How to Audit a Google Ads Account in 60 Minutes

Most Google Ads accounts leak budget. Not dramatically, not in ways that set off alarms, but in the steady drip of irrelevant search terms, misaligned bid strategies, and conversion actions that do not actually measure what matters.

A 2026 study of 43 enterprise B2B accounts found that 36.1% of total spend went to clicks that never had a chance of converting. That is more than a third of the budget evaporating. And this was not limited to poorly managed accounts. Even well-run programmes had pockets of waste hiding in plain sight.

You do not need a week-long engagement to find these problems. A focused, structured audit of 60 minutes can surface the biggest issues and give you a clear action list. This framework covers the five areas that matter most.

Before You Start: Set Up Your View

Open Google Ads and set your date range to the last 90 days. This gives you enough data volume to spot patterns without being skewed by seasonal spikes. If the account has significant seasonality, consider pulling the same period from the prior year for comparison.

Have a spreadsheet or note-taking tool ready. You will want to capture findings, flag specific campaigns, and note dollar amounts as you go. The goal is to walk away with a prioritised list of fixes, not just a vague sense that things could be better.

Part 1: Wasted Spend Analysis (15 Minutes)

This is where you will find the fastest wins. Accounts that have never been professionally audited commonly waste 20 to 40% of their total budget on irrelevant traffic.

Search Term Report

Navigate to Insights and Reports, then Search Terms. Sort by cost (highest first) and scan through the top 50 to 100 queries. You are looking for:

• Irrelevant queries: Terms that have nothing to do with your product or service. These should be added as negative keywords immediately.
• Low-intent queries: Informational searches ("what is", "how to", "free") that rarely convert for commercial campaigns.
• Competitor names: Unless you have a deliberate competitor targeting strategy, these often burn budget with low conversion rates.
• Duplicate traffic: The same user query triggering multiple campaigns, causing you to bid against yourself.

Negative Keyword Coverage

Audit data from 2,000+ accounts shows that insufficient negative keywords are the most common issue, appearing in 87% of audited accounts. Check each campaign's negative keyword list. A well-managed account should have at least 50 to 100 negatives per campaign, updated monthly.

Geographic Waste

Go to Reports and select Locations. Look for spend in regions you do not serve, or regions with significantly higher CPA. If you are an Australian business, check whether your campaigns are accidentally serving ads in countries you cannot fulfil orders in.

Part 2: Campaign Structure Review (10 Minutes)

Campaign Organisation

Scan the campaign list for structural red flags:

• Campaigns with fewer than 5 conversions per month (not enough data for automated bidding to work effectively)
• Ad groups with more than 15 to 20 keywords (usually a sign of poor thematic grouping)
• Multiple campaigns targeting the same keywords or audiences (cannibalisation)
• Paused campaigns still consuming budget through shared budgets

Ad Group Relevance

Spot-check three to five ad groups. Click into each and review whether the keywords, ads, and landing pages are tightly aligned. A common problem is ad groups that have grown over time to include loosely related keywords, diluting Quality Score and relevance.

Part 3: Bid Strategy Alignment (10 Minutes)

Match Strategy to Data Volume

Google's automated bid strategies (Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximise Conversions) require sufficient conversion data to work properly. The general minimum is 30 conversions in the past 30 days for Target CPA, and 50 for Target ROAS.

Check each campaign's conversion volume against its bid strategy. Campaigns using automated bidding with fewer than 15 to 20 conversions per month are essentially guessing, and they tend to overbid on low-value traffic.

Portfolio vs Campaign-Level Bidding

If individual campaigns lack conversion volume, consider whether portfolio bid strategies (which pool data across campaigns) would perform better. This is especially relevant for accounts with many niche campaigns that each generate only a handful of conversions.

ROAS and CPA Targets

Review the target CPA or target ROAS set for each campaign. Compare these targets to actual performance. If the target is significantly more aggressive than actual results, the system will restrict delivery. If the target is too loose, it will spend freely on low-quality traffic. Targets should be within 10 to 20% of actual performance, then adjusted gradually.

Part 4: Ad Copy and Assets (10 Minutes)

Responsive Search Ad Health

Navigate to Ads and check the ad strength indicator for your responsive search ads. "Poor" or "Average" ratings are common when headlines and descriptions lack variety or do not include keywords.

More importantly than the ad strength score, look at the actual asset performance labels: "Best", "Good", "Low." Remove any "Low" performing assets and replace them with new variations that test different value propositions or calls to action.

Ad Extensions

Check that all campaigns have relevant ad extensions (now called "assets" in Google Ads):

• Sitelinks: At least four per campaign, pointing to different landing pages.
• Callouts: Highlight key benefits, offers, or differentiators.
• Structured snippets: List product categories, service types, or feature sets.
• Call and location extensions: If applicable to the business model.

Missing extensions reduce your ad's real estate in the search results and can lower your Quality Score.

Part 5: Conversion Tracking Health (15 Minutes)

This is the most important part of the audit. Every other finding depends on your conversion data being accurate. If your tracking is broken, your bid strategies are optimising towards the wrong signals, and your performance reports are misleading.

Conversion Action Review

Go to Goals, then Conversions, then Summary. Review every conversion action listed. For each one, check:

• Is it still relevant? Old conversion actions from previous campaigns or test pages can pollute your data.
• Is it counting correctly? Check the count setting. For ecommerce purchases, "Every" conversion is correct. For lead forms, "One" is usually right.
• Is the conversion window appropriate? A 90-day click-through window might make sense for high-consideration B2B purchases, but it inflates conversions for impulse-buy ecommerce.
• Is it included in "Conversions"? Only primary conversion actions should be included in the "Conversions" column that bid strategies optimise towards. Secondary actions (like page views or micro-conversions) should be set to "Observation" only.

Tag Verification

Use Google Tag Assistant or the real-time report in GA4 to verify that conversion tags are firing correctly on key pages. Common issues include:

• Tags firing on the wrong pages (inflating conversion counts)
• Tags not firing after site updates or redesigns
• Duplicate tags from multiple tracking implementations
• Consent management blocking tags for a large portion of traffic

Enhanced Conversions

Check whether Enhanced Conversions is enabled. This feature sends hashed first-party data (email, phone) back to Google to improve conversion attribution accuracy, particularly important as third-party cookies continue to degrade. If it is not enabled, add it to your action list.

Building Your Action List

After completing the five sections, you should have a list of findings. Prioritise them by estimated budget impact:

1. Immediate fixes (this week): Add negative keywords for clearly irrelevant search terms. Fix broken conversion tracking. Pause campaigns that are spending on geographic areas you do not serve.
2. Short-term improvements (this month): Realign bid strategies to match data volume. Update ad copy and extensions. Adjust conversion windows and counting settings.
3. Strategic changes (this quarter): Restructure campaigns for better thematic grouping. Implement Enhanced Conversions. Set up a regular audit cadence (monthly for search terms, quarterly for the full audit).

Making Audits a Habit

Research shows that a structured 90-day recovery programme can reduce wasted spend from 36% to under 12% on average. But the benefit compounds over time. A well-managed account should target keeping clearly wasted spend below 10 to 15% of total budget.

The 60-minute audit framework above is designed to be repeatable. Run it quarterly as a full review, and do a lighter-touch version monthly focusing on search terms and conversion tracking. The accounts that perform best are the ones that get regular attention, not occasional overhauls.

If you would like a deeper audit with specialist paid search expertise, or want to discuss what your data is telling you, get in touch. We audit Google Ads accounts across industries and can benchmark your performance against relevant competitors.