Google Ads Account Audit Checklist: 17 Things We Look At First

After 10+ years inside Google working with top advertisers, our team has seen the same handful of mistakes destroy 30-50% of ad spend in nearly every account I audit. The good news: most of them are fixable in a single afternoon.

Here's the exact checklist we use when auditing a new client's Google Ads account. Run through it on your own account before you sign with anyone — including us.

Account structure (5 minutes)

1. How many active campaigns do you have?

If the answer is more than 12 for an SMB account, structure is the problem before bidding is. Smart Bidding needs concentrated conversion data to learn — splitting it across 20 campaigns creates 20 underperforming campaigns instead of 5 strong ones.

Fix: Consolidate similar campaigns. One campaign per buyer intent type (high intent search, brand defense, remarketing, etc.) — not one campaign per service or per geography unless budgets justify the split.

2. Are you running Performance Max alongside Search?

This is the single biggest budget leak we see in 2026. Performance Max cannibalizes your Search campaigns by default — it bids on the same keywords your Search campaigns target, but at higher CPCs because PMax has access to more inventory.

Fix: Add brand keywords + your top-performing Search keywords as negative campaign keywords in Performance Max. Otherwise you're bidding against yourself.

3. What's your account-level negative keyword list?

If you don't have one, or it has fewer than 50 entries, you're hemorrhaging budget on irrelevant clicks. Account-level negatives apply across ALL campaigns — set once, save forever.

Fix: Add common waste terms: "free", "course", "tutorial", "youtube", "reddit", "salary", "jobs", competitor brand names, irrelevant locations, broken intent variants.

Conversion tracking (10 minutes)

4. Are conversions actually firing?

Open Tools → Measurement → Conversions. Look at the "Status" column. Anything showing "No recent conversions" or "Inactive" is invisible to Smart Bidding — meaning Google is optimizing for goals it can't see.

Fix: Test your conversion paths manually. Submit your form. Check that the conversion fires within 24 hours.

5. Are you tracking the RIGHT conversion?

Most accounts we audit track form submissions or clicks on email links. Both are surface-level. The conversion that actually matters is "qualified lead" or "sales-ready opportunity" — and most accounts don't track that at all.

Fix: Set up offline conversion imports from your CRM. Push back to Google when a lead becomes a real opportunity. Smart Bidding gets dramatically smarter when it learns from sales data, not form fills.

6. Are conversions deduplicated?

Common scenario: a user fills out your form, then calls you 30 minutes later. Both fire conversions. Now Google thinks you got 2 leads from 1 person. Bidding optimizes against fake numbers.

Fix: Use unique transaction IDs. Or pick ONE primary conversion action (e.g., form submit) and downgrade calls to "secondary."

7. Is your Conversion Window set correctly?

Default is 30 days. For SaaS or B2B with 60-90 day sales cycles, this throws away more than half your conversion data.

Fix: Match the conversion window to your typical sales cycle. 90 days for B2B SaaS, 30-60 days for most service businesses, 7 days for e-commerce.

Bidding strategy (10 minutes)

8. What bid strategy is each campaign using?

Audit each campaign individually. The most common mistake: setting a tROAS or tCPA that's mathematically impossible given your historical data.

Fix: If your account average CPA is $80, don't set tCPA = $40 hoping to "force" Google to perform. Smart Bidding needs achievable targets to learn from. Set targets at 110-120% of historical average and tighten gradually.

9. Are you giving Smart Bidding enough conversions per month?

Performance Max needs 50 conversions/month per campaign to optimize well. Maximize Conversions needs 30+. tCPA / tROAS need 50+. Most SMB accounts have 5-15 conversions/month split across 8 campaigns — meaning Smart Bidding is essentially guessing.

Fix: Either (a) consolidate into fewer campaigns to concentrate signal, or (b) downgrade to Manual CPC with rules until volume justifies smart bidding.

10. Are you using value-based bidding correctly?

If you're using tROAS (target return on ad spend), you must be passing conversion VALUES — not just conversion counts. We audit dozens of accounts where tROAS is set without value tracking. The bidding is just guessing.

Fix: Either implement conversion value tracking properly, or switch to tCPA / Maximize Conversions until you can.

Targeting & match types (5 minutes)

11. What percentage of your spend is on Broad Match?

If broad match exceeds 60% of search spend in 2026, you're being too generous with Smart Bidding. Broad match is great — when you have abundant conversion data and tight conversion tracking. Without those, broad burns budget fast.

Fix: Audit your search terms report. Pause broad match keywords that produced any spend without converting in 90 days. Phrase match for unproven verticals.

12. Are your audiences set to "Observation" or "Targeting"?

Default is "Observation" — meaning audiences influence bidding but don't restrict who sees ads. For most SMB accounts, this is correct. But if you have specific high-intent audiences (cart abandoners, past converters, in-market for X), "Targeting" mode lets Smart Bidding prioritize them.

Fix: Set high-value audiences to "Targeting" mode. Leave broad audiences on "Observation."

13. Geographic settings — "People IN" vs "People interested in"?

Default is "presence or interest" — meaning your $50 ad in Boston shows to someone who once Googled "Boston restaurants" while sitting in Iowa. For 95% of local businesses, this leaks budget.

Fix: Change to "Presence" only. Settings → Locations → Location options → Advanced.

Creative quality (5 minutes)

14. How many ad variants per ad group?

If you have 1 ad per ad group, Google has nothing to test against. If you have 8+, you're spreading impressions too thin for any single ad to gather data.

Fix: 3-4 Responsive Search Ads per ad group. 15 headlines + 4 descriptions per RSA, mixing benefit-focused, feature-focused, and specific-claim variants.

15. Are ad strengths mostly "Excellent" or "Good"?

Anything below "Average" is being deprioritized in auctions — even if the bid is competitive.

Fix: Click into low-strength ads. Google literally tells you what to fix. Usually it's missing keyword variants in headlines, missing strong call-to-action, or descriptions under 60 characters.

16. Are your sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets enabled?

Account-level extensions raise CTR by 10-20% on average. Most audited accounts have only campaign-level extensions, missing the cross-campaign coverage.

Fix: Add account-level: 6+ sitelinks, 8+ callouts, 2+ structured snippet sets. Refresh them quarterly.

17. Is there a landing page for every ad group?

The single biggest CRO mistake: sending all traffic to your homepage. A click on "Performance Max optimization for SaaS" should land on a page about exactly that — not your generic homepage.

Fix: At minimum, build 1 landing page per industry or service line. Match the headline to the ad copy. Include the same keywords. Mention your unique angle (ours: ex-Google strategists).

What to do with this checklist

Three options:

1. DIY in 90 minutes: Block 90 minutes, work through the list, screenshot anything you can't fix yourself, ask in the r/PPC subreddit.

2. Have your current agency walk through it: Ask them to produce a written response addressing each item. Their answer (or lack of one) tells you whether they're actually managing your account.

3. Get a free audit from us: We do this exact checklist live on a Loom recording, then send it to you. Yours to keep, no pitch. Whether you work with us or not, you'll know exactly what's broken.

Most accounts have 5-8 items from this list that are silently leaking budget. Fixing even half of them typically reduces spend 20-30% with zero impact on lead volume — sometimes lead volume actually goes up because Smart Bidding finally has clean data to optimize against.