Guide · 25 checks · no email required
Google Ads audit checklist: 25 checks, scored in the browser
Tick each check you cannot answer from your own account today. Your score stays in this browser, and an audit starts from the areas you flag.
Cristian BragauFounder & Lead Auditor · Reviewed
The short answer. A Google Ads audit, or PPC audit, checks where search spend leaks: queries that never convert, brand terms that would have converted anyway, your own campaigns bidding against each other, bids steered by the wrong conversion, and sales counted twice. The 25 checks below cover all five; tick the ones you cannot answer with confidence.
Tick the checks you cannot answer with confidence. Each flagged area shows what the published audits found there.
Have all 25 checked →Search terms and match types
Keywords are what you bid on; search terms are what you pay for. The gap between the two is where search spend drains first.
Corpus Wasted paid spend was 22% of spend across the 74 audited budgets. Every finding, ranked.
Brand terms and demand you already own
Brand and category searches convert at the best rates in the account, often because the buyer was coming anyway.
Corpus Three published cases found search paying for demand the business already owned, $41k to $78k a year. The cases, below.
Overlap and internal competition
Two budgets chasing one buyer raise each other’s costs and both claim the sale.
Corpus Two published cases found the same buyer bought twice by budgets competing with each other, $31k to $39k a year. The cases, below.
Bidding, budgets and lead quality
Smart bidding optimizes toward whatever conversion you give it, so the conversion has to be worth money.
Corpus Two published cases found search judged on cost per lead, or on a CAC that left real costs out, $47k to $57k a year. The cases, below.
Conversion tracking and attribution
When Google, every other platform and analytics each claim the same sale, the account reports more revenue than the business made.
Corpus Attribution inflation appeared in 54% of the 74 audited budgets. Every finding, ranked.
Google Ads findings in the published audits
Published cases whose audit traced the leak to search, each with the audited annual figure.
- Pharma
Unbranded search was paying for traffic the brand site already won
−$78k a year, findings in 7 days.
Read the case → - Marketplace
Paid search was bidding on supply the platform already ranked for
−$66k a year, findings in 6 days.
Read the case → - Fintech
CAC payback was twice what the board believed
+$57k a year, findings in 6 days.
Read the case → - Services
Lead spend ignored close rate by source
+$47k a year, findings in 5 days.
Read the case → - B2B SaaS
Paid was subsidizing a channel sales already owned
$41k a year, findings in 5 days.
Read the case → - Services
Every location bought the same keywords against each other
−$39k a year, findings in 5 days.
Read the case → - DTC / Ecommerce
Retargeting was paid twice for the same customer
−$31k a year, findings in 5 days.
Read the case →
The 7 published Google Ads cases above run from $31k to $78k a year. To size your own leak before an audit, run the wasted ad spend calculator, or score the Meta ads checklist next. ✓74 cases
In 74 audited SMB marketing budgets, non incremental paid spend appeared in 68% and attribution inflation in 54%; wasted paid spend was 22% of spend.MarginFix, marginfix.ai/google-ads-audit-checklist/
Google Ads checklist questions
How often should a Google Ads account be audited?
A full audit once or twice a year suits most SMB accounts, with the search terms report and the negative lists read every month. Audit sooner after a bid strategy change, a Performance Max rollout or an agency change, or when reported conversions grow faster than revenue.
Is a PPC audit the same as a Google Ads audit?
PPC covers every pay per click channel, and for most SMBs Google search is the largest one, so this checklist starts there. The overlap checks also cover retargeting run on other platforms; paid social has its own checklist. The Meta ads audit checklist →
What does an audit add to this checklist?
The checklist shows where to look. An audit tests each flagged item against your own numbers: search terms against closed revenue, brand bidding against a holdout, conversions against actual orders. Every finding is priced in dollars a year, in 5 to 7 working days, for a fixed fee.
Have all 25 Google Ads checks run.
Every check against your own account, in 5 to 7 working days. $10k to $50k of findings, or your money back.
Fixed fee. No retainer. NDA first.
Go deeper
Read on from the Google Ads checklist
- Marketing audit checklist30 checks across paid media, attribution, pricing, retention and reporting.→
- Meta ads audit checklist20 checks for paid social, scored in the browser.→
- Wasted ad spend calculatorA modeled range for your own spend and revenue, in about a minute.→
- Attribution inflationWhy every platform claims the same sale, and how to measure the overlap.→
- Non incremental spendSpend that buys conversions you would have had anyway.→
- All 74 findingsRanked by annual value, $58k median, each one a real case.→