Google Ads audit: what each problem costs and in what order to fix it

A useful Google Ads audit isn't a 60-page PDF full of Quality Score screenshots. It answers three questions: what is wrong, how much it costs you and which order of fixes maximises the impact. Our audit reviews the account across seven areas and delivers a prioritised plan that your team (or ours) can start executing the next day.

There is a short, automatic version of this: export your campaign report and run it through the dead spend auditor. It is the same first cut we make ourselves, and the file never leaves your browser.

The seven areas

1. Measurement. The first area and the one that produces the most findings: duplicated conversions, the wrong counting types, missing CRM imports, Consent Mode implemented badly. If this fails, the rest of the account is optimising on false data.
2. Structure. Campaigns mixing brand with non-brand, PMax stepping on everything else, segmentation that fragments learning for no reason.
3. Bidding strategy. Targets consistent with the business: tCPA and tROAS calculated from margin, not inherited from a questionable history. And no loose maximise strategies without a ceiling.
4. Keywords and negatives. Coverage of the demand you actually want, leakage from irrelevant search terms and cannibalisation with brand.
5. Feeds and catalogue (ecommerce). Quality of titles and attributes, disapprovals, price competitiveness and which part of the catalogue deserves a bid.
6. Creative. Number of variants, fatigue, ad-to-landing-page consistency and the PMax assets Google decides on your behalf.
7. Landing pages. Speed, message and friction in the form or checkout: the best-optimised CPC won't fix a landing page that doesn't convert.

What you get

• A document with costed findings: what each problem costs per month, in euros, with the most honest estimate possible.
• An action plan prioritised by impact and effort, executable by your in-house team or by ours.
• A working session to walk through it with whoever makes the decisions. Peer to peer, no sales theatre.

Common mistakes we find (and what they cost)

After auditing accounts of every size, these are the findings that come up most often:

• Conversions counted twice. Counting type set to "every" on lead gen campaigns: the algorithm optimises towards duplicates and the real CPL gets buried. We see it in more than 60% of the lead gen accounts we audit.
• Performance Max cannibalising brand and organic. Without brand exclusions, PMax takes credit for sales that would have happened anyway. The dashboard ROAS goes up; the real one doesn't.
• Smart Bidding without a target. Maximise Conversions with no target CPA on accounts with plenty of budget: the system spends everything it can, not what it should. It often doubles CPA within a few weeks.
• Measurement broken by Consent Mode. Partial implementations that lose between 20% and 40% of conversions, so the algorithm under-bids and the account can't scale.
• Brand keywords mixed with generic ones. Campaigns that don't separate brand from non-brand: brand CPC goes up, generic ROAS gets inflated and you don't know how much new demand you are really capturing.

Each of these mistakes has a monthly cost you can estimate. The audit quantifies it and tells you what to fix first.

What the full audit includes

• Report with costed findings: each problem with its estimated monthly cost, in euros, based on your account's real data.
• Action plan prioritised by impact and effort: what to change first, what can wait and what isn't worth touching.
• Working session to walk through the report with whoever makes the decisions. Peer to peer, no sales theatre.
• Anonymised benchmark against accounts of your sector and size, so you know where you stand relative to the market.

The report is written so it can be executed by your in-house team, your current agency or ours. It isn't a sales document dressed up as an audit.

Where to start

The first step is the viability audit: you tell us about your case, we look at the account and come back with what to scale, what to keep and what to pause. Free, no strings attached. If your account is small or the problem is obvious, we will tell you there and then, and you'll save yourself the full analysis.

If you already know you need the audit and want to move forward, you can give us read-only access straight away. This is how we work as a Google Ads agency once the plan is under way. And if you would rather run a first pass yourself, here is our guide on how to audit a Google Ads account.

Frequently asked questions