How to Audit Your Google Ads Account in 30 Minutes

You don’t need to spend hours in your Google Ads account to know if it’s healthy. A focused 30-minute audit will reveal the biggest problems — and the biggest opportunities.

Here’s the exact checklist we use when evaluating a new client’s account.

1. Check your conversion tracking (5 minutes)

This is the single most important step. Everything else in your account is built on conversion data. If it’s wrong, every optimization you’ve made is based on lies.

What to check:

Go to Tools → Conversions and review each conversion action
Are you tracking the right events? (purchases, demo requests, form submissions — not page views or button clicks)
Are any conversion actions showing “No recent conversions” when they should be active?
Is enhanced conversions enabled? If not, you’re likely under-reporting by 15–30%
Check for duplicate conversion actions — this inflates your numbers and trains the algorithm wrong

Red flag: If your conversion count in Google Ads doesn’t roughly match your CRM or analytics data, something is broken.

2. Review your campaign structure (3 minutes)

Open your campaign list and ask:

Does the structure make logical sense? (Campaigns organized by product line, funnel stage, geography, or match type)
Are there campaigns with overlapping targeting that compete against each other?
Are there old or paused campaigns cluttering the account?
Is budget allocated proportionally to performance, or is your best campaign starved for budget while an underperformer gets equal spend?

Red flag: A single campaign with dozens of ad groups covering unrelated topics. This is the “kitchen sink” structure and it almost never performs well.

3. Analyze your search terms report (5 minutes)

Go to Insights & reports → Search terms for your top-spending campaigns. Look at the last 30 days.

Are you paying for irrelevant searches? (“free,” “jobs,” “login,” competitor employee names, etc.)
What percentage of your spend goes to search terms that actually relate to your product?
Are there high-performing search terms that deserve their own exact match keywords?

Red flag: If more than 20% of your search term spend goes to irrelevant queries, your negative keyword strategy is failing.

4. Check your keyword match types (2 minutes)

Review the match types in your highest-spending ad groups.

Broad match without Smart Bidding is almost always wasteful. Broad match works well only when paired with Target CPA or Target ROAS bidding.
Exact match gives you the most control but limits reach
Phrase match is the sweet spot for most accounts

Red flag: All broad match keywords with Manual CPC bidding. This combination bleeds money.

5. Evaluate your ad copy (3 minutes)

Pull up your top 5 ad groups by spend. For each one:

Do you have at least 2–3 active responsive search ads (RSAs)?
Are the headlines relevant to the keywords in the ad group, or are they generic?
Do the ads include your key differentiators? (pricing, guarantees, unique features)
Is there a clear, specific call to action?
Check the “Ad strength” indicator — it’s not gospel, but anything below “Good” deserves attention

Red flag: One RSA per ad group with no testing. This means no one is iterating on messaging.

6. Review your bidding strategy (2 minutes)

For each campaign, check which bidding strategy is in use:

Manual CPC: Only makes sense if someone is actively managing bids daily (rare)
Maximize clicks: Almost never the right choice. You’re optimizing for volume, not value
Target CPA: Good for lead generation with enough conversion data
Target ROAS: Good for ecommerce with enough revenue data
Maximize conversions / Maximize conversion value: Good starting points when you don’t have enough data for Target CPA/ROAS

Red flag: “Maximize clicks” on a campaign that’s been running for months. This means no one switched to a value-based strategy after the learning phase.

7. Check your Quality Scores (3 minutes)

Add the Quality Score column to your keyword view. Sort by spend.

Are your top-spending keywords at 7+ Quality Score?
Which keywords are below 5? These are costing you significantly more per click
Low Quality Score usually means: poor ad relevance, weak landing page experience, or low expected CTR

Red flag: High-spend keywords with Quality Scores below 5. You’re paying a premium for every click on these.

8. Look at your landing pages (3 minutes)

Click through the top 3 ads in your account as if you were a prospect.

Does the landing page match the ad’s promise?
Does it load in under 3 seconds?
Is there a clear CTA above the fold?
Is it mobile-optimized?
Does it have social proof (testimonials, logos, case studies)?

Red flag: Ads that send traffic to the homepage instead of a dedicated landing page. Homepage conversion rates are typically 2–5x lower than purpose-built landing pages.

9. Review your audience targeting (2 minutes)

Check your audience settings:

Do you have remarketing audiences set up and active?
Are you using audience signals in Performance Max campaigns?
Have you added any audience exclusions? (existing customers, employees, competitors)

Red flag: No remarketing audiences configured. This is the lowest-hanging fruit in Google Ads — retargeting website visitors converts at 3–5x the rate of cold traffic.

10. Check for wasted spend (2 minutes)

Look at your account-level metrics for the last 30 days:

What percentage of clicks come from mobile vs. desktop? Is the conversion rate dramatically different? If mobile converts at half the rate, you might need device bid adjustments or better mobile landing pages
What’s your impression share? If it’s below 50% on your best campaigns, you’re losing auctions you should be winning
Are there geographic regions with high spend and no conversions? Add location exclusions

Red flag: Equal spend across devices when conversion rates differ by 3x or more.

What to do with your findings

Rank your findings by impact:

Conversion tracking issues — fix these first. Everything depends on accurate data
Wasted spend — negative keywords, geographic exclusions, device adjustments
Structural problems — campaign consolidation, match type corrections
Growth opportunities — missing campaign types, remarketing, landing page tests

If your audit revealed more than 3–4 issues, your account needs more than a quick fix. At SemGuns, we start every client engagement with a comprehensive audit and build a 90-day optimization roadmap. Book a 15-minute call and we’ll walk through your account together.

Once your account is optimized, you’ll need ongoing management to maintain performance. Consider subscription-based Google Ads management as an alternative to traditional agency retainers — it often provides better value and more transparent pricing for growing businesses.