Google Ads Audit Checklist: 8 Areas You Should Check in Your Account

Why the order matters

An audit is not a list you tick off in any order. Almost every assessment in Google Ads depends on conversion data: whether a search term is wasted spend, whether a location is worthwhile, whether a bid is too high. If the account counts conversions incorrectly or not at all, these judgements are built on sand. That is why the method is: tracking first, everything else afterwards.

Two further rules make an audit reliable:

• Ranges instead of single figures. When you estimate a saving, give a bad, a likely and a good case. A single figure suggests a precision that account data rarely supports.
• No data, no verdict. If an area has too few clicks or conversions, write "cannot be assessed" instead of a guess.

Area 1: Conversion tracking

Is there an active primary action?

Under Goals, Conversions, Summary, open the list of your conversion actions and check the tracking status. Google lists problem statuses including "Inactive", "Unverified" and "Needs attention" and recommends running a test conversion with Tag Assistant (Google Ads Help: Troubleshoot your conversion tracking status, accessed 30 October 2026).

Also check which actions are primary. Only primary actions appear in the "Conversions" column and are used for bidding, as long as they belong to the goal that is used for bidding. Secondary actions are for observation only and appear in "All conversions" (Google Ads Help: About primary and secondary conversion actions, accessed 30 October 2026). A common mistake: the phone call or the contact form, the thing that actually brings in revenue, is only secondary.

Does GA4 roughly match?

Compare the conversions in Google Ads with the key events in GA4. Google itself says that the figures can differ and that this is common even with a correct setup (Google Ads Help: Create conversions from Google Analytics events in Google Ads, accessed 30 October 2026). A discrepancy only becomes suspicious when it appears suddenly or when one side shows zero. How to check the setup in detail is covered in the guide Setting up and checking conversion tracking in Google Ads; the reasons for discrepancies are explained in GA4 and Google Ads show different conversions.

Area 2: Wasted spend

The most important report is the search terms report under Campaigns, Insights and reports, Search terms. It shows which actual searches triggered your ads. Search terms without enough query activity are left out for data privacy reasons (Google Ads Help: About the search terms report, accessed 30 October 2026). So the report never shows the whole truth, but it does show most of it.

Here is how to proceed:

1. Sort by cost and filter for search terms without conversions in the selected period.
2. Break the search terms down into individual words (n-grams) and add up cost and conversions per word. A word like "free" or "used" that appears in many expensive search terms without a conversion is a better exclusion than twenty individual search terms.
3. Check every candidate against your offer before you exclude it.

With negative keywords, you have to add synonyms and singular and plural forms yourself; Google does not match negative keywords to close variants (Google Ads Help: About negative keywords, accessed 30 October 2026).

Important: your own brand name is not wasted spend just because it looks expensive. Do not exclude it unless a separate brand campaign covers these searches. The full method is described in Finding wasted spend in Google Ads.

Area 3: Bids and budget

Lost to rank or to budget

Two columns in the campaign table tell you why ads were not shown. "Search lost IS (budget)" is the percentage of time the budget was not sufficient; this data is only available at campaign level. "Search lost IS (rank)" is the share lost because of poor Ad Rank (Google Ads Help: Get impression share data, accessed 30 October 2026). More budget only helps against the first value. Against the second, bid and ad quality help. This is covered in depth in Reviewing bids and budget: is your campaign losing to rank or to budget?.

Bid strategy and status

For every active campaign, check the bid strategy and its status. Google lists statuses including "Learning", "Limited" and "Misconfigured (conversion setting)" (Google Ads Help: About bid strategy statuses, accessed 30 October 2026). Do not assess a strategy while its status is "Learning".

What cannot be assessed without conversions

If a campaign has no conversions, nothing can be said about the right bid. Which minimum volumes Google really states for Target CPA and Target ROAS, and which widely quoted figures are wrong, is explained in Smart Bidding requirements.

Area 4: Locations and ad schedule

First check the location option in the campaign settings. The default, and the one Google recommends, is "Presence or interest": it reaches people in your targeted locations and people who have shown interest in those locations. The alternative, "Presence", limits targeting to people who are likely to be in or regularly in those locations (Google Ads Help: About advanced location options, accessed 30 October 2026). For a trade business that only works locally, this is a check, not an automatic choice: decide deliberately. Details follow in Location targeting in Google Ads.

Then the times: under Campaigns, Ad schedule, you can see performance by "Day and Hour", "Day" or "Hour". The ad schedule uses the account's time zone (Google Ads Help: Set up an ad schedule, accessed 30 October 2026). So check whether the account time zone matches your customers' business hours.

Area 5: Audiences and signals

You will find audiences under Campaigns, Audiences. The key distinction is between "Targeting" and "Observation": Targeting restricts who you reach. Observation shows how an audience performs without restricting delivery to it (Google Ads Help: About "Targeting" and "Observation" settings, accessed 30 October 2026). A common mistake in Search campaigns is an audience set to "Targeting" that was really only meant to be observed. Reach then shrinks without anyone noticing.

Area 6: Brand

Spotting cannibalisation

If a brand campaign and a generic campaign run side by side, check in the search terms report whether the generic campaign is buying brand searches. Auction insights also help: for Search campaigns they show, among other things, impression share, overlap rate and position above rate compared with other advertisers. The report does not show insights when your impression share is below 10% (Google Ads Help: Use auction insights to compare performance, accessed 30 October 2026). How to separate brand and non-brand cleanly is described in Brand cannibalisation.

Area 7: Landing pages

Final URL report

Under Campaigns, Insights and reports, Landing pages, you can see which pages clicks land on, including the "Mobile-friendly click rate" column (Google Ads Help: Evaluate the performance of your landing pages, accessed 30 October 2026). Check: do ads land on the right page, or all on the home page? Are there pages with many clicks and no conversions?

Quality Score component

Quality Score is shown at keyword level on a scale of 1 to 10 and consists of three components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Google stresses that it is a diagnostic tool and not an input in the ad auction (Google Ads Help: About Quality Score for Search campaigns, accessed 30 October 2026). If the landing page component shows "Below average" for important keywords, the page is the lever, not the bid.

Area 8: Anomalies and change history

Anomalies are sudden jumps: costs double, conversions drop to zero while clicks stay normal, a campaign stops serving. A drop in conversions with steady clicks almost always points to tracking, not to demand.

Compare every jump with the change history (Campaigns, Change history). It lists all changes from the past 2 years; older data is not available. Changes made via the Google Ads API, for example by third-party tools, appear with "Google Ads API" or the tool's name in the "User" column (Google Ads Help: About change history, accessed 30 October 2026). More on this in Spotting anomalies in your Google Ads account and Reading the Google Ads change history.

The checklist to tick off

Where available, the menu paths follow the Google Help pages cited (as of 30 October 2026). Google changes the interface from time to time; if in doubt, search for the report name.

How often you should audit

Google has no fixed rule for this. A three-tier rhythm has proved useful, as a recommendation, not a standard:

• After every major change: new campaign, new bid strategy, website relaunch, new tracking. Areas 1 and 8 are worth checking straight away.
• Monthly: wasted spend (area 2) and bids and budget (area 3), because search terms change all the time.
• Quarterly: the whole list with all 24 checks.

If you have just switched strategy, wait with your assessment until the status no longer says "Learning".

How Helferlain helps

Helferlain checks a Google Ads account in exactly these eight categories: tracking, wasted spend, bids and budget, geo and ad schedule, audiences, brand, landing page and anomalies. Every finding states severity, observation, hypotheses and the impact as a range of bad, likely and good case. If the account has 0 conversions, the tracking finding comes first and there is no estimate in euros. More on the Google Ads audit page.