This Google Ads audit walkthrough shows, step by step, how we would take a mid-sized account that is spending steadily but converting poorly and find the 25–35% of budget that is quietly going to waste. This is an illustrative scenario based on typical accounts, not a specific client: the business, the numbers, and the timeline are composites of patterns we see repeatedly across small and mid-sized accounts in the US and Western Europe. Treat it as a template for auditing your own account, not as a promised result.
The scenario: an online store selling home-office furniture, shipping across the US, with a Google Ads budget of $12,000 per month. The account was built by a previous agency 18 months ago, runs four Search campaigns, one Performance Max campaign, and one old Display campaign nobody remembers creating. Reported ROAS is 2.4, the owner’s break-even is about 3.0, and the last two quarters have been flat. Nothing is obviously broken, which is exactly the kind of account where an audit pays for itself fastest.
Below is the order we would work in, what we would look for at each step, and what the findings typically turn into. If you want to run the same checks yourself, the checklist at the end is the short version.
Step 1: Check that the numbers can be trusted
Before touching bids or keywords, verify measurement, because every later decision depends on it. In this scenario, the conversion-action list reveals three problems that are common enough to count as defaults: a “Page view” conversion imported from a legacy Analytics property still counts as a primary conversion, the purchase conversion is firing twice on refreshed thank-you pages, and there is no Enhanced Conversions or Consent Mode configured.
Impact in the illustrative account: of the 480 reported conversions last month, roughly 140 were page views and about 60 were duplicate purchases. Real purchases: about 280. True ROAS is closer to 1.9 than 2.4, which means Smart Bidding has been optimizing toward inflated signals. The fix is to demote the page-view action to secondary, add a transaction-ID de-duplication to the purchase tag, and enable Enhanced Conversions for web. Our guide to Google Ads conversion tracking with GA4 covers the mechanics, and if you sell to EU customers, the Consent Mode v2 guide is the companion piece.
Step 2: Read the search terms report for 90 days
This is where most of the waste lives. Export the search terms report for the last 90 days across all Search campaigns, sort by cost, and classify every term with meaningful spend into three buckets: core (what you sell), adjacent (related but low intent), and irrelevant.
In the furniture scenario, the broad-match keyword “office desk” in a campaign with a target ROAS bid strategy had pulled in search terms like “office desk jobs”, “desk exercises”, “free desk plans”, and a long tail of IKEA product names. Across 90 days, terms in the irrelevant bucket cost about $7,800 and produced four purchases. Adjacent terms (“standing desk mat”, “monitor arm”) cost $3,100 and converted a little, but at a ROAS under 1.
The output of this step is a negative keyword list, applied at account level for the clearly irrelevant themes and at campaign level for adjacent terms you may want to test later in their own campaign. Our Google Ads negative keywords list is a useful starting template; the search terms report tells you which of those themes actually apply to you.
Step 3: Audit campaign and ad group structure
Structure problems show up as wasted spend indirectly: through diluted budgets, keywords competing with each other, and ads that cannot be relevant because the ad group covers too much. In the scenario:
- Two Search campaigns bid on overlapping keywords (“standing desk” appears in both a “Desks” campaign and a “Brand + generic” campaign), so the account is bidding against itself in some auctions and the reporting splits conversions unpredictably.
- One ad group contains 47 keywords spanning desks, chairs, and storage, with a single responsive search ad. Quality Scores in that group average 4; the account-wide average is 6.
- Brand terms sit in the same campaign as generic terms, so the brand’s cheap, high-converting clicks mask the generic terms’ poor performance in campaign-level ROAS.
Fixes: split brand into its own campaign with its own budget, consolidate the overlapping campaigns, and rebuild the oversized ad group into themed groups of 5–15 keywords with ads that match. The Quality Score guide explains why this tends to lower CPCs on the same keywords within a few weeks.
Step 4: Look at bidding strategy versus data volume
Smart Bidding needs conversion volume to work. The scenario’s four Search campaigns each use target ROAS, but two of them get fewer than 15 conversions per month. On that little data, target ROAS tends to overbid in short bursts and then throttle spend, which produces the “flat” pattern the owner was seeing.
The recommendation is to consolidate low-volume campaigns so each strategy has at least 30 conversions per month, use Maximize conversion value without a target for the first few weeks after restructuring, and only then set a target ROAS about 10–15% below the observed value. Our Smart Bidding strategies guide goes through when each strategy is appropriate.
Step 5: Audit Performance Max separately
Performance Max needs its own set of checks because the normal keyword and placement controls do not apply. In the scenario:
- The PMax campaign has a single asset group covering the whole catalog, with auto-generated video and three stock images.
- Brand search is not excluded, so a meaningful share of PMax’s reported conversions are brand clicks that the Search campaign would have captured anyway.
- Product-level reporting shows that about 30% of the catalog (low-margin accessories) accounts for 55% of PMax spend.
Fixes: add brand exclusions via account-level negative keyword lists or brand lists, split asset groups by product category with real creative, and use a listing group split (or a separate campaign) to give high-margin desks and chairs their own budget. The Performance Max optimization tips article covers each of these.
Step 6: Hunt for forgotten spend
Every long-running account has it. Here it is the Display campaign: $600 per month for 18 months, targeting an “In-market: home furnishings” audience, with zero purchases and a placement report full of mobile games and auto-play video sites. Also found: a search partner network setting left on across all campaigns, which was delivering around 8% of clicks at a conversion rate one-third of Google Search’s, and location targeting set to “Presence or interest” rather than “Presence”, which had served ads to users in India and the Philippines searching for US furniture brands.
What the audit adds up to
| Finding (illustrative) | Monthly waste | Fix | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Irrelevant and low-intent search terms | ~$3,600 | Negative keyword lists, broad match review | 2–3 hours |
| Display campaign with no conversions | $600 | Pause | 5 minutes |
| Search partners and “interest” location targeting | ~$500 | Turn off partners, switch to Presence | 10 minutes |
| PMax budget on low-margin accessories and brand | ~$1,200 (reallocated, not cut) | Brand exclusions, asset group split | Half a day |
| Inflated conversions misleading Smart Bidding | Indirect | Fix conversion actions, enable Enhanced Conversions | 2–4 hours |
| Structure and Quality Score | Indirect (CPC) | Rebuild brand/generic split, themed ad groups | 1 day |
Direct, cuttable waste in this scenario comes to about $4,700 of a $12,000 budget, close to 40%, which is on the high end of what we typically find but not unusual for an account that has not been audited in over a year. The more important effect is indirect: once conversions are clean and the budget is concentrated on terms and products that convert, Smart Bidding has better data and tends to improve efficiency on the remaining spend over the following four to eight weeks. In a scenario like this, moving from a true ROAS of 1.9 toward the owner’s 3.0 break-even over a quarter is a realistic goal; whether it gets there depends on margin, seasonality, and competition, which no audit can control. If your account converts worse than expected after these checks, our article on why Google Ads are not converting covers the landing-page and offer side.
Google Ads audit checklist (do this yourself)
- Open Goals → Conversions. Confirm every primary conversion is a real business outcome and none fire twice. Check Enhanced Conversions and, for EU traffic, Consent Mode status.
- Export the 90-day search terms report. Classify terms by spend and build account- and campaign-level negative lists.
- List all campaigns with their keywords. Flag overlapping keywords across campaigns and ad groups with more than 20 keywords or fewer than two ads.
- Separate brand from generic search.
- Check conversions per campaign per month against the bid strategy; consolidate anything with fewer than 30.
- In Performance Max, check for brand exclusions, asset-group granularity, and spend by product category.
- Review campaign settings: search partners, Display expansion, location targeting option, ad schedule, and device bid adjustments.
- Read the placement report for any Display or video campaign and pause anything without conversions in 90 days.
- Check landing pages: speed, mobile layout, and whether the page matches the ad promise.
- Write down the top five fixes with estimated savings and do them in order of effort, not in order of discovery.
Google’s own guidance on keyword hygiene is a useful reference while you do step 2 and 3: see Basic tips for building a keyword list and About Quality Score in Google Ads Help.
FAQ
How much wasted spend does a typical Google Ads audit find?
In our experience, accounts that have not been reviewed in six months or more commonly have 20–35% of spend going to irrelevant search terms, forgotten campaigns, and misconfigured settings. Well-managed accounts are usually under 10%. The scenario above sits at the higher end deliberately, to show the full range of checks.
How long does a Google Ads audit take?
A thorough audit of a $5,000–20,000 per month account takes us one to two working days, including the written findings. Implementing the fixes takes another one to three days depending on how much restructuring is needed.
Can I audit my own Google Ads account?
Yes, with the checklist above. The steps that most people skip are conversion verification and the 90-day search terms export; do those two even if you do nothing else.
How often should a Google Ads account be audited?
A full audit once or twice a year, plus a monthly search terms and settings review, is enough for most accounts. After any big change (new agency, new website, new product line) audit within the first 60 days.
Does an audit guarantee better results?
No. An audit removes waste and fixes measurement, which gives Smart Bidding and your optimization decisions better data. Results after that depend on your offer, margins, landing pages, and competition.
Need help with your campaigns?
If you would like this done on your own account, our Google Ads Audit delivers a written report covering every check above with prioritized fixes, and the Google Ads Management service implements them and keeps the account clean month to month. If you just want a first look, request a free mini-audit or book a free 30-minute call.