Google Ads Audit and Health Check: What It Checks and What to Expect

A Google Ads audit, often called a Google Ads health check, is a structured review of an account’s setup, spending and tracking that shows where budget is being wasted and what to fix first. It is also the natural starting point for any new programme of Google Ads management for UK businesses, because changes made without one tend to fix symptoms rather than causes.

The Google Ads audit checklist below covers the areas a thorough review should reach. You can use it to audit a Google Ads account yourself or to check the scope of an audit someone else is offering.

1. Confirm each conversion action records the right event once, with consent mode and enhanced conversions working.
2. Check account structure and whether campaigns compete for the same searches.
3. Review campaign settings, including networks, location options, ad schedules and auto-applied recommendations.
4. Assess keywords and match types against the search terms that triggered your ads.
5. Add negative keywords for irrelevant searches without blocking valuable traffic.
6. Review responsive search ads, ad strength and assets such as sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets.
7. Match each bidding strategy to the volume and quality of conversion data behind it.
8. Check budgets for campaigns limited by budget or spend drifting to low-value campaigns.
9. Review audience and location targeting, including observation audiences and exclusions.
10. Assess landing pages, Quality Score components and, where used, Performance Max asset groups and Shopping feeds.

Each area is covered below, followed by what you should receive, how to grant access safely and how often to repeat the exercise. Not every item will apply to every account and a small lead generation account with two Search campaigns needs a lighter review than a retailer running Shopping and Performance Max.

What a Google Ads Audit Is and When You Need One

A Google Ads audit compares how an account is set up with how it should be set up for the business goals it supports. The output is a list of problems and opportunities ranked by their likely effect on cost and results, not a new set of campaigns.

Some moments make an audit particularly worthwhile. Rising cost per acquisition with no obvious cause, a change of agency or in-house team, a website rebuild that may have broken tracking and a plan to increase budget are all good reasons for a review. Adding budget to an account with structural problems usually buys more of the same waste.

B2B accounts have their own pressures, because long sales cycles make it harder to see which clicks turn into pipeline. Our article on what a PPC audit reveals about B2B ad spend looks at those issues in more depth.

What a Thorough Google Ads Audit Checks

A thorough audit works through the account in layers, from structure and settings down to search terms, then out to tracking and landing pages. Each layer affects the next, so a fault in conversion tracking can make poor keyword and bidding decisions look sound.

Priority Pixels audits review campaign structure, keyword match types, bidding strategies, ad group organisation and conversion tracking setup and highlight budget waste, poor Quality Scores and missed targeting opportunities. The table below sets out the main areas, what an auditor looks for and the problems that tend to come up.

Most accounts show problems in a few of these areas rather than all of them. The value of the audit lies in showing which problems cost the most, so the fixes can be put in order.

Account Structure, Campaign Settings and Networks

Account structure is the first thing an auditor reviews, because it decides how budget is split and how easy the account is to manage. Campaigns should reflect business priorities such as services, product lines or regions, with ad groups built around tightly related keywords.

Campaign settings often hide avoidable waste. New Search campaigns can include the Search Partner Network and Display expansion and location targeting can reach people who show interest in an area as well as those physically in it, which suits some businesses and not others. An audit checks each choice against the campaign’s goals, along with ad schedules and any auto-applied recommendations that changed the account without review.

Keywords, Match Types and Search Terms

Keyword review starts with the search terms report, because it shows the searches that triggered your ads rather than the keywords you chose. Broad match can find useful new queries, particularly alongside Smart Bidding, but without regular negative keyword work it can also spend money on searches with no commercial intent.

An auditor checks whether match types suit each campaign, whether negative keyword lists are up to date and whether any negatives block searches that convert. Our guide to Google Ads keyword match types explains how broad, phrase and exact match behave today.

Search term review is not a one-off task. On the accounts we manage, search term reports are reviewed weekly, with irrelevant terms added to negative keyword lists and high-performing searches added as keywords with their own bids.

Ads, Assets, Bidding and Budgets

Ad review looks at whether responsive search ads reflect the keywords in each ad group and give a clear reason to click. Assets such as sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets make ads larger and more useful and missing assets are among the quicker fixes an audit finds.

Bidding strategy needs to match the data behind it. Target CPA and Target ROAS rely on steady conversion volume and, for ROAS, accurate conversion values, so an account with few conversions or unreliable tracking may perform better on Maximise Conversions or a simpler strategy until the data improves.

Budgets are checked in the same way. Campaigns limited by budget while lower-value campaigns spend freely suggest the split needs changing and impression share lost to budget or to ad rank shows whether the constraint is money or relevance.

Conversion Tracking and Consent Mode

Everything else in the audit depends on conversion tracking. If conversion actions double count, treat page views as primary conversions or miss phone calls and offline sales, Smart Bidding will optimise towards the wrong outcome.

Enhanced conversions are worth checking too. In its announcement of new data and measurement tools, Google says advertisers using enhanced conversions see an average 11% increase in Search conversions compared with standard conversion imports. For B2B accounts, importing offline conversions from a CRM lets bidding learn which leads become customers and Priority Pixels workflows include CRM integration for lead quality tracking.

Consent is the other half of the picture for UK advertisers. Google’s EU user consent policy applies to end users in the UK as well as the EEA and Switzerland and consent mode passes each visitor’s choices to Google so that tags behave accordingly. The ICO’s guidance on cookies says cookies that are not strictly necessary cannot be set before a user has consented, so an audit should confirm that the cookie banner, consent mode and Google tags work together.

Landing Pages and Quality Score

Quality Score is a diagnostic rated from one to ten at keyword level, based on expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. It is not used directly in the auction, but a low score points to a mismatch between the search, the ad and the page that usually raises costs.

Landing page review checks that each ad group sends people to a page that continues the ad’s message, loads quickly on mobile and makes the next step obvious. Sending every ad to the homepage is a common problem and it affects conversion rate as much as Quality Score.

In practice, a service advert should land on the matching service page and any offer mentioned in the ad should appear on the page. Accessibility matters here as well, because forms and buttons that work with a keyboard and screen reader can convert a wider audience.

Performance Max and Shopping Campaigns

Performance Max and Shopping campaigns need their own checks, because much of their performance depends on inputs rather than keywords. For Performance Max, an auditor reviews asset groups, audience signals, brand exclusions and search term reporting and checks whether the campaign is taking traffic a Search campaign would handle more cheaply. The B2B takeaways from Google Marketing Live 2026 explain how recent Performance Max changes affect these checks.

Shopping audits focus on the Merchant Center product feed. Titles, descriptions and categorisation decide which searches products appear for and disapproved products can drop out of the auction without an obvious warning in the campaign. Our Google Ads workflows include structured Performance Max asset management and our Shopping work optimises product feeds with accurate titles, descriptions and categorisation.

What You Should Receive at the End of an Audit

An audit should end with a written set of findings, each explaining what the problem is, why it matters and what to do about it. Findings should be ranked by likely effect and effort, so quick fixes such as broken tracking or missing negatives are separated from larger work such as restructuring campaigns.

Priority Pixels Google Ads audits finish with specific recommendations to improve click-through rates, reduce cost per click and increase conversion rates, along with a clear roadmap for fixes. The findings below come up often enough that they are worth checking in any account.

A good audit also says what is working well, so sound campaigns are protected when changes are made. If a report lists problems without priorities, ask for them before any work starts.

DIY Versus Independent Google Ads Account Audits

You can audit a Google Ads account yourself if you know the platform well and have time to work through it. Google’s free Skillshop training covers Search, Display, Measurement, Video and Shopping and the checklist above gives a sensible structure to follow.

The limitation of an internal review is familiarity. People who built an account tend to accept its settings as normal, while an independent auditor brings a fresh view and experience of other accounts. Priority Pixels is a Google Partner, which means we have met Google’s requirements for campaign performance and platform expertise and our team holds certifications across Search, Display, Shopping and Video.

If you are comparing outside help, our guides to what makes a good Google Ads consultant and choosing a Google Ads agency set out the questions to ask. Confirm what the audit covers and what you will receive before you share access.

How to Prepare for an Audit and Grant Access Safely

Preparation makes an audit quicker and more accurate. Share your business goals, target cost per lead or return on ad spend, priority services or products and recent changes such as a website rebuild, because the auditor needs this context to judge the account.

Access should be granted through Google Ads user management or by linking the account to the auditor’s manager account, never by sharing a login. Read only access is usually enough for an audit and the auditor will often need read access to Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager and Merchant Center as well.

Ownership of the account should stay with your business. The account, billing and data should belong to you, so access can be changed without losing the account’s history.

How Often to Audit Google Ads

Most accounts benefit from a full audit once a year and a lighter review each quarter, with an extra audit whenever something significant changes. Agency or staff changes, new campaign types or a sudden rise in costs are all reasons not to wait for the next scheduled review.

Between audits, day-to-day monitoring catches problems early. Priority Pixels paid media retainer clients have live access to our reporting dashboard, which brings Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Meta Ads data together in one place with automated anomaly detection that flags significant spend or performance changes.

If you also advertise on Bing, the same principles apply and our guide to auditing and optimising Microsoft Ads campaigns covers the differences. Our PPC management covers Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and paid social campaigns across LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram for B2B clients.