Most Google Ads accounts have at least two fixable problems sitting in plain sight. The issue isn't that they're hidden — it's that when you're inside an account every day, you stop noticing them. An audit forces you to look at the account the way a new specialist would: systematically, without assumptions.
This guide walks through the five areas that matter most in any Google Ads audit. Each one affects the others. Fix just one and you'll see marginal improvement. Fix all five and you'll typically see a meaningful shift in cost per booked call within 30 days.
Who this is for: Business owners and marketing managers running Google Ads for lead generation — specifically where the sale closes on a call or a meeting, not an instant online purchase.
Account and Campaign Structure
Structure determines everything that follows. A poorly structured account wastes money regardless of how well the ads are written or how high the bids are set.
What to look for
Start at the campaign level. Each campaign should have a clear, single purpose — branded search, generic search, competitor targeting, remarketing. If you have one campaign trying to do all of these at once, Smart Bidding can't learn properly because it's receiving mixed signals about what you actually want.
Then go into ad groups. The rule is simple: each ad group should cover a tightly related set of keywords that share the same intent. "Google Ads audit" and "Google Ads management" are different intents — different stages of the buyer's decision. Grouping them together means your ad for "management" services shows to someone looking for an "audit" and vice versa. Click-through rate drops, Quality Score drops, cost per click rises.
Red flags to note
- Single ad group campaigns with 50+ keywords
- Branded and non-branded keywords in the same campaign (they need separate budgets and bid strategies)
- No campaign-level negative keyword lists
- Ad groups with only one ad — no variation to test
- All campaigns set to the same bid strategy regardless of campaign purpose
Common mistake: Putting all keywords in one campaign to "keep it simple." This prevents Smart Bidding from learning which segments are actually profitable because the conversion data is averaged across everything.
Conversion Tracking and Attribution
This is the most important step in any audit. Everything else — bidding, optimisation, budget decisions — depends on conversion data being accurate. If it isn't, you're flying blind.
The core question: what are you measuring?
Open your conversion actions in Google Ads. For each one, ask: does this conversion represent an actual business outcome, or just an activity? The most common problem I find in audits is accounts measuring page views or any button click as a conversion. Smart Bidding then optimises toward getting more of those — which has nothing to do with getting more booked calls or paying clients.
For a service business where the sale closes on a call, the right conversion signals are:
- Form submission on a dedicated landing page — confirmed by a thank-you page load, not a click
- Phone call from an ad — with a minimum duration threshold (under 30 seconds is rarely a real enquiry)
- Booked appointment — if you use Calendly or a booking system, this can be tracked directly
Check your setup
Go to your thank-you page and load it directly in a browser with GTM Preview open. Confirm your conversion tag fires on that page and only on that page. Then check Google Ads — if the conversion shows as "Unverified" or has suspiciously round numbers, the tracking needs investigation before you trust any reported conversion data.
Attribution window: For service businesses with longer consideration cycles, a 30-day click attribution window is more accurate than the default 7 days. Someone who clicks your ad and books a call 12 days later should still be credited.
Search Term and Wasted Spend Analysis
The search terms report is where you find the money that's being wasted. This is usually the most immediately actionable part of any audit.
How to run it
In Google Ads, go to Keywords → Search terms. Set the date range to the last 90 days. Sort by Cost descending. You're looking for two things: search terms that are spending significant budget but have zero conversions, and search terms that reveal your keyword match types are too broad.
What you're likely to find
In most accounts I audit, 20 to 40 percent of spend is going to search terms that have no realistic chance of converting. Common categories:
- Job seekers: "google ads jobs," "google ads career," "how to get a job in google ads"
- Students and researchers: "what is google ads," "google ads tutorial," "google ads course free"
- Competitors' brand names: unless you're intentionally running competitor campaigns
- Geographically wrong: searches from locations you don't serve
- Informational intent: "how does google ads work" when you're selling a service
Building your negative keyword list
Add everything irrelevant as negative exact match first, then expand to phrase match for clear patterns. Maintain a shared negative keyword list at the account level so new campaigns inherit clean coverage from day one. Most accounts I audit have negative keyword lists that haven't been updated in months — the search terms report shows the cost of that neglect clearly.
Quality Score and Ad Relevance
Quality Score affects how much you pay per click and where your ad appears. A keyword with a Quality Score of 4 costs significantly more per click than the same keyword at 8 — for the same position.
Where to find it
Go to Keywords and add the Quality Score column. You can also add the three sub-components: Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. These tell you exactly where the problem is.
What each component means
- Expected CTR (below average): Your ad copy isn't compelling enough for this keyword — rewrite the headline to directly address what someone searching this term wants
- Ad Relevance (below average): The keyword and ad copy don't match closely enough — the keyword probably belongs in its own tightly-themed ad group
- Landing Page Experience (below average): The page visitors land on doesn't match the keyword intent, loads slowly, or lacks trust signals — this is the most common cause of poor Quality Score for service businesses
Don't chase Quality Score for its own sake. A keyword with Quality Score 5 that converts at a profitable cost per lead is better than a keyword with Quality Score 9 that never converts. Quality Score is a diagnostic tool, not the goal.
Bidding Strategy and Budget Efficiency
The right bid strategy depends on where your account is in its lifecycle. The most common mistake is using an automated bid strategy before the account has enough conversion data for the algorithm to learn from.
The data threshold problem
Maximize Conversions and Target CPA both require sufficient conversion history to optimise effectively. Google's own guidance suggests a minimum of 30 conversions per month in the campaign before these strategies can learn reliably. Below that threshold, you're handing control to an algorithm that doesn't have enough signal — which typically means erratic spending and high cost per conversion in the early weeks.
For new accounts or campaigns with under 30 monthly conversions, Maximize Clicks with a max CPC cap gives you more predictable volume while conversion data accumulates.
Budget allocation red flags
- Campaigns losing impression share to budget — you're capping reach on campaigns that are working
- Budget spread too thin across too many campaigns — consolidate and concentrate on what converts
- Display campaigns consuming budget that should go to Search — Display rarely converts for service businesses at the same rate as Search
- No dayparting consideration — if your sales team only answers calls during business hours, running ads 24/7 generates leads nobody is following up
Impression Share check: In campaign view, add the Search Impression Share, Lost IS (Budget), and Lost IS (Rank) columns. If you're losing more than 30% to budget on a converting campaign, that's the first place to reallocate spend from underperforming campaigns.
Turning the Audit into a Priority Action Plan
An audit is only useful if it leads to action. Once you've worked through the five areas above, you'll have a list of issues. The temptation is to fix everything at once — resist it. Changes to a live account compound each other and make it impossible to know what actually moved performance.
Prioritise in this order:
- Fix conversion tracking first. Everything else is meaningless if the data is wrong. Don't optimise bids, budgets, or keywords until you're confident conversions are being measured accurately.
- Add negatives from the search terms report. This is the fastest way to stop wasted spend. It takes an hour and the savings show up in the next billing cycle.
- Fix structural problems. Separate branded from non-branded, tighten ad groups, ensure each campaign has a clear purpose.
- Improve ad relevance on low Quality Score keywords. Rewrite headlines to match keyword intent, move outlier keywords to their own ad groups.
- Adjust bidding strategy. Only after the above — accurate data, clean structure, and relevant ads give the algorithm something real to optimise toward.
Make one change at a time, wait for enough data, then move to the next. For most accounts, a proper audit followed by disciplined implementation produces measurable improvement within 30 to 45 days.