Google Ads Audit Checklist: 40 Checks, Measurement First

A Google Ads audit checks two things, in order: whether the account measures the right outcome, and whether it spends well to get it. This checklist has 40 checks. Thirteen are about conversion tracking, and they come before keywords, ads or bids, because every bidding decision learns from the conversions the account reports.

It is the order we use before taking on accounts for our Google Ads agency. Each check that relies on a Google feature or number was confirmed against Google's help pages on 1 October 2026, and the table near the end lists Google's own thresholds with their sources.

How do I conduct a Google Ads audit?

Work from access, to measurement, to spend. Five steps:

1. Get read-only access to Google Ads, Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Merchant Center, plus an export from your CRM or store for the same period.
2. Pull at least 90 days of data, longer if your customers take weeks to buy, and use change history to note any tracking changes in that window.
3. Audit measurement first (checks 4 to 16). If it fails, write it down and read every later number with that failure in mind.
4. Work through structure, search terms, ads, bidding and Shopping (checks 17 to 40).
5. Write each finding with its severity, the evidence and the fix, so whoever runs the account can act on it without you in the room.

How to rank what you find

Not every problem is equal. A wrong conversion signal costs money every day; a missing sitelink costs a little. We sort findings into four levels, the same scale our tracking audit uses.

Source: Profit Geeks audit practice, as used in our tracking audit.

What should a Google Ads audit checklist include?

Seven areas: access, conversion tracking, campaign settings, search terms and negatives, Quality Score and landing pages, bidding, and Shopping with Performance Max if you sell products. The checks for each follow, numbered so you can track them.

Access and ownership

1. The business owns the Google Ads account and holds admin access. Agencies and freelancers have their own logins at the level they need; Google offers Admin, Standard, Read-only, Email-only and Billing access.
2. The business also owns Merchant Center, Google Analytics and Tag Manager, so changing agency never means losing history.
3. Change history and automatic recommendations are reviewed. Change history keeps two years of edits and who made them. Check which recommendations are set to apply automatically, and whether you agree with each one.

Conversion tracking

4. Every primary conversion action is a real business outcome: a purchase, a qualified lead or a booked job, not a page view, a button click or a tap on a phone number.
5. Only one stage of each funnel is primary. Earlier stages are secondary, reported but not bid on.
6. Count is set to One for leads and Every for purchases.
7. Values are present, in AUD, never $0, and on a known GST basis, so ROAS can be compared with a break-even worked out the same way.
8. Nothing is counted twice. A transaction ID is sent with each conversion, and the site isn't tagged by both a platform plug-in and Tag Manager.
9. The Google tag fires on every page, and Tag Manager has a Conversion Linker tag.
10. Enhanced conversions is on and its diagnostics show no errors. Since June 2026 it is a single setting for web and leads.
11. Auto-tagging is on, and the GCLID survives any redirect to the landing page.
12. Offline conversions from the CRM upload daily, inside Google's windows: 90 days from the click for GCLID matches and 63 days for customer-data matches.
13. Call reporting is on, the minimum call length reflects real sales calls, and taps on a phone number are secondary.
14. The conversion window fits the buying cycle (check the time lag report), and the attribution model is data-driven, Google's default for most conversion actions.
15. Google's conversions and conversion value reconcile to the CRM or store within an agreed tolerance. We use 5 percent.
16. Consent is handled: consent mode for visitors from the European Economic Area, where Google requires consent signals, and your Privacy Act obligations for Australian visitors.

If several of these fail, stop here. Fixing measurement changes what every later check tells you. Our Google Ads conversion tracking guide covers each fix.

Campaign settings and structure

17. Brand and non-brand search run in separate campaigns and are reported separately, so brand demand doesn't flatter the rest.
18. Location targeting is deliberate. Google's default, Presence or interest, also reaches people elsewhere who show interest in your area; local service businesses usually want Presence, which reaches people in or regularly in it.
19. Search campaigns include the Display Network or search partners only by choice, and each is judged on conversions.
20. Each campaign gets enough conversions to learn. Split campaigns only where budgets, targets or settings need to differ.
21. Old manual bid adjustments are cleared. Smart Bidding ignores most of them, and with Target CPA a device adjustment changes the target rather than the bid.

Search terms, match types and negative keywords

22. The search terms report has been read for the last 90 days, sorted by cost, and terms that spend without converting have been dealt with.
23. An account-level negative keyword list holds the terms you never want, such as jobs, free or DIY. Google allows up to 1,000 negatives at account level, applied to Search and Shopping inventory including Performance Max.
24. Negatives include plurals and synonyms. Google's negative keywords don't match close variants, although they do allow for casing and misspellings.
25. Broad match keywords only run with Smart Bidding, a pairing Google describes as critical. Exact and phrase match are used where you need control.
26. Ad groups are themed tightly enough that one ad suits every keyword, and keywords marked low search volume are cleaned out.

Two questions come up often here. A negative keyword example: a plumber who doesn't train apprentices adds "apprenticeship" so the ads never show for "plumbing apprenticeship". Should negative keywords be exact match? Only for blocking one specific search. Phrase match suits most negatives, because it blocks the phrase inside longer searches too.

Quality Score, ads and landing pages

27. Quality Score is reviewed for the keywords that spend most, and treated as Google intends: a diagnostic, not a target. Google says it isn't a key performance indicator and isn't an input to the ad auction.
28. Each weak component points to its fix: expected click-through rate to the ad copy, ad relevance to how keywords are grouped, and landing page experience to the page itself.
29. Responsive search ads have Good or Excellent ad strength, with pinning used sparingly.
30. Sitelink, callout, call and location assets are set up, and no ads or assets are disapproved or limited by policy.
31. Landing pages keep the ad's promise, load quickly on mobile, and the form or checkout works and is tracked.

Where can you see your Quality Score? In Google Ads, open Keywords, choose the columns icon and add the Quality Score columns. Scores run from 1 to 10 at keyword level, and each component is rated Above average, Average or Below average against other advertisers who showed for the same search over the last 90 days. A dash means there isn't enough exact-match search data yet. For the page side of the score, see our notes on landing page design and conversion rate optimisation.

Bidding and budgets

32. The bid strategy matches the goal: Target CPA or Maximise conversions when conversions are worth about the same, Target ROAS or Maximise conversion value when values differ.
33. Targets come from break-even CPA or ROAS, not from Google's recommended target, which is based on what the account has recently achieved.
34. There is enough data. Target ROAS needs at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days on Search and Shopping, and results are judged over periods with at least 30 conversions (50 for Target ROAS).
35. Targets aren't changed every few days. Changes are logged and judged after one to two conversion cycles. Since 17 August 2026, budget-limited campaigns with a target deliver closer to that target, so a loose target now costs money.
36. Seasonality adjustments are used only for short events, which Google puts at one to seven days, and data exclusions cover any days when tracking broke.

Our guide to Target CPA vs Target ROAS shows how to set those targets from your margin, and our guide to Google Ads costs in Australia covers what a click is worth paying for.

Shopping and Performance Max

37. Merchant Center shows few disapprovals, and prices include GST and match the website, as Google requires for Australia.
38. Custom labels group products by margin, so campaigns or asset groups can carry different targets.
39. Performance Max has brand exclusions or negative keywords in place, and its search terms report is read regularly.
40. Where Standard Shopping and Performance Max cover the same products, you know which one serves. Google now lets Ad Rank decide rather than favouring Performance Max, so test the two against each other instead of assuming.

Our Performance Max guide covers these in more depth.

Google's own numbers to check against

These are the thresholds and limits Google publishes, all useful as pass or fail lines in an audit.

Source: the Google Ads Help pages named in the table, checked 1 October 2026.

Does Google do audits?

Not independent ones. Google Ads gives every account an optimisation score from 0 to 100 percent, which Google describes as an estimate of how well the account is set to perform, along with recommendations based on your data and Google's forecasts. Applying or dismissing a recommendation moves the score, so it measures how much of Google's advice you have dealt with, not whether the account makes money. Treat it as one input to an audit, not the audit.

How to do a PPC audit

The same order works for any pay-per-click account: confirm who owns it, prove the conversion data, then check structure, search terms, ads and bids. The platform's features differ; the logic doesn't. Measurement first, because every other setting learns from it.

Want a second pair of eyes?

If you would rather have the audit done for you, our free 30-minute profit audit puts a senior operator on your account with you, and the written findings are yours to keep whether or not we work together. For the measurement layer in depth, the tracking audit is a two-week, read-only diagnostic with a prioritised fix list. And if the account needs running as well as fixing, see our Google Ads agency service or work with a named Google Ads consultant.