A Google Ads audit is a structured check of two things: whether your ad spend is reaching the right people, and whether you can trust the results being reported. You can do a useful one yourself in an afternoon by working through the eight checks below with your own sales records beside you. Change nothing while you look, and write down what you find.
What is a marketing audit, and how is this different?
A marketing audit is the big version: a regular, objective review of a company’s marketing strategy, organisation and operations. A Google Ads audit is far narrower. It looks at one ad account, its settings, its tracking and where the ad spend went.
For most small businesses running ads, the narrow version is the better place to start. The evidence is already in the account and you can look at it today.
What do you need before you start?
- Access to the account. Read-only access lets you see campaigns and users, which covers almost everything here.
- Your own record of sales or enquiries for the last 90 days, from your till, accounts software or inbox.
- A rough figure for what a new customer is worth to you. Our cost per customer calculator can help.
Set the date range to the last 90 days. We checked the menu names below against Google’s help pages in November 2026, but Google does move things, so search its help pages if a label has changed.
What should a Google Ads audit checklist cover?
Work through these in order. The first three matter most, because every other number depends on them.
- Who controls the account? Go to Admin, then Access and security.
- Good: someone at your business has admin access and you recognise every name.
- Bad: you can’t get in without your agency, or past staff and suppliers are still listed. Google’s policy says agencies must give you your account’s customer ID when you ask, and Google says you’ve a right to know your clicks, impressions and total ad cost.
- Is conversion tracking working? A conversion is an action you count as a result, such as a sale or an enquiry. Go to Goals, then Conversions, then Summary, and read the Status column.
- Good: your main actions say Active, and the ones marked Primary are real sales or enquiries. Primary actions fill the Conversions column and guide Google’s bidding.
- Bad: Misconfigured means recording has stopped. Awaiting conversions means none in the past seven days. Page views marked as Primary will flatter your results.
- Do the numbers match real life? Put Google’s conversions for the last 30 days next to your own records.
- Good: they’re close and you can explain the gap.
- Bad: a big gap nobody can explain. As an example, if Google reports 40 sales and your records show 12, every cost-per-sale figure in the account is wrong until that’s fixed.
- Are the ads showing in the right places? Go to Campaigns, open the Settings tab, pick a campaign and open Locations. Google’s default option, Presence or interest, can reach people elsewhere who’ve shown interest in your area. The Presence option sticks to people in or regularly in it.
- Good: the setting matches where you can serve customers, and someone chose it on purpose.
- Bad: a local business left on the default, paying for clicks from people it can’t serve.
- Which searches are you paying for? Go to Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms, and sort by cost. This shows what people actually typed, which can differ from the keywords you chose.
- Good: the most expensive rows are people looking for what you sell.
- Bad: job hunters, people after something free, or products you don’t offer. Negative keywords stop your ad showing for those searches. Google leaves out some low-volume searches for privacy, and Performance Max, its automated campaign type, has its own view in the same report.
- Where did your ad spend go? In the Campaigns table, sort by cost and read across to conversions and cost per conversion.
- Good: the biggest share goes on campaigns bringing in customers at a cost you can live with.
- Bad: your largest campaign produces almost nothing. A status of “Limited by budget” means a campaign could show more often, which on its own is no reason to increase ad spend.
- Does the click land somewhere useful? Open the page behind each main ad on your phone. Send a test enquiry and tap the phone number.
- Good: the page delivers what the ad promised and the enquiry reaches a real inbox.
- Bad: everything goes to the home page, or the form quietly fails.
- Is anyone looking after it? Go to Campaigns, then Change history, which shows two years of changes and who made them. Then go to Campaigns, Recommendations, Auto-apply settings.
- Good: regular, sensible changes by people you know, and automatic changes switched on only because someone decided to.
- Bad: you pay a monthly fee and nothing has changed for months, or Google is adding keywords or changing bidding with nobody reviewing it.
How do you check Facebook and Instagram ads?
The same thinking works with Meta’s tools. There’s no search terms report, so checks 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 do most of the work.
- Access: in Meta Business Suite, go to Settings and look under Users.
- Results: in Ads Manager, open the Columns menu and choose Compare attribution settings to separate clicks from views. Attribution means how a sale gets credited to an ad. Meta’s usual default, 7-day click or 1-day view, can count someone who saw your ad and never clicked it.
- Tracking: in Events Manager, go to Data sources and use Test events.
When is a professional check worth paying for?
You can do everything above yourself, and a clean result is well worth knowing. Paying makes sense when:
- Check 3 fails and you can’t find out why. Tracking faults are hard to spot from reports alone.
- Someone else runs the account. An outsider has no past decisions to defend.
- You’re about to increase ad spend or change agency, and you want a clear starting point.
- Most of your ad spend sits in automated campaigns, where the reasons behind results are harder to see.
- The sums work. As an example, with £3,000 a month in ad spend and a fifth wasted on searches that never buy, that’s £600 a month.
A good audit gives you a ranked list of fixes in plain English, with reasons, that you could act on without the person who wrote it. Be wary of anyone who asks for your password or promises the top position. Google says a specific ad position can’t be guaranteed.
Questions people ask
How often should I audit my ad account?
We’d look at search terms and conversion status monthly, and run the full checklist twice a year. Run it again after a website rebuild or a change of agency.
Does a 100% optimisation score mean my account is healthy?
No. Google calls the score an estimate of how well the account is set to perform, and you can reach 100% by applying or dismissing all its recommendations. It can’t see your profit, so judge each recommendation against your own records.
Can someone audit my account without my password?
Yes. On Google, an agency links its manager account to yours and you accept the invitation, or you can add someone with read-only access. On Meta, you add a partner in Meta Business Suite and choose what they can see. You can remove either later.
What to do next
Try the checklist first. It may give you enough to work on for a while. If you’d like to see what clicks cost where you are, our click price lookup and Google click prices by city are free to use. If you’d prefer a second opinion, our Ads health check is £425: a look at one ad account, fixes in plain English and a 30-minute walkthrough, delivered within five working days of getting access. You add us as a partner on the account, so you never share a password. How it works covers the rest, and Help me choose can point you to a starting place if you’re unsure.
Related guides
- Do you have good tracking on your website? A checklist
- Which part of your marketing funnel isn’t working?
- Before you spend more on Facebook and Instagram ads, make these six checks
This guide is general information based on publicly available sources, correct when written in November 2026. It isn’t legal, financial or tax advice, and ad platforms change their rules and menus often, so check the latest guidance before you act.