How do I audit a Google Ads account?

Set the date range to the last 30 days and keep it there for every line. A week is too short to judge a keyword on, and a quarter hides a problem that began this month.

Each line below names a problem, what to look for, and where it is in Google Ads. Where a guide covers a line, the problem’s name links to it, with the steps in full and what the fix looks like.

Write down what you find as you go, with the figure beside it. An audit that doesn’t say what each problem costs, or why it matters, can’t tell you which to fix first.

Bidding and every judgment below read these numbers, so check them first.

• One conversion counted twiceTwo primary conversion actions recording the same event, or an add-to-cart or begin-checkout action counted as a conversion beside the purchase it leads to.In Google AdsGoals › Conversions › Summary. Then segment the Campaigns table by Conversion action to see what each one recorded.
• Bidding towards a conversion that stopped firingA primary conversion action that recorded nothing in the last 30 days while campaigns still bid toward it.In Google AdsGoals › Conversions › Summary. Read the Status column, then check the last 30 days yourself: Google’s status looks at the last 7.
• Conversions measured two different waysPrimary conversion actions feeding one campaign that use different attribution models or click-through conversion windows.In Google AdsGoals › Conversions › Summary. Open each action’s settings and compare its Attribution model and Click-through conversion window.
• Sales and leads a campaign doesn't countA campaign whose clicks make purchases or leads that its Conversions column leaves out, while it counts next to nothing itself.In Google AdsCampaigns. Add the Conversions and All conv. columns, segment by Conversion action, and look for a sale or lead that appears only under All conv.

What people actually searched before your ads showed, and what each search cost.

• Two campaigns splitting the same searchesSearch terms that two or more of your Search campaigns paid for. Only one ad from your account enters each auction, so the search can land in the campaign you didn’t build for it.In Google AdsCampaigns › Insights and reports › Search terms. Sort by search term and read down for any term listed under two campaigns.
• Paying for searches that never convertSearch terms that took real spend over the last 30 days and converted nothing.In Google AdsCampaigns › Insights and reports › Search terms. Filter Conversions to 0, then sort by Cost, highest first.
• A keyword its own negative blocksEnabled keywords that one of your own negative keywords blocks. Google’s keyword diagnosis says it in words: a negative keyword is preventing your ad from showing.In Google AdsCampaigns › Audiences, keywords, and content › Search keywords. Compare the Negative search keywords tab with the keywords in the same campaign.

The keywords themselves: where they sit, and how Google rates them.

• The same keyword in two placesThe same words, in the same match type, enabled in two ad groups of one campaign.In Google AdsGoogle Ads Editor › Tools › Find duplicate keywords.
• Keywords losing Quality Score while they spendKeywords still carrying spend whose Quality Score fell two points or more, and which of its three parts moved.In Google AdsCampaigns › Audiences, keywords, and content › Search keywords. Add the Quality Score (hist.) columns, then segment by week to see when it moved.

Whether each ad leads where it says it does.

• Clicks landing on a broken pageAds Google’s review flagged for where they lead: Destination not working, Destination mismatch or Destination not accessible.In Google AdsCampaigns › Ads. Hover over the reason in the Status column. Policy manager, under Tools and Troubleshooting, lists every policy issue in one place.

Where a campaign's budget, not its bids, decides how much it buys.

• Budget, not bidding, decides how much it buysCampaigns that spend their whole daily budget on most days and lose more searches to budget than to rank, while missing their target or without one.In Google AdsCampaigns › Campaigns. Filter Status to Limited by budget, and add Search lost IS (budget) from Competitive metrics.
• A profitable campaign held down by an old numberA campaign beating its own target CPA or target ROAS while losing searches to budget. The budget, not the bidding, is what holds it back.In Google AdsCampaigns › Campaigns. Put Search lost IS (budget) beside each campaign’s cost per conversion or return, and compare them with its target.

Whether bid strategies get time to settle, and which searches are lost to Ad Rank.

• A bid strategy that never gets to settleA bid strategy or its target changed on two or more separate days within two weeks. Google puts a strategy back into Learning when one of its settings changes.In Google AdsCampaigns › Change history. Read the bid strategy changes by date, and the Status column under Tools and Bid strategies for any strategy still Learning.
• Searches lost to ad rank on a campaign that paysA campaign that converts well, losing a large share of its searches to Ad Rank rather than to budget.In Google AdsCampaigns › Campaigns. Add Search impr. share, Search lost IS (rank) and Search lost IS (budget) from Competitive metrics.

Whether each asset group has enough to work with.

• Asset groups too thin to serve everywherePerformance Max asset groups whose Ad strength reads Poor or Average: too few assets, or too little variety, to serve well everywhere.Read each asset group’s Ad strength. Google says the ad editor view shows the most up-to-date rating.

The text and links around your ads, and the assets Google turned down.

• Disapproved assets holding a slotAssets Google disapproved that still hold a place in a Performance Max asset group, so the group runs one short.In Google AdsTools › Troubleshooting › Policy manager. Read the Policy issues tab.
• The same headline over and overAd groups whose responsive search ads repeat the same headlines. Google asks for at least five unique headlines that don’t repeat the same or similar phrases.In Google AdsCampaigns › Ads. Open each responsive search ad and read its headlines side by side.
• Free space on the results page left emptySearch and Performance Max campaigns with no sitelinks of their own and none from the account.In Google AdsCampaigns › Assets. Choose Association from the Table view menu to see the level each sitelink is attached at.
• Campaigns missing callouts and snippetsCampaigns with no callouts or no structured snippets, at either the campaign or the account level.In Google AdsCampaigns › Assets. Filter by asset type, then read which campaigns each one is attached to.

Who sees your ads, where and when.

• Paying for clicks outside your areaSpend from places outside the locations you target.In Google AdsCampaigns › Insights and reports › When and where ads showed. Open the Matched locations tab and compare it with your targets.
• Buying people who searched about a placeCampaigns set to Presence or interest, Google’s default, when you only serve people who are in the place. Presence reaches people in or regularly in your targeted locations.In Google AdsCampaigns › Settings › Locations › Location options.
• Ads running when nobody answersHours of the day that take spend and return no conversions.In Google AdsCampaigns › Insights and reports › Report editor. The When your ads showed report breaks your results down by hour of day.
• A country converting far below the rest of its campaignA country your campaign targets that brings far fewer conversions for its spend than the campaign’s other countries.In Google AdsCampaigns › Insights and reports › When and where ads showed. Open the Matched locations tab, view it by country, and compare each country’s cost per conversion with the rest of the campaign’s.
• Audience lists built and never usedYour own data segments, such as site visitors, that no campaign or ad group uses. Google recommends Observation for Search campaigns, which doesn’t narrow who sees your ads, and with Smart Bidding, first-party segments added under Observation are used as signals.In Google AdsTools › Shared library › Audience manager.

Goldbeater runs these 24 checks on every weekly review, the same way each time, so a finding that’s new this week means something in the account changed. Each finding shows its evidence and, where the problem costs money, an estimate of what it costs a month.

Goldbeater drafts the fix where a setting can make it. A change reaches your account when you approve it and press Apply, and an applied change can be undone. The 4 checks it doesn’t run yet are marked on the full list.