Google Ads Audit: Step-by-Step Guide [Free Template]

Running successful Google ad campaigns isn’t just about setting them up—it’s about continuous improvement. Over time, you will encounter conversion tracking issues, wasted ad spend, and lower returns on ad spend. That’s where a Google Ads audit comes in. By evaluating key campaign elements, you can uncover hidden issues, refine targeting, and maximize your return on investment. 

In this blog, we’ll explore why regular Google Ads Audit are essential and how they can transform your ad performance. Let’s dive in!

What is a Google Ads Audit?

Google Ads Audit (also known as PPC Audit/SEM Audit) is a process of thoroughly reviewing your Google Ads account and campaigns. The audit aims to understand the overall performance of ad campaigns and gather key information to enhance their performance.

The audit also helps you understand underperforming ads. With this information, advertisers can create an optimization plan and make necessary adjustments. 

Now, let’s examine why you must regularly audit your Google ads account.

Why Regular Google Ads Audits are Crucial for PPC Campaigns?

Google Ads Audit ensures that your ad campaigns are performing at their peak. These audits provide valuable insights that can significantly improve performance, reduce wasted spending, and refine targeting strategies. 

Not only that, Audits help lower costs by identifying areas of underperformance and addressing issues impacting your quality score,  leading to better ad placements and lower costs per click. They also boost ad placement and increase return on investment. 

Also, evaluating ad copy effectiveness ensures your creatives are engaging and driving conversions.

Keeping that in mind, we will now explore the steps to audit Google Ads.

Steps to Perform a Google Ads Audit for Better PPC Results

Now we will dive into the various steps involved to perform a Google Ads Audit:

1. Identify Your Campaign Objectives

Before diving deep into the details of the Google Ads audit, let’s take a step back and understand what you’re trying to achieve by running PPC campaigns.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Is it to encourage traffic, conversions, and sales?
• How do you measure ad success? Is it through click-through rates, conversion rates, Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), etc.
• Is your current Google Ads budget realistic in terms of achieving your goals?

Additionally, you can also find goals on Google Ads, known as ‘campaign objectives.’

In Google ads, you must choose your campaign objective before you select the campaign type.

Google shows you the following options:

• Sales: Selecting this objective means you aim to drive sales or customer conversions.
• Leads: When you select leads, you want individuals to interact with your ad and provide their contact information.
• Website Traffic: To encourage visits to your website.
• Awareness & Consideration: Using this objective, you can reach a wider audience and spread awareness about your product; this involves running multiple ad formats and engaging with potential customers who have already expressed interest in your brand.
• App Promotion: Choose this objective when you want to drive installs and engagement.

Carefully identify the goals and campaign objectives you want to achieve through Google Ads. Doing so will give you a direction for auditing your Google Ads account.

Let’s look into how you must perform a Google Ads Audit.

2. Account Level Audit

Let’s start by examining your Google Ads account. This level of audit includes how you’ve configured settings, your account structure, keywords, targeting, and audiences.

Review Account Settings:

Review Auto-apply settings: The Auto-apply feature allows Google to make changes to your account automatically. Ensure you don’t activate this feature to have more control over your PPC campaigns.

Tip: This feature is recommended to advertisers running multiple ad campaigns and saving time.

Here’s how you can check: 

Go to your Google Ads account >> click the Admin icon in the left-hand-side menu >> navigate to Account settings >> Click on Auto-apply.

• Expanding the “Auto-apply” option will show all the subscribed auto-apply recommendations and outline all the recommendations you can auto-apply based on your recent activity.
• Click on Go to auto-apply settings to change the list of auto-applied recommendations.

Check the Google’s recommendations tab in your Google Ads account regularly and accept only the valid and most relevant ones.

Check for Automatic Asset Creation: When you enable this setting, Google also automatically generates AI text assets for campaigns. 

Here’s how you can enable automatic asset creation:

• Go to your Google Ads account.
• Click the Campaigns icon.
• Click the Campaigns drop-down in the section menu.
• Click Campaigns. 
• Go to the Settings tab at the top, then select the checkbox next to the campaign you want to edit. 
• Click Edit.
• Select ‘Change automatically created assets’ settings from the drop-down.
• Click Turn on, and
• Then click Apply.

NOTE: As the performance of these assets varies widely, you may want to opt-out once you have your assets in place.

Review Account & Campaign Structure

You must structure your campaigns to align with your business objectives and target audience.

Hence, you should have separate campaigns for different product lines, services, or campaign objectives on Google ads (such as brand awareness vs. lead generation).

Here’s how you can structure Google ads campaigns:

Organize ads into smaller sets of closely related keywords: If you’re selling hair care products for women and want to run ads to promote your curly hair care products. Create ads targeting keywords related to curly hair. This specificity will allow you to target only curly-haired women, driving conversions and sales.

For example: 

You are trying to generate leads with Google ads and plan to create a series of ads. Your ads 1, 2, and 3 focus on selling products to women with curly hair. So you can target keywords like curly hair shampoo, curly hair conditioner, curly hair care, etc., for these ads and group them into one.

Check if there’s an overlap between ad groups and campaigns: This simply means duplication in keyword targeting. You do not want to compete within yourself, driving up costs and diluting your performance data. Hence, you must identify duplicate campaigns and ad groups to avoid cannibalization. 

Using a search terms report, you can identify your duplicate search terms.

Here’s how to view your search terms report:

• Go to your Google Ads account >> click campaigns >> click insights and reports, then Search terms.

When you access the report, you’ll see data on the search terms many individuals use, which have triggered impressions and clicks.

If you’re having problems setting up your Google Ads account, here’s an official page from Google with a checklist to help you set up your account.

Google Ads Keyword & Targeting

When it comes to keywords, check for the following:

• Ensure that keywords directly relate to the ad group’s theme to maintain high relevance across your ads.
• Use a mix of broad-match keywords and exact-match keywords to help you balance reach and relevance.
• Don’t miss out on negative keywords. These keywords prevent your ads from showing on irrelevant search queries, saving your budget for more qualified leads.
• Use Branded keywords to help your potential customers find you faster. Some common examples of branded keywords include Apple iPhone, Loreal Paris, etc.
  • Speaking of branded keywords, make sure you’re adding brand misspellings. Don’t forget to include misspellings of your brand name in bids. Include any relevant misspellings in your campaigns to capture a broad audience.
  • You can also use Google’s Auction Insights report in your Google Ads account to compare your campaign’s performance against that of your competitors. 

We have curated a blog post on proven methods to find the best keywords in Google Ads in Google Ads. Give it a read to improve your keyword ranking.

Review and/or incorporate GA4 audiences

Universal Analytics has been sunsetted, and users have fully transitioned to Google Analytics 4. Now, the standard analytics is Google Analytics 4.

Check for the following:

• Ensure your Google Analytics 4 and your Google Ads account are connected. 
• You must have a Google Account that has the following permissions:
  • Google Account should have administrative access to a Google Ads account (or a Google Ads manager account). 
  • You should also set up auto-tagging in the Google Ads account.
  • The Google Ads Account requires at least a “Marketer” user access permissions level in the corresponding Google Analytics property Google Ads linking configuration. 

NOTE: If you don’t have access to create your Analytics Audiences within your Google Ads account, you do not have enough permissions.

You can use Google Analytics 4 to auto-generate audiences or recreate existing audiences, including:

• Likely 7-day churning purchasers
• Likely 7-day churning users
• Likely 7-day purchasers 
• Likely first-time 7-day purchasers
• Predicted 28-day top spenders

3. Campaign Level Audit

After reviewing your Google Ads account on the account level, let’s examine the key aspects of reviewing Google Ads campaigns.

Audit Your Google Ads Copy and Creative:

• Review the performance of each ad copy and creative asset to determine which ads drive the most engagement and conversions.
  • Look at headlines, descriptions, and calls to action (CTAs) used in your campaigns.
  • Additionally, assess if your messaging resonates with your target audience.

Pro tip: Also read our blog on Google ads examples where we have discussed what types of ad copies work for Google ads.

Audit Ad Groups, Ad Formats, and Campaign Types:

• Ad Groups
  • Ad groups consist of one or more ads targeting similar audiences. They are part of a campaign, and it is essential to categorize them based on a unified theme. 
  • After determining the ad groups, review them carefully and check if the messaging meets your business objectives.
  • Additionally, explore other segments for your ads based on demographics, interests, or other relevant factors. You can also use these segments to group your ads into one.

• Ad Formats

• With Google Ads, you can format your ads into text, images, video, shopping, etc. However, it is crucial to understand that each ad format has its purpose.
  • For instance, a video ad of ‘how to use a certain shampoo for curly hair’ is ideal to drive brand awareness. On the other hand, shopping ads are ideal if you’re looking for conversions. Hence, choose the best ad format that fits your campaign goals.

• Campaign Types

              You must also review campaign types and ad formats. Analyze whether you could use other ad types, like dynamic display or search ads, to reach your goals.

Evaluate Google Ads Bidding Strategies & Budget Allocation for Cost Efficiency

Bids are the maximum amount you will pay when someone visits your ad. You will pay each time a visitor clicks on your ad. 

It is crucial to choose the bidding strategy based on your campaign objectives. You can choose a certain strategy for generating clicks and another one to drive conversions.

Google offers you various bidding strategies, including:

Smart Bidding:

Smart Bidding is a set of automated bid strategies that uses AI to optimize for conversions or conversion value in every auction. It also considers a wide range of auction-time signals such as device, location, time of day, language, and operating system to capture the unique context of every search.

Below are the smart bidding strategies you can use:

• Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
• Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
• Maximize Conversions
• Maximize Conversion Value
• Enhanced CPC (ECPC)

CPC Bidding:

Choose the following strategies to generate clicks and traffic to your ads.

• Manual CPC (Cost Per Click)
• Maximize Clicks

Visibility:

You can choose the following strategies if your goal is to enhance your ad visibility.

• Target Impression Share
• CPM
• Target Cost per thousand impressions (tCPM) 
• Viewable Cost per mille (vCPM)

These bidding strategies must align with your goals, and it is important to note that when your goals change, so should your bidding strategy. Here’s how to change the bidding strategy in your Google Ads account:

• Go to your Google Ads account.
• Click Campaigns.
• Click Campaigns from the drop-down menu.
• Select the campaign.
• Click settings.
• Open bidding and then click ‘Change bid’ strategy.
• Select your new bid strategy from the drop-down menu.
• Click Save.

Here’s how to evaluate your bidding strategies:

• Monitor Key Performance Indicators such as CTR, conversion rate, and cost per conversion.
• Review past performance data to identify trends and patterns. 
• Compare your performance against industry benchmarks.
• Conduct experiments using different bidding strategies.

Here’s how to experiment with bidding strategies:

STEP 1: Go to your Google ads account >> click on campaigns >> choose ‘Experiments’ from the drop-down menu.

STEP 2: Select the experiment draft.

STEP 3: Select the campaign type you would like to experiment with:

When you click ‘Continue,’ you will be taken to another window where you can add or edit details. Choose the draft campaign and allocate 50/50 split traffic (or another ratio).

Define the experiment duration (at least 4 weeks). 

After evaluating, adjust your bids based on their performance. You can increase or decrease bids, use automated bidding, or use bid modifiers.

This is where budget allocation also plays a significant role. Based on campaign performance, you can focus on high-performing ones and stop overspending on low-performing ones.

Ad Extensions (Assets)

Ad extensions are now known as Assets. Ad extensions enhance visibility by providing additional information, such as site links, contact details, callouts, ratings, call to action, structured snippets, etc.

While auditing ad extensions:

• Check for relevance to products/services, 
• Accuracy with up-to-date information and 
• The status of each extension.

Additionally, you can check the performance of each ad extension and understand how many clicks and conversions each extension is driving to your Google ads campaigns.

Here’s how you can view/edit them:

In your Google ads account >> left-side menu >> select Assets >> click Assets in the drop-down menu. Here, you will see a list of ad extensions present across your campaigns:

Check for the impressions, clicks, and interaction rate columns to gauge the performance of each asset.

4. Performance Audit

It’s time to review the key metrics, such as conversions, understand the ad performance in-depth through the quality score, and look at the performance channel-wise.

Quality Score, Click-Through Rate, and Cost Per Click Audit

Let’s just quickly brush up with definitions:

Click-through rate (CTR): CTR is the percentage of individuals who click on your ad. A high CTR indicates that users find your ads and listings helpful and relevant.

You can measure the CTR against industry standards and estimate whether a campaign has a good CTR. 

Here’s how to check CTR:

STEP 1: In your Google ads account >> click campaigns >> click overview.

STEP 2: You can view the overall performance of your campaigns on the right-hand side screen. Click on the campaign and ad group drop-down to select a campaign or an ad group. You can view the CTR.

Source – Runningrobots

Check for the following:

• Analyze the CTR across ad groups, campaigns, and ads to identify areas with lower CTRs. 
• You can also use the segmentation features to see how CTR varies based on user devices (mobile, desktop) and locations to optimize targeting further. 
• Find out the average CTRs for your industry to understand if your campaign performance is aligned with expectations. 
• Consider fine-tuning your ad copy, imagery, CTA, and overall brand experience to resonate with your audience.

Cost-per-click (CPC): CPC is the percentage that represents the average cost of a click on your ad. 

On the same screen, you will find Avg. CPC (as shown in the picture below).

Source – seroundtable

Here’s how you can lower your CPC:

• Add negative keywords. Go to Insights and reports >> search terms>> At the bottom, you can add negative keywords.
• Check for assets at your campaign level. Add relevant ad extensions based on your business, such as a site link or call option. These ad extensions enhance ad visibility, leading to more clicks, conversions, and lower CPC.
• Cater to a broad audience by selecting multiple locations or the entire state. This technique will allow you to target highly profitable keywords, resulting in more visibility, clicks, and lower cost per click. You can edit your location by going to Audiences, keywords, and content >> Locations >> add locations >> increase the radius (from 20 miles to 50 miles or so).
• Additionally, having up-to-date, high-quality content, choosing the right ad format, and updating landing pages can lower your CPC percentages.

Quality Score: Quality Score is a diagnostics tool that helps you understand how well your ad performs against other advertisers. The score is measured from 1 to 10 based on factors like ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected click-through rate. Here’s a guide on how to improve your Google ads quality score.

Here’s how to check your quality score:

In your Google Ads account >> click campaigns >> click Audiences, keywords, and content >> click search keywords. In the upper right corner of the table, click the columns icon >> under “Modify columns for keywords >> click on the drop-down arrow beside “All columns” and then open the Quality Score section >> add a quality score.

You can view the quality score in the table.

Source – adespresso

How to improve quality score:

• Review expected CTR, ad relevance, landing page experience. If these components have ‘avg’, ‘below avg’, ‘above avg’ statuses, try to improve ad copy, keyword selection, and landing page copy.
• Group keywords into themes (based on products, services, or categories) to make your ads relevant to them. 
• Improve CTR and landing page copy. A score between 7 and 10 is typically considered good.

Check Google Ads Conversion Tracking and Reporting

Ensure your Google Ads account is connected to your Google Analytics 4 and the conversions are tracked accurately. 

Here’s how to check:

STEP 1: In your Google ads account >> From the left-side menu >> select Goals >> select ‘conversions’

Source – Wordtream

STEP 2: Review your conversion tracking by looking at your tracking URLs, conversions, goals, UTM parameters, and other tracking elements.

STEP 3: Test Conversions

You can test by clicking the troubleshooting option in the Actions column. Ensure there is no double-tracking or missing data when using GA4. You can do so by performing a test order yourself and understanding how the tracking is working for Google Analytics and Google Ads; this will help you determine if there are any double-counting conversions.

This review process aims to ensure that your conversion tags are triggering correctly and that all your data is captured comprehensively.

Also, access reports and monitor key metrics like conversions, ROAS, and ROI. Apply filters and understand every metric in detail. 

Audit Performance based on Different Channels, Devices and Locations:

Do you remember filling out a random form and answering the question, ‘How did you hear about us?’ there are definitely multiple options, such as Google, Facebook, through a friend, and so on. 

And the answer differs from one another.

Similarly, users might find your ad through various channels, devices, and from different locations.

For example, you might observe that some ads perform better on mobile than on the web and vice versa. So, you must optimize ads accordingly for all devices. 

Regarding location, targeting the right location is essential to generate more clicks and conversions. Understand if your current location targeting settings are helping you drive more conversions. Based on this metric, adjust your locations accordingly.

To adjust your location, go to your Google ads account >> click Audiences, keywords, and content >> click on Locations.

You can either enter locations manually or select the radius option to add locations.

Source – WebFX

5. Website Audit

This section aims to make you understand how to audit a website, landing page, and perform a competitor analysis.

Landing Page Audit for Google Ads Campaigns

Landing page optimization involves inspecting many aspects and elements. We have highlighted a few:

• Headline: A headline must be engaging, clear, short, and, importantly, interest the user to read more. Check if your landing page headlines meet these criteria and rework them if they don’t.
• Call to Action: A clear call to action is crucial if you want your customers to take appropriate action. These must be well-aligned with your entire copy. Mention ‘Learn more’ if you’re redirecting users to educational content, and use ‘Buy Now’ if you want them to install/download your app.
• Relevance with Ads and Keywords: Ensure your landing page matches your ads and keywords. For example, if you’re targeting a keyword like “t-shirt discount,” ensure your landing page shows the discount on the t-shirt.
• Also, your website must allow mobile users to quickly find what they want with simple navigation and adequate contact information.
• Provide helpful and unique content on your landing page to give a better understanding of your product or service.

Additionally, check if the form is functioning—check if the buttons are working and firing off correctly. You might also want to create a thank you page for users who give away their details. 

Website Audit

Inspecting a website involves a comprehensive approach, paying attention to content quality, structure, and technical SEO. Also, check and optimize for the following aspects:

• Mobile-Friendliness: Ensure your website is fully responsive. Check for touch element spacing, font sizes, and viewport settings to ensure mobile users can easily navigate your site.

• Site Speed and Performance: Check page load times. You must aim for fast page load times by optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, and minimizing HTTP requests. You can check the page load time using online tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. You will have to enter your website URL, and the tools will show you the page load time, insights, and recommendations.

• User Experience (UX): Ensure your site’s navigation is intuitive. Check if you have placed clear and compelling CTAs on relevant pages to guide users to their desired pages.

• Check for Policies: Importantly, cross-check if you have missed adding important information such as return and refund policy, payment methods, contact information, shipping policies, and terms and conditions/privacy policy. These are mandatory for promoting your products/services on Google Ads.

Competitor Analysis 

Analyzing your competitors gives you insights, such as:

• Who are your competitors, and where do you stand?
• Are you targeting the exact keywords?
• How are their ads performing against yours and so on?

Here’s how to check your competitors’ ad performance:

In your Google ads account >> campaigns >> Auctions insights report. This report will provide an overview of your competitor’s ads with metrics such as impression share, overlap rate, etc.

Source – Seowebdesign

You can also use Google Ads Transparency Center, Google search results, and third-party tools like SEMRush and SpyFu to uncover your competitors’ strategies, traffic, etc.

Gathering all this vital information makes your auditing process more effective. You can use analytics tools to track your competitors’ data; we shall discuss this further in the following sections.

6. Policy Violations

You can also check if your ads, ad groups, and assets are violating Google ads policies inside Google ads itself. 

Here’s how to check:

• In your Google ads account >> click campaigns >> select ads/ad groups/assets >> check the ‘status’ column (it shows the current status).
• For detailed information on policy violations, go to Tools >> troubleshooting >> Policy Manager. You will see a list of all the policy violations along with their reasons. Check for each reason and start resolving them.
  • Here’s how:
  • In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns >> Click the Campaigns drop-down in the section menu >> click Ads >> hover over the ad or asset and click Edit >> edit the ad or asset so that it complies with the policy >> click Save.
  • Google will review your ad automatically. You can check the status column later to see if the ad is active or disapproved.
• You will also get an email from Google regarding the ad disapproval due to policy violations. This email also includes the reasons for disapproval.

Destination Policy Violation

Source – Google

One of the most common reasons for policy violations is destination. You must ensure that the destination (landing page) you provide in your ad functions correctly and meets Google’s destination requirements. 

• A common error for destination policy violation is ‘destination not working.’ 
• Ensure your ad destination is working for Google AdsBot web crawlers and does not return any destination errors (such as an HTTP error response code) globally. 

If you have fixed the destination policy violation, you can request an appeal from your Google ads account’s policy manager.

Here’s how:

• In your Google Ads account >> Tools >> Click the Troubleshooting drop down in the section menu >> click Policy Manager>> on the “Policy issues” tab, find the ad you want to appeal >> click Appeal >> under “Reason for appealing,” select Dispute decision or Made changes to comply with policy >> click Submit.
• Google takes some time to review the ad; you can track the status from the policy manager later.

Along with policy violations, it is important to pay attention to misrepresentation errors. A common error is caused by providing inaccurate and misleading information.

Misrepresentation Error

Google Merchant Center misrepresentation error occurs when Google finds misleading or inaccurate information and violates Google ads policies. Subsequently, this error leads to account suspension.

To avoid or overcome this error, follow:

1. Provide relevant and accurate information and maintain up-to-date information.
2. Review Google ads policies thoroughly and remove products that violate the policies.
3. Provide accurate business and contact information.
4. Update your website and product data in your GMC account.

7. Optimization Plan Audit

Consider all the factors mentioned above and thoroughly review your optimization plan before making changes. Ensure that it is comprehensive and does not lead to increased errors. Additionally, you must know that Google ads auditing is not a one-time activity, so you must be open to adjusting the optimization plan on the go. 

Google Ads Audit Checklist – Free Template

We have curated a comprehensive Google Ads audit checklist to ease your Google Ads Audit process. You will also get a free Google Ads Audit template to keep track of the changes made to your account.

Download the google ads audit checklist and free google ads audit template.

Common Mistakes Made During a Google Ads Audit

Take a closer look at the common mistakes advertisers make when performing a Google Ads Audit. We have also highlighted how you can prevent these mistakes beforehand. 

Double Counting Conversions

You might have two conversion actions counting the same thing. 

Solution:

• To avoid this, segment conversions by conversion action in your Google ads.
• Check for primary conversions in the conversions tab and remove the old conversion action.

Broad Match Keyword Spend

When you target a broad match keyword in your ads, your ad will be triggered for various search terms. While this is a good thing, the downside is that your ad will be triggered for search terms loosely connected to the broad match keyword.

The problem is that you’re wasting your ad budget on search terms loosely connected to the broad match keyword.

Invalid Clicks in Google Ads can also be a hidden factor behind wasted spend. These are non-genuine or fraudulent clicks that drain your budget without contributing to meaningful engagement.

Solution

• Have a negative keyword strategy to eliminate irrelevant search terms.
• Review your search terms thoroughly when using broad-match keywords.
• Use exact and phrase match types to yield higher-quality traffic with better intent.
• Experiment with different match types for your keywords and monitor the performance. 
• Use A/B testing to find the right balance for your campaigns.

Overlooking Key Performance Indicators

When reviewing your Google Ads, metrics play a significant role. They drive your entire optimization plan. A common mistake made by advertisers is checking the surface-level metrics. A high CTR is great, but clicks do not make sense with a low conversion rate. Hence, it is important to perform in-depth analysis. 

Solution:

• Look beyond the basic metrics and understand the context behind each metric and how it relates to your overall campaign goals.
• Balance immediate performance indicators like CTR with long-term indicators like customer lifetime value or Quality Score.
• Here are some industry-standard benchmarks. The average CTR across industries is between 2.4% and 4.6%. The average CPC is $2.69 for search and $0.63 for display. The average conversion rate is 3.75% for search and 0.77% for display. The average CPA is $48.96 for search and $75.51 for display.

Incorrect Usage of PMax Campaigns

Performance Max campaigns are powered by Machine Learning. They need as much data as possible to yield better results. Therefore, providing minimal data leads to bad performance of PMax campaigns. 

Solution:

• Upload all 15 to 20 images while setting up the PMax campaign.
• Fill out the headlines and descriptions up to the maximum limit.
• Provide a logo.
• Additionally, Google announced new features such as enhanced search reporting and guidance and more campaign controls. Hence, advertisers must take advantage of these features to maximize ad performance.

Read Also: Examples of PMax campaign & PMax Campaign assets.

Misaligned Ad Content and Keywords

Your ads are not relevant to the individuals clicking on them. This approach results in higher clicks and low to zero conversions.

Solution:

• Ensure your ad copy and keywords closely match what you offer.

Ignoring Violations of Google Ads Policies

Your account can be suspended if you are found violating Google ads policies. These include endangering users, providing false information, impersonating brands, and more.

This policy violation is usually referred to as ‘Unacceptable Business Practices Policy Violation.’

Solution:

• Thoroughly read and review Google ads policies.
• Resolve policy violations from your Google ads account.
• Fix the issues immediately and request an appeal.

Missing Negative Keywords

Adding negative keywords to your campaigns enables your ads not to appear for irrelevant searches and reduces wasted ad spend.

Solution:

• Identify and add negative keywords in your search terms report in Google ads.

Other common mistakes in Google Ads audits include ineffective bidding strategies, a lack of mobile optimization, and errors in location targeting. To automate and improve ad visibility, you can use automated bidding strategies and responsive search ads. Utilize first-party data to protect your customers’ privacy.

Best Tools for Conducting a Google Ads Audit

Let’s look at the best analytics tools to streamline and ease the Google ads audit process using the Google Ads audit tool.

Google Ads Performance Grader (WordStream)

Source – Wordstream

Wordstream’s Google Ads performance grader offers a comprehensive and straightforward approach to auditing Google Ads. It provides a detailed analysis of strengths and areas for improvement in a Google ads account.

Key Features

• Detailed Performance Insights: Offers a fast, in-depth analysis of your Google Ads account, grading it against industry benchmarks.
• Provides recommendations: Besides reports, it recommends specific actions to improve campaign performance, including bid adjustments and keyword optimization.
• Performance Benchmarking: Compares and evaluates your campaigns against competitors.
• Wasted Spend Analysis: Identifies areas where your budget may be wasted, whether on ineffective keywords or poorly targeted ads and offers suggestions for reallocating spending more effectively.
• Quality Score Evaluation: This service analyzes your Quality Scores and offers insights that can lead to lower costs per click and better ad positions.

Pricing: This tool is free.

SEMRush

Source – SEMRush

SEMRush comes with a PPC advertising tool kit and offers a set of comprehensive features 

that encompasses SEO, social media monitoring, content marketing, and competitor analysis.

Key Features

• Competitor Analysis: SEMRush lets advertisers get detailed insights into ad spending, keyword bids, and campaign performance.
• PPC Keyword Tool: Helps to identify keywords, match types, organize them, and remove conflicts within keyword lists.
• Ad Builder: This tool helps advertisers create ad copies based on competitive research.
• Site Audit Tool: Identifies and helps you fix issues to improve the performance of your PPC efforts.

Pricing: You will get the PPC tool in the Pro plan, which costs $135.95/month.

Optmyzr

Source – Optmyzr

Optmyzr is a PPC management software that offers a wide variety of solutions, such as paid search optimization, automated bidding, audits and insights, AI-powered tools, and more.

Key Features

• Performance Data Insights provides audit tools, cause charts, recommendations, and growth opportunities. These insights also include an overall picture of your account’s health.
• Optimize Campaigns: Offers a range of one-click solutions to optimize bids and keywords.
• In-depth Reporting: Features reporting tools that provide insightful analysis of campaign performance. 
• Advanced Scripting: With the enhanced scripting functionality, advertisers can customize and automate complex tasks.
• Bid Management: Allows advertisers to automate bid adjustments using algorithms.

Pricing: Starts at $249/month.

Google Analytics 4

Source – owox

Google Analytics 4 is an advanced tool that helps you measure traffic and engagement across platforms such as websites and apps. GA4 is the newer version of universal analytics that works on an event-based model.

Key Features

Conversion Tracking: Connect your Google ads account with GA4 to get accurate data without double-counts or missing conversion data.

Audiences: GA4 allows you to create and edit audiences. It offers pre-built audiences and allows you to configure your audiences based on a specific geographic area, cart abandoners, users who have made a minimum number of purchases, and so on.

Negative location targeting: Using Google Analytics, you can also track your wasted spending on countries outside of your service area. 

Measure campaign performance: GA4 provides comprehensive, privacy-centric analytics to measure and optimize app campaign performance.

Event Tracking and Analysis: GA4’s event-based data model allows for detailed tracking of user actions beyond standard page views. By setting up custom events, you can monitor specific behaviors that align with your advertising goals, such as form submissions or product purchases, providing deeper insights into ad performance.

Pricing: GA4 is free for small and medium businesses, and for large enterprises, GA4 offers a paid version of GA 360.

Google Ads Scripts

Google Ads Scripts are Javascript code that allows you to automate routine tasks, gain valuable insight, and optimize campaign performance. Using these scripts, you can easily add/edit/remove items to manage your account.

Key Features

Account Anomaly Detector Script: Monitors Google ads account for unusual fluctuations in key metrics such as clicks, impressions, conversions, and spending.

Ad Performance Report Script: Identifies top-performing and underperforming ads and automates ad adjustments based on predefined rules.

Bid by Weather Script: Adjusts bids based on real-time weather conditions in specific locations and aligns bids with consumer behavior.

Change History Script: This script analyzes account changes over a specified period and provides insights into the impact of modifications on performance.

Account Summary Script: This script generates a comprehensive summary of account performance metrics and offers a quick assessment of account health.

Here’s how to access the Scripts Interface:

Go to your Google Ads account >> Navigate to Tools & Settings > Bulk Actions > Scripts >> Create and Configure the Script >> Click the + button to add a new script or choose a script template.

Pricing: Free to use

How Often Should You Perform a Google Ads Audit?

It is recommended that PPC audits be performed every 3 to 6 months, depending on the size of your organization. Conducting quarterly Google ads audits helps you adjust and capitalize on seasonal trends. Auditing for 6 months helps maintain long-term campaign health.

In addition to auditing quarterly or bi-annually, you must consider a few situations that demand Google ads audit. They are:

New Google Ads Account: When you’ve opened a new Google Ads account to manage, you should audit it to assess its overall health and identify opportunities for quick wins.

Performance Decline: If you notice a significant drop in key metrics like conversions, clicks, or return on ad spend, an audit can help you understand the causes and how to fix them.

Campaign Restructuring: When you make changes to campaign or targeting settings, perform an audit to ensure no inconsistencies or overlaps.

Post-Audit Activities

Now you have the optimization plan, the question is, how do you implement these changes in your Google ads? Well, here’s what you can do:

Prioritize the high-impact Issues

After preparing the optimization plan, it’s time to take action. First, it is important to fix the issues that have a high impact and lead to long-term success. You can use the ICE framework to identify such issues. Impact, Confidence, and Ease is a prioritization framework that will help you evaluate and rank your ideas.

Let’s understand how this works:

• Firstly, identify issues with a high impact, such as conversion tracking, website audit, etc.
• Next, analyze your confidence in making the change based on your prior experience.
• Then, evaluate how easy it is to implement the suggested changes. 
• Assign a score for each improvement based on their priority. 
• Multiple these scores to get the ICE weightage.
• The action with the highest score will likely have a higher impact, so you can start with it, pick the second highest, and so on.

Monitor the Progress

After implementing the changes successfully, you must also monitor the performance and progress of your ad campaigns.

You can track by generating reports or creating dashboards to continuously monitor key metrics like conversions, identify areas performing well and not performing well, and further optimize them.

Reporting and Documentation

Keep detailed records of the changes made, track performance over time, and adjust your strategy as necessary.

Conclusion

Conducting a Google Ads audit is critical to maintaining an optimized and cost-efficient PPC campaign. Regularly reviewing your account structure, keywords, ad copy, bidding strategies, and conversion tracking can maximize your ROI and stay competitive in your market. Implementing audit recommendations and following best practices ensures your campaigns continually evolve with the changing digital landscape.

FAQs

What is a Google Ads audit? 

Google ads audit is a process of reviewing a Google ads account to identify issues and fix them. The audit includes inspecting account and campaign settings, landing pages, ad copies, keywords, and key performance metrics such as conversions and return on ad spend.

Why is conducting a Google Ads audit important?

Conducting a Google ads audit is crucial for maintaining the health of your account. Regular audits help you identify issues and improve the performance of your campaigns and return on investment (ROI). 

What are the key components of a Google Ads audit? 

Account and campaign structure, ad group organization, quality score, landing page, bidding strategy, ad extensions, and negative keywords are some of the key components of a Google ads audit.

How often should a Google Ads audit be performed? 

Depending on your company size, you can conduct the Google ads audit quarterly, annually, or bi-annually.

What tools can be used for a Google Ads audit? 

For a Google ads audit, you can use tools such as Google Analytics 4, SEMRush, Ahrefs, Wordstream’s performance grader tool, and Google ads scripts.

How can I improve the Quality Score in my Google Ads campaigns? 

Firstly, review the quality score components like ad relevance, expected click-through rate, and landing page experience. Next, create ads that are more relevant to keywords, improve CTR, and update the landing page. 

What are negative keywords, and why are they important in a Google Ads audit? 

Negative keywords prevent your ad from showing in search results when a user searches for a specific word or phrase. They help you appear only in front of interested customers, increasing conversion rates.

How can I identify wasted ad spend during an audit? 

You can identify wasted ad spend by tracking and monitoring key metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, and cost per acquisition.

What metrics should be prioritized in a Google Ads audit? 

Prioritize key performance indicators such as click-through rate (CTR), quality score, Conversion rate (CVR), Cost per action (CPA), Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), impression share, bounce rate, Cost per click (CPC), Lifetime Value (LTV), and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). 

What should I look for in a keyword audit? 

Review the current keyword rankings, analyze whether you’re using broad and exact-match keywords, branded keywords, and negative keywords, and look for whether you’re using the same keywords in multiple ads and campaigns.

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