical and strategic diagnosis
A serious Google Ads check-up — a real audit of PPC campaigns — combines two levels. Thetechnical analysis looks at configurations, tracking, match types, exclusions, network settings: the configuration errors that silently lose money. Thestrategic analysis looks at what the account is trying to achieve and whether the choices serve it: are the goals clear and measurable, is the return on investment (ROI) — and the ROAS for sales campaigns — known or only assumed, is the budget on the right ad groups and campaigns, are the bidding strategies consistent with the history, is the growth potential covered or left to competitors.
The support tools — platform reports, automations, third-party tools — serve to collect data faster; interpretation and prioritization are done by senior specialists, because that is where the value of an advanced auditlies. It is the approach of thein-depth account analysis: going inside every campaign, assessing structure and performance one by one, and identifying all the optimization opportunities, not just the obvious ones.
How the audit is carried out
The audit follows a systematic assessment, with a visit to the account guided by a control checklist : not a random tour. There are structured reference frameworks — the so-called 21-question method and similar lists — but the value isn’t in the list of questions: it’s in linking symptoms to causes and ordering interventions by return.
Access and context
Business goals, what a conversion is and how much it is worth, history, verification of account ownership.
Measurement check
Tracking, Google Tag Manager, GA4, conversion values, consistency between platforms.
Structure and configuration analysis
Campaigns, ad groups, network, areas, budget, setup errors.
Keywords, search terms and exclusions
Waste on off-topic terms, missing negative keywords, uncovered opportunities.
Ads, quality, bids and landing page
Quality score, CTR, CPC, assets, bidding strategy, landing page analysis.
Prioritization
Interventions ordered by impact on CPA and volume, indicating what to do now and what can wait.
Report and shared review
Reading the priorities together and aligning on real constraints.
Without correct tracking, every attempt to improve the campaigns is blind.— Andrea Viggiano, Google Ads audit methodology
What the audit report contains
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Summary | Account health and main issues, in understandable language |
| Measurement | Tracking problems (Tag Manager, GA4, conversions) and how to solve them — normally the priority |
| Ownership and compliance | Access, account ownership, policy warnings, risk of penalties |
| Waste | Where budget is lost: off-topic queries, devices, areas, hours, Display network |
| Opportunities | Unaddressed queries and segments, recoverable impression share, growth potential |
| Structure and quality | Reorganization of campaigns and groups, interventions on quality score and ads |
| Priorities | Operating sequence by impact and effort |
The most common causes of inefficiency
Some problems are found in almost every account not managed with method. The audit quantifies each of these bottlenecks and indicates the fix, with the best practices of Google as a reference.
- 01
Off-topic search terms
The report full of irrelevant queries for lack of negative keywords: this is often where the biggest loss is.
- 02
Traffic diverted to the home page
Instead of pages consistent with the ad: it lowers quality score and conversion.
- 03
Overlapping campaigns
And competing with each other for the same budget.
- 04
Devices, hours and areas never excluded
They consume spend without converting and nobody has ever checked them.
- 05
Old ads never tested
With low CTR and relevance, dragging down the whole group.
- 06
Display network switched on inside a Search
It scatters budget without anyone noticing.
- 07
Smart Bidding on wrong data
Activated with wrong tracking, it optimizes toward fake conversions.
Signs that your account needs an audit
- You’ve been spending for months but don’t know which part of the budget produces results.
- Conversion tracking is absent, incomplete or never verified.
- Cost per acquisition doesn’t improve over time, or isn’t even measured.
- Reports talk about clicks, CTR and impressions but not about leads or sales.
- You have just inherited an account managed by others.
- You are about to increase the budget and first want to understand whether the foundations hold.
- Policy warnings or disapproved ads have appeared.
Audit of an account managed by an agency or third parties
A frequent case is the audit of an account managed by a previous agency or consultant, to understand whether the work is producing value. The analysis looks carefully at: whether the campaigns are on the client’s account or on the agency’s (in the latter case, at the end of the relationship the history is lost); whether tracking is correct or whether the reported results are inflated by weak conversions; whether the structure is reasoned or built to justify the spend; whether reports talk about conversions and cost per acquisition or only vanity metrics. The audit provides an objective basis for deciding whether to continue, change management or bring it in-house — and it is also the moment when ownership of the account and of the assets is verified.
Audit for e-commerce and for lead generation
The method is the same, the focus changes. For an e-commerce, the audit goes deeper into Shopping and the product feed, conversion values, ROAS per product group, handling of low-margin products that absorb budget. For lead generation, the audit looks at lead quality — whether tracking distinguishes useful requests from useless ones — at landing pages with forms, at cost per qualified lead rather than per generic lead, and at the import of offline conversions from the CRM. In both cases the underlying question is the same: how much does it cost to acquire a customer, and how to reduce it.
Google Ads audit and SEO
A campaign audit also produces data useful for SEO: which queries really convert and at what cost, and therefore which deserve an organic investment to reduce dependence on budget. Conversely, knowing on which queries the site is already strong organically helps understand where campaigns are paying for traffic that would be obtained anyway. Read together, the Ads audit and theSEO audit give a complete view of the acquisition cost by channel.
How often to redo the audit
A complete audit once or twice a year is reasonable for an account under stable management; in active projects it is worth having a recurring process of lighter verification, monthly or quarterly, on the key metrics. A targeted check is always useful after a major change — new site, new tracking, change of bidding strategy, restructuring of campaigns — or when performance worsens without an obvious explanation.
Frequently asked questions about the Google Ads audit
How long does a Google Ads audit take?+
For a small account, a few days; for large accounts, with many campaigns and extended history, one or two weeks, especially if the state of tracking needs reconstructing.
Does the audit include the interventions?+
No: the audit is the analysis with the prioritized plan. The interventions are the next phase, carried out by me or guided step by step if there is an in-house team.
Do the campaigns need to be stopped during the audit?+
No: you work on the live account, also because recent data is part of the analysis. Any urgent interventions on the most obvious waste can be applied right away.
What is the difference between an audit and a free online check?+
Automatic tools assign a score and flag dozens of “problems” with no context or priority, and are often a sales lure. An audit interprets the data for your specific case and produces a sequence of interventions ordered by return, not a list.
Does the audit check tracking with Google Tag Manager and GA4?+
Yes: the first part of the audit is the health of measurement. It checks the implementation of Google Tag and Google Tag Manager, the configuration of conversions, consistency with GA4 and any import of offline conversions.
Are Display and Local campaigns checked too?+
Yes: every type of campaign — Search, Shopping, Display, Local, Performance Max — is analyzed with its own criteria. On Display campaigns, placements and exclusions are examined; on Local ones, alignment with the business listing.
Does the audit flag the risk of penalties?+
Yes: disapproved ads and extensions, policy warnings and situations that expose the account to suspension are checked. It is among the first things to secure, because a penalty wipes out visibility quickly.
How is the quality score read in an audit?+
Not as a single number, but in its components — keyword relevance, landing page experience, expected CTR — to understand which lever to act on. A low quality score raises CPC and worsens position at equal bid.
Does the audit say whether I’m spending too much overall?+
It assesses spending efficiency — how much a useful conversion costs and how much can be recovered — rather than giving an absolute judgment on the budget. If a significant share is wasted on off-topic queries or loss-making products, that is the first margin to recover before deciding whether to increase or reduce the investment.
Can I use the audit to decide whether to change agency?+
Yes, it is one of the most common uses: the audit gives an objective basis — state of tracking, structure, waste, account ownership, type of reporting — to assess whether the current management produces value or just consumes budget.
Who conducts the audit?+
A specialist, not a tool. Support tools collect the data; technical and strategic analysis, linking symptoms to causes and prioritizing interventions require field experience.
Is the campaign structure analyzed too, not just the spend?+
Yes: the account structure — how campaigns and ad groups are divided, whether they follow business goals, whether there are overlaps — is one of the first things looked at, because a confused structure is a cause of inefficiency that carries over to everything else.
Does the audit take Google’s best practices into account?+
Yes, as a reference: conversion setup, use of negative keywords, consistency between ads and landing page, handling of bidding strategies. But best practices are a starting point, not a blind rule: the analysis adapts them to the account’s context and goals.
What happens after the report is delivered?+
It is read together, priorities are aligned with real constraints of time and budget, and you decide how to proceed: interventions carried out by me, guided step by step for an in-house team, or a recurring process of verification and optimization over time.
Does the audit also check remarketing campaigns?+
Yes: the remarketing campaigns and the linked audience lists are checked — whether they are up to date and populated enough, whether time windows are sensible, whether the message is differentiated from cold traffic, whether ads are being shown to people who have already converted. It is one of the areas where budget is recovered quickly.
What is the difference between ROI and ROAS in an audit?+
The ROAS (return on ad spend) measures the revenue generated for every euro spent on ads; the ROI also takes into account costs beyond the average spend, and reflects the real return on the investment. The audit uses ROAS as an operating metric for sales campaigns and reasons in terms of ROI when assessing whether the channel, overall, pays off.
Are Shopping campaigns and free listings analyzed?+
Yes: for an e-commerce store, Shopping is often the center of the audit. It looks at product feed quality, the ROAS per group, the handling of low-margin products, and whether the store is also using the free listings of Merchant Center alongside paid campaigns.
How are targeting and audience segments assessed?+
The audit checks that the targeting by area, device and time excludes what doesn’t convert, and that the audience segments are used with judgment: as a signal for automation or as a restriction where it makes sense, not applied at random. An audience that is too narrow chokes volume; one that is too broad scatters budget.
Does the audit also look at the CPM of Display campaigns?+
Yes: on Display campaigns and video, placements, exclusions and the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) are checked, which without adequate exclusions can climb on low-quality inventory without bringing results.
Is it a standalone service or part of management?+
It is the first step of Google Ads management, but it can be requested on its own to bring clarity to an account or to assess a management in progress.
Request a Google Ads audit
I analyze your account and your Google Ads campaigns — measurement, ownership, structure, waste, quality and opportunities — and deliver a report with interventions ordered by impact on cost per acquisition.
To learn more about Google Ads
Blog guides on the topic of this page.
Where does your budget end up?
An assessment of the account’s state and priorities, no commitment.
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