Self-audit 25 checks · 5 groups · 20 minutes
The 20-minute Google Ads self-audit.
Twenty-five yes-or-no checks in five groups. Open your account, go through each question and tick what passes. Anything you cannot answer counts as a no. Three or more nos in any one group means that group is where the money is leaking, and that is where to start.
Group 1 of 5 Tracking and measurement
Is the account counting the right things?
- Why it matters: the bidding optimises towards whatever you call a conversion. Count the wrong thing and it buys the wrong traffic very efficiently.
- Why it matters: untracked calls make the campaigns that drive them look like failures, so they get cut first.
- Why it matters: double counting halves your real cost per lead on paper and hides the problem until the bank balance shows it.
- Why it matters: consent banners and browser restrictions lose a slice of conversions; without enhanced or offline data the bidding is working from an incomplete picture.
- Why it matters: without values, a £50 job and a £5,000 job look identical to the bidding, so it chases the cheap one.
Group 2 of 5 Account structure and settings
Is the account set up to let the winners win?
- Why it matters: both quietly extend your ads to lower-intent inventory at your chosen bids. Off until proven costs nothing.
- Why it matters: the default shows your ads to people outside your area who merely searched about it, which is wasted spend for almost every UK service business.
- Why it matters: most accounts have hours and devices that convert at several times the cost of others. Treating them all the same is an even spread of waste.
- Why it matters: one campaign with one budget and one bid strategy cannot prioritise, so the cheap, easy traffic swallows the budget.
- Why it matters: capping a winner while an average campaign spends freely is the most common silent leak in an account.
Group 3 of 5 Keywords, match types and search terms
Do you know what you actually paid for?
- Why it matters: keywords are what you asked for; search terms are what you paid for. The gap between the two is where budget goes.
- Why it matters: a negative added to one campaign leaves the same junk query free to fire in all the others.
- Why it matters: broad match without conversion data is a wide net with nothing steering it. It finds volume, not buyers.
- Why it matters: brand clicks are cheap and convert well. Mixed in, they flatter every generic metric and hide how the real prospecting performs.
- Why it matters: those 20 terms are usually a third or more of the spend. If three of them are wrong, the account is wrong.
Group 4 of 5 Bidding and budget
Is the money pointed at the right place?
- Why it matters: Smart Bidding on too few conversions sets bids on guesses and swings wildly; manual bidding with plenty of data leaves money on the table.
- Why it matters: a target with no economics behind it either strangles volume or buys leads you lose money on.
- Why it matters: every big change restarts learning. Accounts that get poked weekly never leave it.
- Why it matters: evenly split budgets are a management convenience, not a strategy. The winners should be fed first.
- Why it matters: letting the algorithm discover your busy season halfway through hands the cheapest leads of the year to competitors.
Group 5 of 5 Ads and landing pages
Does the click land somewhere that converts?
- Why it matters: the click-to-page journey is where most leads are lost. The message should match at every step, and Quality Score rewards it.
- Why it matters: most Google Ads clicks are on phones, and every second of waiting loses a share of the people you have already paid for.
- Why it matters: a page that offers six things gets none of them. One form or call button, above the fold, is what converts paid traffic.
- Why it matters: broken forms and unanswered lines do not show in the dashboard. They show up as "no leads" weeks later.
- Why it matters: more assets mean a bigger ad and a stronger Ad Rank at the same bid. Leaving them blank gives the space to competitors.
Your score What to do with it
Add up the nos across all five groups.
0 to 5 nos
Tidy.
The account is fundamentally sound. Fix the nos, then run the checklist again in 90 days. Gains from here are incremental, which is exactly where you want to be.
6 to 12 nos
Leaking. Fix in order.
Tracking first, because nothing else can be judged until it is right. Then search terms. Then bidding. Expect the numbers to look worse before they look better: the first fix usually reveals the truth.
13 or more nos
A rebuild is cheaper than repairs.
At this point patching costs more than starting again. Rebuild the structure around real conversions, keep the old campaigns paused for reference, and move the budget across in stages.
Want us to run it for you?
The free audit does exactly this, on your account, with the founder walking you through it live on a call or as a recorded video you keep. No obligation.
Free audit · live or recorded · no obligation