Google Ads Audit Checklist: 27 Things to Check Before Spending Another Dollar
Most Google Ads accounts have at least 5-8 fixable issues quietly draining budget. This checklist shows you exactly where to look — and what to do about what you find.
What You'll Learn
- The 27 most impactful Google Ads audit checks, organized by category so you can work through them systematically
- Which issues are critical (immediate revenue impact) versus which are medium-priority optimization opportunities
- What to look for in the Search Terms Report, and how to use it to build a proactive negative keyword strategy
- How to verify your conversion tracking is actually recording real business events — not just page loads
- The landing page checklist that separates accounts with 8% conversion rates from accounts with 2% conversion rates
Account Settings
4 checksLocation Targeting: Presence vs. Interest
Confirm your campaigns target people "Present in or regularly in" your target location — not "Interested in." The default setting can serve your ads to people researching your city from across the country who will never become customers.
CRITICALDevice Bid Adjustments Are Intentional
Pull a performance breakdown by device (desktop, mobile, tablet). If mobile drives 60% of your clicks but converts at half the rate, that gap should be reflected in a bid adjustment — not silently eating budget at equal bids.
HIGH IMPACTAd Scheduling Matches Business Hours
If your business cannot take calls or accept leads outside of 8am-6pm, you should not be running ads at full bid 24/7. Review your hour-of-day performance report and apply bid adjustments or complete dayparting to align spend with available capacity.
HIGH IMPACTSearch Network Only (No Display Opt-In)
The "Search Network with Display expansion" setting silently shows your ads on the Display Network when Google determines your Search budget is not spending efficiently. This typically produces low-quality, low-intent traffic. Run Search and Display as separate campaigns with separate budgets and goals.
CRITICALCampaign Settings
4 checksBidding Strategy Matches Data Availability
Target CPA and Target ROAS require 30-50 conversions in the last 30 days to function properly. If your account has fewer conversions than that, these strategies operate in learning mode indefinitely and may dramatically overbid or underbid. Confirm your Smart Bidding strategy is appropriate for your current conversion volume.
CRITICALDaily Budget vs. Actual Spend Ratio
Check if campaigns are limited by budget (Google will flag this). If a campaign regularly spends 100% of its daily budget before noon, you are likely losing significant afternoon and evening impressions when intent remains high. Either increase budget or reduce bids to pace more evenly across the day.
HIGH IMPACTBranded and Non-Branded Campaigns Are Separate
If your brand name keywords share a campaign with competitive or generic service keywords, your brand terms are absorbing budget at low CPCs and artificially inflating campaign-level conversion metrics. Separate these immediately — they need different budgets and different performance benchmarks.
CRITICALRotation Setting: Optimize (Not Rotate Evenly)
Ad rotation set to "Rotate evenly" prevents Google from favoring higher-performing ads. For RSAs, this setting is largely irrelevant, but for any legacy ETA still running, confirm rotation is set to Optimize so Google can favor the better-performing ad.
MEDIUMKeywords
5 checksSearch Terms Report Reviewed in Last 7 Days
Open the Search Terms Report and look at what queries are actually triggering your ads. Sort by cost descending. Any query in the top 20 by cost that is not relevant to your business should become a negative keyword immediately. This single check is the highest-ROI action in most audit sessions.
CRITICALNegative Keyword List Exists and Is Applied
Every Search campaign should have a shared negative keyword list covering broad irrelevant terms. Check that your negative list is actually applied to all campaigns — not just created. A negative keyword list with 200 terms that is not applied to a campaign does nothing. Verify in Tools → Negative keyword lists → Applied campaigns.
CRITICALMatch Type Strategy Is Intentional, Not Default
Pull your keyword list and note the match type distribution. If everything is broad match in an account without 30+ monthly conversions and Smart Bidding, that is a problem. If everything is exact match in an account that could benefit from query expansion, that is also a problem. Your match type strategy should be documented and deliberate.
HIGH IMPACTQuality Score Below 5 on High-Spend Keywords
Add the Quality Score column to your keyword view and sort ascending. Any keyword with a Quality Score of 4 or below that is driving significant spend is costing you 20-50% more per click than it should. Investigate the three sub-scores — expected CTR, ad relevance, landing page experience — to identify where the breakdown is occurring.
HIGH IMPACTNo Cannibalizing Keywords Across Ad Groups
When the same or very similar keywords appear in multiple ad groups, they compete against each other in auction and can inflate your own CPCs. Use the Keyword Diagnosis tool and search for your primary terms to confirm they are only triggering ads from the intended ad group. Resolve conflicts with exact match negatives in the ad groups where the keyword should not be eligible.
MEDIUMAds & Extensions
4 checksRSA Ad Strength Is "Good" or "Excellent"
Open each RSA and check Ad Strength. A "Poor" or "Average" rating signals that your headlines lack diversity, are too similar in theme, or you have not filled enough headline slots. Address this by adding more unique angles across message categories: benefits, proof points, urgency, CTAs, and keyword-matched headlines.
HIGH IMPACTAsset Performance: Low-Rated Assets Removed
In the Assets report (Ads and Assets → Assets), filter for assets rated "Low." These are headlines and descriptions that Google has served enough times to determine they underperform relative to others in the same RSA. Remove them and replace with new angles. Do not keep Low-rated assets running out of attachment to the original copy.
HIGH IMPACTSitelinks, Callouts, and Structured Snippets Active
Ad extensions (now called Assets) take up more search results page real estate, improve CTR, and cost nothing extra per click. Every Search campaign should have at minimum: 4+ sitelinks, 4+ callout extensions, and at least one structured snippet. Check the Assets tab to confirm these are approved and serving.
HIGH IMPACTCall Extension Active for Phone-Reliant Businesses
If your business model depends on phone calls, a Call extension is non-negotiable. It adds your phone number directly to the ad on mobile, enabling one-tap calling without a click to your landing page. Check that call reporting is enabled so you can attribute phone call conversions to specific campaigns and keywords.
MEDIUMLanding Pages
4 checksPage Speed Passes Core Web Vitals on Mobile
Test your landing page with Google PageSpeed Insights on mobile. A Largest Contentful Paint over 2.5 seconds or a Cumulative Layout Shift above 0.1 is actively harming your landing page experience Quality Score sub-score and your conversion rate. For every second of load time improvement, expect a 7-12% increase in conversions.
CRITICALMessage Match Between Ad and Landing Page
Click your own ads and audit what the first thing a visitor sees actually says. If your ad headline is "Emergency Plumber Available Now" and your landing page headline is "Welcome to ABC Plumbing," you have a message match failure. The landing page headline should echo the specific promise made in the ad. This single change can improve conversion rate by 20-40%.
CRITICALMobile Form Usability Check
Fill out your lead form on a real mobile device. Are the input fields large enough to tap accurately? Does the keyboard cover the submit button? Does the form auto-advance between fields? A form that frustrates mobile users costs you the clicks you already paid for. Test this on iOS and Android, not just desktop browser mobile simulation.
HIGH IMPACTConversion Tracking Fires on Thank You Page
Use Google Tag Assistant or the Google Ads preview tool to confirm that your conversion tracking tag fires on your thank you or confirmation page — and only on that page. If the tag is on every page, you are recording page views as conversions. If it is missing from the thank you page, every form submission goes unrecorded and Smart Bidding has no signal.
CRITICALBidding & Budget
3 checksTarget CPA/ROAS Is Set Realistically
If your Target CPA is set lower than your historical average CPA, Smart Bidding will reduce bids aggressively to try to hit the target — and you will see impressions and conversions drop as a result. Set your initial Target CPA 10-15% above your current average CPA, then reduce it gradually as the algorithm learns. Aggressive CPA targets from day one consistently backfire.
HIGH IMPACTBid Adjustments Are Based on Actual Data
Check your bid adjustments for location, device, and audience. Many accounts have bid adjustments that were set in the first month and never revisited. Pull 90-day performance data segmented by each dimension and compare actual CPA or conversion rate against the account average. Adjustments should reflect current reality, not initial guesses.
MEDIUMBudget Pacing: No Campaign Capped Before 3pm
Check your campaign-level delivery metrics by hour. If any campaign is exhausting its daily budget before 3pm local time, you are missing the often-high-intent afternoon search window. Either increase the budget or reduce your max CPC / Target CPA to pace more evenly, accepting lower-position ads in exchange for all-day presence.
HIGH IMPACTTracking & Attribution
3 checksAll Conversion Actions Are Meaningful Business Events
Open Tools → Conversions and review every conversion action in the account. Remove or exclude any conversion that does not represent a real business outcome — page views, time on site, or newsletter signups should not be primary conversion actions for lead generation campaigns. Smart Bidding optimizes toward whatever you call a conversion, so if you include low-value events, you will get a lot of them at the expense of actual leads.
CRITICALConversion Value Is Assigned Where Applicable
For e-commerce or any business with different-value conversion events, conversion values should reflect actual business economics. Even for lead generation businesses, assigning a value to each conversion type (form submit vs. phone call vs. booking) enables value-based bidding strategies to prioritize your highest-LTV conversion actions over lower-value ones.
MEDIUMAttribution Model Is Data-Driven (Not Last Click)
Last-click attribution gives 100% of conversion credit to the final ad click, which systematically undervalues upper-funnel and mid-funnel keywords that play a role in the conversion journey. Switch to Data-Driven Attribution (available in accounts with sufficient conversion volume) or at minimum to Position-Based or Linear attribution. This directly affects which keywords Smart Bidding values and how budgets are allocated.
MEDIUMHow to Score and Prioritize Your Findings
After working through all 27 checks, you will have a mix of critical issues, high-impact opportunities, and medium-priority items. The order of remediation matters as much as the identification of problems.
Fix Critical issues first — without exception. Broken conversion tracking (checks 21, 25), Display network opt-in on Search campaigns (check 4), and location targeting errors (check 1) silently destroy performance every single day they are left unfixed. A campaign with a broken conversion tag is not running blind — it is actively training Smart Bidding on wrong data, which gets harder to correct the longer it runs.
Sequence High Impact items by estimated dollar impact. Look at your largest-spend campaigns and apply the relevant High Impact fixes there first. A budget pacing issue (check 24) on a $200/day campaign has more impact than a bid adjustment error (check 23) on a $20/day campaign. Work largest spend first.
Medium priority items are ongoing optimization, not emergencies. Attribution model changes, ad rotation settings, and keyword cannibalization checks can be worked through over 4-6 weeks as part of regular account maintenance rather than emergency fixes. They compound over time — ignoring them has cost, but not the acute cost of a broken tracking tag.
Estimated Impact by Severity
- Critical (5 checks): Fixing these typically reduces wasted spend by 15-35% within 30 days
- High Impact (10 checks): Addressing these typically improves conversion rate by 20-40% over 60-90 days
- Medium (7 checks): These compound over time and improve account efficiency by 10-20% over 6 months
How Ad Boost Handles the Audit
Our free audit covers all 27 points in this checklist — plus a competitive intelligence layer using Auction Insights to show you exactly who is beating you on impression share and why. Here is what the first 30 minutes look like when we access a new account.
Tracking Verification
We go straight to conversion settings and Tag Assistant. If tracking is broken, nothing else we find is reliable. We fix this before interpreting any performance data.
Search Terms Scan
We pull 90 days of Search Terms data, sort by cost, and identify the top irrelevant queries eating budget. On average we find 8-15 terms that should be immediate negatives.
Structure and Settings
Campaign settings, location targeting, device distribution, branded isolation — we check all structural issues that multiply in cost impact across every keyword in the account.
Findings Presentation
We present a prioritized list of findings with estimated cost impact per issue. You leave the call knowing exactly what to fix, in what order, and what the expected result is.
What Happens After We Find the Issues
Prioritized Action Plan Delivery
Every finding is documented with severity, estimated impact, and a plain-English description of the fix. No jargon, no ambiguity — just a clear ordered list of what to do.
Critical Fixes Implemented Within 48 Hours
Conversion tracking verification, negative keyword additions, and setting corrections go in first — before any creative or bidding work — so every subsequent action is built on accurate data.
Structural Improvements Over 30 Days
Campaign restructuring, ad copy rewrites, and landing page recommendations are implemented systematically over the first month to avoid disrupting the Smart Bidding learning period.
30-Day Performance Benchmark Report
At 30 days post-audit, we compare performance metrics against the pre-audit baseline. Wasted spend reduction and conversion rate improvement are quantified in dollar terms.
Ongoing Monthly Optimization Cycle
The audit is a starting point, not a one-time event. Monthly reviews cover the checklist items most likely to drift — Search Terms, Quality Score, asset performance, and budget pacing.
Frequently Asked Questions
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