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November 5, 2025
You're spending money on Google Ads every month, but something feels off. The clicks are coming in, yet the results don't match what you expected. A Google Ads audit promises answers, but most audits barely scratch the surface. They might tell you your Quality Score is a 6 and call it a day. The truth is proper audit should reveal exactly where your money is going and whether it is actually coming back.
A Google Ads audit is a deep dive review of your PPC account, including your campaigns, keywords, ad copy, targeting settings, and conversion tracking. Think of it as a diagnostic checkup for your advertising spend.
But here's where most people get it wrong. They assume an audit is just a report card showing basic metrics like clicks, impressions, and cost-per-click. That's like going to the doctor and only getting your temperature checked.
Many businesses invest in Google Ads without fully understanding the results. A real audit connects the dots between what you are spending and what you are actually getting back, a concept rooted in fundamental marketing principles that many advertisers overlook when they focus solely on platform metrics. It examines your account structure, identifies budget leaks, and uncovers opportunities you did not know existed.
The difference between a useful audit and a waste of time comes down to one thing: business impact.
Advertisers often focus only on basic metrics when reviewing their accounts. Surface-level audits focus on platform metrics such as CTR, CPC, impression share, and Quality Score. These numbers matter, but they do not indicate whether your ads are actually profitable. You could have a fantastic click-through rate while losing money on keywords that never convert.
Not all audits are created equal. Some specialists, like e-commerce PPC consultant Victor Serban, structure audits around net profit impact rather than vanity metrics. When evaluating an audit, look for this kind of focus on business outcomes rather than just platform performance.
A meaningful audit ties everything back to revenue and profit. It answers questions such as which campaigns are driving actual sales, where budget is being wasted on irrelevant searches, and whether you are paying for clicks that have no chance of converting.
This is foundational. If your tracking is broken, every other metric in your account is meaningless.
You'd be surprised how common tracking errors are. Double-counted conversions, missing purchase events, or tracking the wrong actions entirely can affect accounts of all sizes. Your audit should verify that conversions are being recorded correctly and that the data feeding Google's algorithms is accurate.
Your search terms report reveals what people actually typed before clicking your ad. This is where budget waste hides in plain sight. Research found that companies waste an average of 15% of their PPC budget on irrelevant keywords. In some accounts, that number climbs much higher. Your audit should identify search terms eating budget without delivering results.
Common keyword problems to look for:
How your account is organised affects everything from budget allocation to reporting clarity.
Common structural problems include campaigns that are too broad, keywords competing against each other across different campaigns, and branded terms mixed with generic searches. A messy structure makes optimisation nearly impossible and often leads to internal bidding wars that drive up your costs.
Google offers multiple bidding strategies, and using the wrong one for your goals is a fast track to wasted spend.
Manual CPC, Maximise Clicks, Target CPA, and Target ROAS each serve different purposes. Your audit should evaluate whether your current bidding approach matches your actual objectives. Many accounts run on default settings that were never optimised for the business's specific needs.
You can nail everything in your ad account and still fail if the post-click experience is poor.
Your audit should flag disconnects between ad messaging and landing page content, slow load times you can diagnose with Google’s PageSpeed Insights, and pages that aren't optimised for conversion. Sending all traffic to your homepage instead of dedicated landing pages is one of the most common and costly mistakes.
A thorough audit should surface specific warning signs. Watch for these issues:
These are not just inefficiencies; they represent money leaving your account every day it runs without correction.
For most advertisers, a comprehensive audit every quarter strikes the right balance. This gives you enough data to identify meaningful patterns while catching issues before they compound.
That said, you should consider an audit whenever you see unexplained performance changes - both positive and negative. Understanding how ongoing optimization works can help you distinguish between normal fluctuations and genuine red flags. A sudden drop in conversions might indicate a tracking problem. A spike in spend without corresponding results could signal keyword match type issues.
If you've recently taken over an account or switched agencies, an immediate audit is essential. You need to understand what you're working with before making changes.
The most common mistake is focusing only on surface-level metrics like click-through rate or Quality Score. A proper audit must connect ad performance directly to your business's revenue and profitability to be truly useful.
An audit should check for common errors like double-counted conversions, tracking the wrong user actions, or missing purchase events. If your ad data doesn't seem to match your actual sales figures, your tracking is likely flawed and needs immediate attention.
A disorganised account structure often leads to wasted budget. When campaigns are too broad or keywords compete against each other, you can end up in bidding wars against yourself, driving up costs without improving results. A clear structure is essential for efficient management.
A high conversion rate is far more important. While a good Quality Score can help lower your costs, it means nothing if the clicks you're getting don't turn into customers. An effective audit prioritises keywords and campaigns that generate actual sales, not just those with good vanity metrics.
Yes, a professional audit can uncover hidden opportunities and budget leaks that are easy to overlook. Experts analyse your account with a focus on profitability, identifying complex issues in bidding strategies, tracking accuracy, and competitive positioning that a standard review might not catch.
