When a Google Ads audit is worth doing
An audit is not an annual formality. It is a focused check at a moment when you need to make a decision or when something does not add up. The usual triggers are:
- Cost per enquiry or cost per sale is rising and nobody can say why.
- You want to increase the budget and would like to know the current spend is sound first.
- You have doubts about your agency or consultant and want an independent view before you switch.
- You have launched a new website, cookie banner or ecommerce platform. That is exactly when tracking tends to break without anyone noticing.
- You are inheriting an account from a former employee or supplier and need to know what is in it.
- Google Ads reports more conversions than your inbox or order system shows. That gap is a warning sign.
What we check in a Google Ads audit
We work through the account systematically, from measurement to the landing page. For each area we ask not only whether something is set up incorrectly, but what it is costing you and how confident we can be about that.
| Area | What we look at | The question behind it |
|---|---|---|
| Conversion tracking | Primary and secondary actions, double counting, consent mode, enhanced conversions, CRM imports | Is Google optimising towards real customers or side issues? |
| Account structure | Campaigns, ad groups, overlap, brand and non-brand separation | Can you see what each part costs and returns? |
| Search terms and keywords | Search terms report, match types, negative keyword lists | Are you paying for searches that will never buy? |
| Bidding and budget | Strategy per campaign, targets, learning status, campaigns limited by budget | Is money flowing to what earns most? |
| Ads and assets | Copy, sitelinks and other assets, disapprovals, fit with search intent | Would the right person want to click? |
| Location, schedule and networks | Location options, search partners, Display expansion in search campaigns | Do you appear only where and when you have customers? |
| Landing pages | Relevance, speed, mobile layout, forms | Does the page deliver what the ad promised? |
| Merchant Center and feed | Disapprovals, titles, product data, link with Performance Max | Do your strongest products get the visibility they deserve? |
| Ownership and access | Whose name the account is in, who has which access level | Would you keep everything if you changed supplier? |
Tracking first: without reliable data every optimisation is a guess
Every audit starts with measurement, because everything else depends on it. Automated bidding learns from the conversions you report. If those are wrong, Google will optimise very efficiently towards the wrong goal.
- What counts as a primary conversion? A thank-you page view, a tap on a phone number or a brochure download is not the same as a qualified enquiry or a purchase.
- Is anything counted twice? A common case is the same purchase recorded by the Google tag and again through an import from GA4.
- Does consent mode work? Google's EU user consent policy covers users in the UK as well as the EEA, and consent mode is how your banner passes visitors' choices to Google tags. A banner that does not pass those signals properly costs you data.
- Are enhanced conversions on, and do outcomes from your CRM come back? For service businesses, knowing which enquiries became customers is often the most valuable signal of all.
If measurement turns out to be the heart of the problem, repairing it is a project in its own right: see Google Ads conversion tracking.
Typical findings
Every account is different, but certain patterns come up again and again. They are rarely dramatic; they are often expensive.
- Broad match keywords without maintained negatives, so budget goes on searches for jobs, free versions or do-it-yourself guides.
- Performance Max absorbing brand searches, making the campaign look profitable when those customers would have found you anyway.
- Search campaigns with Display expansion or search partners switched on without a deliberate decision.
- A location setting that also reaches people merely interested in your area rather than people who are actually there.
- Auto-applied recommendations that quietly broadened keywords or increased budgets.
- A conversion goal set too loosely, such as every view of the contact page.
- Ads sending traffic to the home page instead of a page that answers the search.
- Disapproved products in Merchant Center that nobody had spotted. For retailers, our Google Shopping page goes deeper.
Optimising Google Ads after the audit
An audit only pays off if the findings are tackled in the right order. We rank them by impact and certainty and keep to a fixed sequence:
- Repair measurement. Until it is right, Google learns from the wrong signals.
- Stop waste. Negatives, network settings and locations. This often pays back fastest.
- Improve structure. Arrange campaigns so you can steer by service or product group.
- Adjust bidding and targets. Only meaningful once measurement and structure are sound; see our guide to Google Ads bidding strategies.
- Improve ads and landing pages. Better relevance tends to lift Quality Score as well; our guide to Google Ads Quality Score explains how.
Not every finding is worth fixing. A good audit also tells you what you can safely leave alone.
What an audit is not
- Not the strategy session. The Beacon Strategy Session is a paid 50-minute introductory conversation with the founder. We do not look inside your account during it and you do not receive a report. An audit is a separate project with its own proposal.
- Not the optimisation score. Google's optimisation score shows how far you have followed Google's recommendations. That is a different question from whether the account performs well for your margins.
- Not an automated report. Tools can check settings, but they cannot judge whether your conversion goal makes sense or your landing page persuades.
- Not a promise of results. An audit shows where gains are likely to be. How much of that is realised depends on execution and on your market.
Free Google Ads check or paid audit?
Many agencies offer a free Google Ads check or account review. It can be useful, but know what you are getting. A free check is usually a sales conversation built around a few eye-catching points, often from a tool. There is little time for your tracking, your search terms or your margins, and the conclusion tends to be that the agency could do better.
You can see a lot yourself. Look at the optimisation score with a critical eye, read the search terms report and scan the change history. To see which ads competitors are running, use Google's Ads Transparency Center.
A paid audit goes deeper: someone takes the time to understand the whole account and has no stake in a particular answer beyond giving you honest advice.
Quick checklist: ten questions for your own account
You can answer these before involving anyone. Each no or not sure is a reason to look more closely.
- Is the account registered to your company, and are you an administrator?
- Do you know which conversions count as primary, and are they real enquiries or purchases?
- Does the number of conversions in Google roughly match your own records?
- Has someone read the search terms report in the past month and added negatives?
- Are brand and non-brand searches separated, so you can see what new customers cost?
- Are Display expansion and search partners on or off by deliberate choice?
- Does your location setting reach only people in your area?
- Are Google's recommendations reviewed rather than auto-applied?
- Does every ad lead to a page that matches the search?
- Does your cookie banner pass consent signals to Google tags correctly?
How a Google Ads audit works with us
- Strategy session. 50 minutes with the founder, £225 excluding VAT, about your ambition, your market and whether we fit. Afterwards we decide whether to take on the project.
- Proposal. An audit with a fixed scope and fixed price, matched to the size of your account.
- Access. You give us access to Google Ads and, where needed, GA4, Tag Manager and Merchant Center. Nothing needs to be transferred.
- Analysis. We work through every area, including your landing pages.
- Walk-through. You receive the findings in order of importance and we go through them together.
- Your choice. Continue yourself, with your current supplier, or with us through PPC management.
Kaptein Beacon is a founder-led studio based in the Netherlands, working remotely with UK companies. For the wider decision about outsourcing paid search, see our PPC agency page.