Google Ads Account Audit Checklist

If you want to be more confident in the success of your Google Ads campaigns, an ad account audit can be a good solution. A quick check will help you avoid many mistakes and save your budget.

We regularly conduct Google Ads account audits for our clients and have created a detailed checklist to speed up the process. You can use it to ensure that your ad account follows best practices.

Google Ads Account Audit Checklist

1. Account Health

Account Restrictions: Look for any restrictions, policy violations, suspensions, or billing issues in the account.

Access Linking: Make sure all necessary accounts are linked (like Google Analytics, Merchant Center, Google Business Profile, YouTube).

Analytics Installation: Double-check that linked Google Analytics is properly installed on your website or landing pages. In Google Analytics, check the data collection settings.

Audiences: Check if the audiences are filling up (for better results, it’s also worth downloading the Customer List)ist)

2. Tracking & Conversions

Conversions: Check if conversions are created and match your business goals.

Enhanced Conversions: check if Enhanced Conversions are configured and if they are collected for the primary conversion (like Purchase or Lead/Form Submit).

Action Optimization: Make sure only the main conversions are marked as "Primary".

Tracking: Verify that tracking is working properly (double-check data with other sources, such as Google Analytics, Shopify, WordPress, etc.).

3. Merchant Center (For E-commerce)

Account Health: Check the Merchant Center account for restrictions and limitations.

Add-ons: check if all available add-ons are used, especially Remarketing and Product Ratings (important for e-commerce)

Product Feed Quality: Assess the quality of products in the feed (titles, descriptions, images, GTIN) and check for any restrictions.

4. Account Review

Turn off Auto-Apply: Make sure that Google recommendations auto-apply are turned off.

Review Recommendations: Read Google Ads account recommendations (for informational purposes) and insights.

Automated Rules/Scripts: Check if any automated rules or scripts are running and confirm they're set up correctly.

Change History: Review the change history to see if there’s been too much or too little management activity.

Overall Performance: Evaluate the account’s overall results to see if they meet the target goals. Compare results over different periods (7 days, 1 month, 3 months, 1 year) to spot trends, seasonality, peaks, and drops. Check auction insights.

Campaign Performance: Review each campaign's results. Identify the best and worst-performing campaigns. Compare performance over different periods (7 days, 1 month, 3 months, 1 year) to identify peaks and drops and determine whether they relate to the change history.

5. Account Structure

Account Structure: Check if the correct campaign types are selected. This is a big topic worthy of a separate article. At a minimum, determine that the structure is logical and you can see the strategy.

Campaigns Overlapping: Check if campaigns overlap (e.g., use the same keywords, product listings, and audiences).

Budget: Check budget allocation. Check if campaigns are spending their budget and identify any limitations.

Bid Strategies: Make sure each campaign is using the optimal bid strategy.

Experiments: Check if any A/B tests are running. See if there are any new testing opportunities.

6. Campaigns Structure Quality

Campaigns Structure: Check the campaigns structure and ensure best practices are used (e.g., the number of ad groups/asset groups, their structure, the number of ads etc.).

Ads Quality: Review the quality of ads and asset groups (Ad strength).

Content Quality: Ensure the ad copies and content follow best practices and don’t have any violations.

Landing URLs: Check that the correct landing pages are set (make sure that ads do not lead to outdated content, expired offers pages, 404 pages, etc.).

Extensions: Make sure ad extensions (sitelinks, callouts, snippets, etc.) are created and check their quality.

Account-Level Extensions: Check if account-level extensions are relevant.

7. Keywords & Search Terms

Search Terms: Check if search terms are relevant. Evaluate performance.

Keywords: Check keywords (relevance, match type). Evaluate performance.

Brand Keywords: Check if brand keywords are used. Check their volume, impression and search share.

Negative Keywords: Confirm that negative keywords/lists are used. Look for conflicts or gaps (don't forget to add negatives to PMax if you run it)

Account-Level Negative Lists: Check if negative keywords are added at the account level (in account settings). Check for any conflicts or gaps.

Display: Review the relevance and performance of display ad placements (if any).

8. Product Performance (For E-commerce)

Product Analysis: Review product performance (number of purchases, value, spend, ROAS). Identify the top performers, underperformers, and those with low spend. 

Product Listing Overlap: Look for overlaps in product listings. Consider segmenting them by brand, category, top value, low spend, etc.

9. Targeting & Breakdowns

Location Targeting: Check location targeting and location options (ensure the "Presence or interest" option is not selected). Break down traffic by locations and analyze performance to identify segmentation opportunities.

Language: Check which languages ​​are targeted and whether they correspond to the ads and landing pages (I don’t recommend choosing All languages). Break down traffic by language and analyze performance to identify segmentation opportunities.

Audience Signals: Make sure audience signals are used. Especially Customer List (if available) and remarketing audiences.

Additional Targeting Settings: Check bid adjustments for gender, age, devices and schedule. Identify opportunities for segmentation.

If you're not entirely confident in evaluating the results, feel free to contact us for assistance. We can perform the audit for you and provide a comprehensive report based on our expertise. This is an affordable, one-time service that can potentially save you a significant amount of money and unlock valuable opportunities!

Paid Google Ads Audit