Google Ads accounts rarely fail all at once. They degrade gradually: a recommendation accepted here, a broad match keyword added there, a tracking change nobody documented. Months later the cost per lead has doubled and nobody can say exactly why. An audit is simply a structured look at the whole account to find those accumulated problems. Here are the signs that it is time for one.
1. Cost per result rises while nothing “changed”
If your cost per lead or cost per sale has crept up for three months or more without a clear market reason, something inside the account has shifted. Common culprits are expanded match types, new automated assets, or a bidding strategy learning from flawed conversion data.
2. You cannot explain what counts as a conversion
Ask whoever manages the account to list every primary conversion action and what triggers it. If the answer includes page views, button clicks without confirmation, or two tags for the same form, the bidding algorithm is optimising toward the wrong thing. This is the most expensive problem an account can have, because every other optimisation sits on top of it.
3. The search terms report makes you wince
Open the search terms report for the last 30 days. If you find job seekers, competitors, free-only searches or entirely unrelated services spending real money, negative keyword management has fallen behind. In many accounts a meaningful share of spend goes to terms that could never convert.
4. Your best campaigns are limited by budget
A campaign marked “limited by budget” while weaker campaigns spend freely means money is allocated by habit rather than results. Reallocating budget toward proven campaigns is often the quickest win an audit finds.
5. Auto-applied recommendations are switched on
Google can apply recommendations automatically, including adding keywords, changing bids or creating assets. Some are useful; many increase spend. If nobody has reviewed that setting recently, it is worth checking what has been applied in the change history.
6. Brand searches are mixed with everything else
When brand traffic runs inside a Performance Max or generic campaign, cheap brand conversions make the whole campaign look efficient and hide how poorly the non-brand part performs. Separating them is essential to see the real cost of acquiring new customers.
7. Locations and schedules were never questioned
The default location option targets people “in or interested in” your areas, which can show ads to people far from where you operate. Ad schedules set years ago may no longer match when your team can answer calls. Both are quick to check and often overlooked.
What a useful audit delivers
An audit is only valuable if it ends with priorities. A good one produces:
- a list of tracking issues, fixed first because they affect everything else;
- an estimate of wasted spend by category, such as search terms, locations and devices;
- structural recommendations for campaigns, match types and bidding;
- a short action plan ordered by impact and effort.
You can do much of this yourself with the checks above and a free afternoon. If you would rather have a second pair of eyes, an independent Google Ads audit that also reviews GA4 and Tag Manager catches the tracking problems that account-only reviews tend to miss. Either way, the cost of an audit is usually small compared with even one month of budget spent on the wrong signals.
