Quick answer: A Google Ads audit checks whether your tracking is accurate, your settings match your business, and your budget is going to searches that can actually turn into customers. Start with conversion tracking, then location and network settings, then search terms and negative keywords, then bidding. Most wasted spend hides in those four places.
Most Google Ads accounts I look at aren't broken in one big way. They're leaking in five or six small ways at once.
That's not just my experience. WordStream analyzed 15,666 Google Ads accounts in 2025 and found the average account wasted about $1,127 a month, roughly 36% of a typical budget. 29% of accounts recorded zero conversions over 90 days, and a quarter had never added a single negative keyword (PPC Land on WordStream's study, 2026).
Below is the checklist I use, in the order I use it. The examples come from real small business audits I've done this year, including a Swiss accounting firm. Names are left out.
The checklist at a glance
| # | Check | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Conversion tracking exists | No conversions recorded at all |
| 2 | The right actions are "primary" | Bidding toward page views, add to carts or broken actions |
| 3 | Conversions are firing correctly | Platforms and your store or CRM don't roughly match |
| 4 | Offline sales are counted | Sales close by phone or invoice and Google never hears about it |
| 5 | Test activity is excluded | Your own test orders counted as results |
| 6 | Location targeting | "Presence or interest" left on by default |
| 7 | Networks | Search Partners or Display mixed into Search campaigns by accident |
| 8 | Search terms | Paying for searches that have nothing to do with you |
| 9 | Negative keywords | None, or negatives that block good searches |
| 10 | Bid strategy fits your data | Smart bidding with too few conversions to learn from |
| 11 | Shopping and product bids | Best sellers hidden by bids that are too low |
| 12 | Ads and landing pages | The ad promises one thing, the page shows another |
Part 1: Tracking (check this first)
If tracking is wrong, every other number in the account is wrong too. That's why I always start here.
1. Does conversion tracking exist at all?
It sounds obvious, but it's the most common gap I find. A Swiss accounting firm I worked with wanted Google Ads leads. When I looked at their site, there was no conversion tracking, no Google Analytics and no Google Tag Manager. Any ads they ran would have spent money with no way to tell which clicks became clients.
What to check: Go to Goals, then Conversions, then Summary in Google Ads. If there are no conversion actions, or they all say "No recent conversions," stop and fix that before touching anything else.
2. Are the right actions set to "primary"?
Google Ads splits conversions into primary and secondary. Primary actions show in your "Conversions" column and are what Google's bidding optimizes toward. Secondary actions are only tracked for reference (Google Ads Help).
This matters more than most people realize. If "page view" or "add to cart" is primary, Google will happily get you cheap page views and add to carts, not sales.
What to check: Your primary actions should be the things that make you money: purchases, qualified lead forms, booked calls. Supporting steps like add to cart can stay secondary so you can still see them.
3. Are conversions actually firing correctly?
A conversion action can be set up perfectly and still never fire. In one store audit, the Google Ads purchase conversion imported from GA4 wasn't sending purchase signals. Separately, GA4 purchases weren't recording because a store plugin setting only counted orders less than 30 minutes old. Neither problem was visible from inside Google Ads.
What to check: Compare a week of purchases or leads in your store or CRM against what Google Ads reports. They won't match exactly, since platforms count differently, but they should be in the same ballpark. If Google shows 2 sales and your store shows 20, something is broken. I wrote more about this in Your reports disagree. What should you check first?
Also check for enhanced conversions. It's a free Google Ads feature that matches hashed customer data, like email addresses, to ad clicks so you recover conversions that cookies miss (Shopify, 2025).
4. Are offline sales being counted?
If customers buy by phone, by invoice or in person, Google Ads doesn't see those sales unless you send them back. That makes good campaigns look bad.
In one store audit, most orders closed through custom invoices, not the website checkout. The fix was sending every paid invoice back to Google Ads as an offline conversion. That paid-invoice action became the primary purchase conversion, and the broken GA4 one was moved to secondary. Google supports this through offline conversion imports (Google Ads Help).
What to check: Ask how many of your sales actually happen on the website. If the answer is "not most of them," offline conversions should be on your list.
5. Is test activity polluting the numbers?
Every time someone on your team places a test order or submits a test form, it can count as a conversion. During setup that adds up fast and makes early results look better than they are.
What to check: Look at recent conversions around the dates tracking was set up or changed. Exclude internal traffic in GA4 and note test orders before reporting results to anyone.
Part 2: Settings
6. Location targeting: "Presence" or "Presence or interest"?
This setting quietly wastes money in a lot of accounts. Google's default, "Presence or interest," shows your ads to people in your target area and people who are just interested in it (Google Ads Help). If you ship to four states or serve one city, someone in another country searching about your area can still see your ads.
What to check: In each campaign's settings, open Locations, then Location options. For most local and regional businesses, "Presence: people in or regularly in your included locations" is the safer choice.
7. Which networks are you running on?
New Search campaigns can include the Search Partner network and sometimes the Display network. Display especially can eat budget on low-intent placements.
What to check: In campaign settings under Networks, make sure Search campaigns are only on the networks you meant to use. If Search Partners are on, check their results separately in your segments before deciding to keep them.
Part 3: Keywords and search terms
8. What are people actually searching?
Your keywords aren't the searches you pay for. Google matches your keywords to a much wider range of search terms, especially with broad match.
What to check: Open Insights and reports, then Search terms, for the last 30 to 90 days. Sort by cost. Anything you'd never want to sell to, mark it. In one store audit, this turned up searches for live edge tables, a style they don't make, so "live edge" became a negative keyword.
9. Are your negative keywords helping or hurting?
In WordStream's data, accounts with at least one negative keyword converted at about 13% on average, versus 4.6% for accounts with none (PPC Land on WordStream's study, 2026).
But negatives can go wrong in the other direction too. The match type matters. A broad match negative for "furniture" would block every search containing that word, including "solid wood dining room furniture." To block only the vague one-word search, use an exact match negative: [furniture]. That blocks the search "furniture" and nothing else (Karooya).
What to check: Review your shared negative keyword lists. Look for negatives that might be blocking good searches, and make sure lists are actually applied to every campaign.
Part 4: Bidding and budget
10. Does your bid strategy fit how much data you have?
Smart bidding strategies like Maximize conversions need conversion data to work. With very little data, they can stall.
In one store audit, two Search campaigns were set to Maximize conversions, optimizing toward an add to cart goal set at the campaign level. They barely spent, most likely because there wasn't enough conversion data for Google to bid with confidence. We switched them to Maximize clicks so the campaigns could start collecting traffic and data while the tracking issues got fixed.
What to check: If a campaign isn't spending or performance swings wildly, look at how many conversions it has had in the last 30 days. A handful usually isn't enough for conversion-based bidding to work well.
11. Are your best products actually showing? (Shopping)
In Shopping campaigns, product-level bids can hide your best sellers without you noticing.
One product in a store audit had a product bid of $0.01. At that bid it was essentially invisible. Raising it to match the rest of the product group was a two-minute fix.
What to check: In Shopping campaigns, open the product groups and sort by bid. Anything sitting at a penny or far below the rest deserves a second look. Also confirm your product feed in Merchant Center has no disapproved items.
Part 5: Ads and landing pages
12. Does the ad match the page?
The click is only half the job. If an ad promises white oak dining tables and the landing page is your homepage, many people will leave before they find what they came for.
What to check: Click your own top ads on a phone. Does the page load fast? Does it show what the ad promised within one scroll? Is there a clear next step, like a product, a form or a phone number?
How often should you audit Google Ads?
Do a full audit like this at least once a quarter, and any time something changes: a new website, a new tracking setup, a big budget increase, or results that suddenly drop. Check search terms every week or two, since that's where waste builds up fastest. If you're thinking about spending more, run through these five questions first.
DIY audit or hire someone?
You can do most of this checklist yourself in an afternoon. Where an outside audit helps is the tracking section. Problems like a broken GA4 import or a plugin setting that drops purchases don't show up in Google Ads at all. You have to know where to look, and you have to check the store, the tag setup and the ad account side by side.
A good audit should also end with a decision, not just a list of observations. More on that in What a paid media audit should give you.
Want a second set of eyes on your account? I do fixed-price paid media audits for small and growing businesses. You'll get the findings in plain language, what to fix first, and what can wait. Get a free account check.
FAQ
What is a Google Ads audit?
A Google Ads audit is a structured review of your account's tracking, settings, keywords, bidding and ads. The goal is to find wasted spend, broken measurement and missed opportunities, then decide what to fix first.
How long does a Google Ads audit take?
A basic self-audit using a checklist takes two to four hours. A thorough audit that also checks tracking, GA4, Tag Manager and landing pages usually takes a few days, depending on account size.
How much does a Google Ads audit cost?
It ranges widely. Free automated graders cover surface-level settings. Freelancers and agencies typically charge a fixed fee depending on account size and how deep the tracking review goes.
What's the most common Google Ads problem?
In my experience, broken or missing conversion tracking. If Google can't see your sales or leads, it can't optimize toward them, and you can't tell what's working.
Are free Google Ads audit tools worth using?
They're a good starting point for spotting settings issues like missing negatives or low Quality Scores. They can't check whether your tracking matches your actual sales, or whether your targeting fits your business.
Sources
- Most Google Ads accounts waste $1,127 a month: study of 15K accounts (PPC Land, 2026)
- About primary and secondary conversion actions (Google Ads Help)
- About advanced location options (Google Ads Help)
- About offline conversion imports (Google Ads Help)
- Enhanced conversions for Google Ads (Shopify, 2025)
- Negative keyword match types with examples (Karooya)