How to Audit a Google Ads Account and Decide What to Fix First

Start a Google Ads audit with three questions: can customers reach you, is the account measuring the outcome you want, and does its spending configuration match the amount the business approved? Resolve those foundations before recommending more keywords, different bids or a larger budget.

Then work through targeting, queries, ads, destinations and recent changes. For each material issue, identify what you observed, why it matters and the next action. The finished audit should leave the owner with a short list of decisions, not a score that hides unresolved problems.

Consider a hypothetical service business planning to increase its advertising. Its account reports more conversions, but the audit finds that a brochure interaction is included in the campaign’s chosen custom goal. The business actually wants accepted service enquiries. The reviewer also finds two daily budgets whose full-month reference exceeds the approved media envelope. Neither finding proves the account is unprofitable. Both need attention before the owner can make a sensible expansion decision.

The fictional account’s starting snapshot is simple:

• Business question: can the owner approve more media spend?
• Intended result: an accepted service enquiry, with capacity confirmed separately.
• Measurement concern: the campaign goal also includes brochure activity.
• Spending concern: current daily budgets need reconciliation with the approved monthly amount.
• Unanswered question: whether reported growth represents more useful demand.

These observations set the audit’s order. Measurement and spending need clarification before a larger traffic forecast becomes useful.

Your first-pass Google Ads audit checklist

Use this order to avoid spending the review on minor settings while an active problem remains hidden:

1. Check urgent notices, unexpected spending and broken contact routes.
2. Confirm the business objective, current offer, service area and approved budget.
3. Inspect campaign conversion goals and verify what the important actions count.
4. Compare campaign results with actual enquiries, sales or other intended outcomes.
5. Review budgets and bidding against the objective and available measurement.
6. Inspect targeting and visible search terms for supported mismatches.
7. Read ads, assets and destinations as a single customer journey.
8. Review recent changes and active automation before explaining performance shifts.
9. Prioritize a small set of repairs, investigations and possible tests.

You can complete an initial inspection without changing the account. If the audit is being commissioned externally, agree separately who can implement recommendations. A finding can be urgent while still needing the business owner or account administrator to decide what action is appropriate.

All account examples and numbers in this guide are fictional. They illustrate how to reason from evidence, rather than predicting results for a particular business.

Check for problems that should interrupt the review

Open the account overview and affected campaign statuses. Read the actual notices rather than relying on a report saying “ads are down”. Identify which ads, assets or campaigns are affected and whether the issue concerns policy, billing, verification, a paused item or another delivery condition.

A disapproved ad, an item under review and an account suspension require different responses. Record the exact status and any stated deadline. Use the disapproved-ads guide for ad-level policy diagnosis; an account-level notice needs its own official route.

If someone reports unexpected spending, compare the actual cost records and current budget settings with the approved amount. Do not begin by increasing bids to “recover performance” while the spending question is unresolved.

Test the customer’s essential path

Open the advertised destination directly. Does it load, describe the current service and offer the intended next step? Check a relevant mobile view as well as desktop. A working homepage does not establish that the specific advertised landing page works.

If a form or telephone route needs a controlled test, coordinate it with the receiving team and clearly identify the test. Confirm the result at the destination: accepted submission, delivered notification, correct queue or appropriate response. A visible thank-you message does not by itself prove that a useful enquiry reached the business.

Avoid generating paid clicks just to inspect the website. Use the configured destination and appropriate preview or diagnostic methods. The aim is to verify the path without confusing real campaign activity with the audit.

A confirmed contact failure deserves prompt attention. If active traffic reaches a form that cannot submit, fixing that path is more consequential than tidying campaign names. Save enough evidence to explain the fault and assign the website or intake owner a specific repair.

Handle credible account-security concerns separately

An unfamiliar user or manager relationship is a question to verify, not automatic proof of unauthorized access. Ask the business administrator who the person is and what role they serve.

If there is credible evidence of unauthorized changes, preserve relevant details and involve the responsible account administrator. Do not leave the issue in an ordinary optimization list or remove access impulsively without understanding billing, recovery and operational dependencies.

For a routine audit, use access appropriate to the task. Google’s account access-level documentation describes the available permissions, including read-only inspection. An auditor does not need a shared password to review campaign information.

Establish what the account is supposed to achieve

Before judging settings, write the business decision the audit must support. “Should we increase spend on recurring office contracts?” is more useful than “make the account better”. “Why did accepted enquiries fall after the website launch?” leads to a different investigation.

Confirm the current products or services, intended customers, delivery areas, language support, capacity and the meaningful customer action. Check these with the business rather than inferring them from old advertisements.

The desired action might be a sale, an accepted enquiry, a booking or another measurable milestone. Use the same definition throughout the review. A campaign can perform well against a platform goal that no longer matches the business’s needs.

Record the approved media spend, period and currency. Clarify whether the business’s stated budget includes agency fees, creative, software or taxes. A media-only report cannot establish compliance with an all-in marketing budget unless those other costs are considered separately.

Choose history that fits the question

For a sudden interruption, inspect the recent period and relevant changes. For a performance decision, allow time for the buying cycle and conversion reporting to develop. A current broken URL and a long sales-cycle question should not be forced into the same date window.

Google explains that recent cost can appear before delayed conversions, making a recent period look weaker. Use its conversion-delay guidance to understand the account’s timing before declaring a decline.

Note changes inside the period: a promotion, a new service, a website release, a closure or a change in staffing. If the underlying offer changed halfway through the month, the combined monthly figure may obscure two different situations.

Keep account currency and reporting time zone visible. A Canadian business may use an account configured differently. Do not relabel dollars or shift reporting days simply to match a presentation template.

Compare like with like

If one report counts initial forms and another counts qualified requests, the totals should differ. If one report uses the interaction date and another organizes records by when the enquiry arrived, a daily comparison may also differ.

Start by understanding the units and date basis. A mismatch does not automatically prove broken tracking, and matching totals do not prove that the same events were measured. Use a small sample of real records where permitted to understand how the systems connect.

If important evidence is unavailable, state the decision that remains blocked. “Qualified outcomes cannot currently be linked reliably to campaigns” is useful. “Tracking needs work” leaves the owner guessing what the uncertainty prevents them from deciding.

Audit conversion goals before interpreting performance

Open the conversion summary and inspect the actions relevant to active campaigns. Then inspect each campaign’s effective goal selection. The account’s list of available actions alone does not show which ones a particular campaign uses.

For every important action, ask what triggers it and what business event it represents. Does a “Quote request” action fire after a successfully accepted form, after a click on the submit button or after opening a contact page? The name is a clue, not verification.

Google’s primary and secondary conversion guidance explains that primary actions are used for bidding when their standard goal is selected. Secondary actions are generally observational, but actions inside a custom goal can be used for bidding regardless of that label. Check the actual goal composition.

A worked custom-goal finding

In the hypothetical service account, both campaigns use a custom goal containing accepted service enquiries and brochure interactions. The brochure action is labelled secondary. The business brief identifies accepted enquiries as the outcome it wants to acquire.

The auditor can confidently report that the custom goal includes the brochure action. The auditor cannot conclude from that setting alone how many sales were lost or how much better another configuration would perform.

The next action is to confirm the intended goal and whether a reliable enquiry signal exists. The measurement owner should check the full configuration before proposing the precise change. Removing a supporting action without a functioning replacement may leave the account with a different problem.

Verification should include the saved campaign goal selection, the expected reporting treatment and a later review of actual outcomes. A settings repair can be complete before enough performance evidence exists to judge its commercial effect.

Investigate apparent duplicate or missing signals

Two conversion names that sound similar may represent the same event, separate milestones or a legacy setup. Inspect their source and triggers before recommending deletion.

A sudden rise after a website release could mean more genuine demand, repeated event firing or a changed conversion definition. A sudden fall could mean weaker demand, a broken form, a measurement change or delayed processing. Use a controlled test and the relevant diagnostics to narrow the cause.

The audit should distinguish configuration inspection, functional testing and reporting verification. Each answers a different question. A quiet diagnostic screen does not demonstrate every user path; a single successful test does not establish long-term completeness.

If the issue lies in tags and triggers, assign a focused Google Tag Manager audit. If the intended business outcome exists only in a CRM, identify the missing connection as an implementation dependency rather than pretending that campaign reports already contain it.

Compare reported conversions with real enquiries

Ask sales or intake what happens after the conversion. Are requests suitable, reachable and within the offer? Are genuine enquiries arriving but not being assigned? Are existing-customer calls mixed with new demand?

Read a varied, appropriately redacted sample. Include suitable enquiries, obvious mismatches and unresolved contacts. A complaint about “bad leads” is an important prompt, but it does not yet identify the cause.

An enquiry for a service you do not sell differs from a fake form. A missed callback differs from both. Those distinctions determine whether the next action belongs to targeting, messaging, form safeguards or the response process.

Use the lead-quality diagnosis guide for the detailed review. In the account-wide audit, summarize the repeated pattern and the decision it affects.

Preserve the difference between suitable demand and a sale

A customer can qualify and still choose another provider. A suitable request can be lost because the business has no capacity. A sale can arrive through several influences before the final advertising interaction.

Do not redefine every unsold lead as poor marketing. Equally, do not call every submitted form a qualified opportunity. The audit needs to show where the customer journey succeeds or fails in terms the business recognizes.

If the account is being considered for expansion, ask whether the business can respond to and fulfil more suitable demand. Increasing a budget while the intake queue is already failing can magnify an operational problem.

This is a business discussion rather than a platform setting. The audit should surface it early enough that advertising decisions reflect actual delivery capacity.

Check budgets against the approved spending envelope

Open the campaign budget settings and identify which budgets are independent, shared or set for a campaign’s total duration. Count each shared budget once. Google defines a shared budget as one average daily budget used by multiple campaigns.

For most campaigns with average daily budgets, Google documents a daily billed limit of twice the average daily budget and a monthly limit of 30.4 times that amount. Exceptions and budget changes matter; consult the current spending-limit guidance.

A daily budget is therefore not a promise that every day’s cost will be identical. The audit should examine the actual type and history of the budget instead of multiplying whatever number appears in the campaign table by the remaining weekdays.

A simple budget mismatch worth finding

The fictional business has two independent average daily budgets: CAD 80 and CAD 120. Assume they remain unchanged for a full month and are subject to the standard monthly rule. Their combined reference is:

(CAD 80 + CAD 120) × 30.4 = CAD 6,080.

The business approved CAD 5,500 of monthly media spend. The configured reference is CAD 580 higher. This is a control mismatch to resolve before approving an increase. It does not predict that the account will necessarily spend CAD 6,080.

The owner may decide to change the allocation or approve a different spending amount. The auditor’s role is to make the mismatch visible, including any other active budgets that affect the same envelope.

Do not apply this simple calculation to a changed budget without considering when the changes occurred. Google’s budget-change guidance explains that the day’s limit uses the highest average daily budget selected that day. Reducing it later does not necessarily reduce that day’s limit to twice the final setting.

Separate total budgets and billed costs

Campaign total budgets operate over a defined duration and do not have the same daily limit as average daily budgets. Their pacing should be reviewed under Google’s total-budget guidance, not the 30.4 calculation.

Also distinguish served cost from billed cost when examining a possible spending-limit issue. The amount of advertising served and the amount ultimately payable after applicable adjustments can differ. Use the appropriate cost report before reporting an overcharge.

Assign someone to monitor the agreed envelope and define when they should escalate. A threshold nobody watches is not an effective control. The detailed budget-pacing guide handles the in-month calculations; this audit establishes whether those controls and responsibilities exist.

Assess bidding in the context of the goal and signal

Open the campaign’s bid strategy and any associated targets. Ask what it is intended to optimize and whether the selected conversion signals support that purpose.

Google offers strategies for different objectives, including clicks, conversions and conversion value. Its bid-strategy guide explains those distinctions. A strategy should be evaluated against the business’s goal and available evidence rather than labelled good or bad in isolation.

If a campaign is optimizing conversion value, inspect what those values mean. Are they real transaction values, a defensible estimate or the same arbitrary number on every action? The strategy’s label cannot repair an unclear value definition.

If a target has recently changed, examine the timing and relevant status before attributing a performance movement to audience quality. Avoid repeatedly changing goals, targets and budgets because each day’s report looks different.

Do not recommend a strategy change to hide a measurement problem

Suppose the accepted-enquiry signal is unreliable. Switching from one conversion-focused strategy to another does not establish what the account is learning from. Repair the signal or explicitly design a temporary approach appropriate to the evidence available.

A campaign with limited data also needs a more careful discussion than a universal minimum-conversion rule. The useful questions are whether the selected strategy is eligible, what information it receives and how the business will judge the result.

The bidding-strategy guide covers selection in depth. An account audit should identify the relevant mismatch or uncertainty, explain what decision is needed and avoid prescribing a new strategy without the prerequisites.

Treat a suggested budget increase similarly. A campaign constrained by budget may have more available traffic, but that does not establish that the extra traffic will be commercially worthwhile or that the business can fulfil it.

Inspect targeting and search terms for mismatches

Review the campaign’s locations, exclusions, language settings, schedule and applicable audience configuration against the business brief. Write down the purpose of an unusual setting before deciding it is wrong.

Google’s advanced location options distinguish likely presence from presence or interest and do not guarantee perfect location accuracy. A local service and a relocation business may reasonably need different settings. Avoid a universal instruction to use one option in every account.

For regulated or policy-sensitive categories, verify the current permitted targeting before recommending changes. The audit should refer the question to the relevant policy or qualified specialist rather than improvising demographic or location restrictions.

Check the schedule against the actual offer. A business promising immediate telephone assistance needs a different operating arrangement from one inviting appointment requests that can be answered later. Evening enquiries may look weak because nobody responds, rather than because evening customers are inherently unsuitable.

Use visible queries to find a bounded problem

Open the search terms report and review clear mismatches with the offer. Keep the campaign and period visible. Google’s search-term documentation explains that some queries are omitted for privacy, so the visible rows do not describe every search.

A repair campaign receiving employment or training searches may warrant a targeted exclusion review. A relevant estimate query reaching an unclear page may warrant a destination improvement. Do not reduce both findings to “keyword waste”.

The search-terms review guide explains how to make those decisions. For the audit, retain the observed issue, affected scope and next action.

Avoid extrapolating a small sample into a whole-account waste percentage. Historical cost attached to an unsuitable visible term is not guaranteed future savings, and hidden activity cannot be assigned an intent by assumption.

Keep campaign types distinct

Performance Max has a search-term report, but query analysis does not describe every part of a multi-channel campaign. Use the reports and controls relevant to the campaign type.

A broad account summary can show where spend and outcomes are concentrated. A diagnosis usually needs narrower context: the service, destination, goal and inventory involved. Combining everything too early makes the numbers easier to present and harder to interpret.

Read ads, assets and destinations together

Open the active ads and relevant assets. Check the current service, promotion, location, phone number and next step. Then inspect the destination the customer actually reaches.

A technically valid ad can make a promise the business no longer fulfils. An expired offer may still appear in a shared sitelink. A correct landing page can send its form to an obsolete inbox. Review the whole path far enough to understand the consequential mismatch.

Where automated text or destination features are enabled, include them in the inspection. Do not assume a feature is active simply because the platform supports it. Conversely, do not review only advertiser-entered text if the campaign can use additional generated assets or destinations.

Use one customer question to test the journey

For a hypothetical office-cleaning campaign, take the question, “Can this company provide recurring cleaning for my premises?” Read the ad and page from that perspective.

Does the ad specify the relevant service? Does the page confirm the coverage and type of premises? Does the form ask enough to choose the next step without forcing unnecessary detail? Does the confirmation explain what happens next?

If the page still advertises residential cleaning the company discontinued, that is a specific offer correction. If the service is clear but the form fails on mobile, that is a functional repair. If the form works and suitable requests are delivered but nobody follows up, that is an intake problem.

Each finding belongs in the audit, but each needs a different owner. Recommending a complete redesign before locating the failure may increase effort without improving the relevant path.

Distinguish clarity from cosmetic preference

A reviewer may prefer different colours, shorter copy or another layout. Those preferences are not automatically business problems. Explain the observed obstacle or the customer question the proposed change would address.

A broken button, unreadable field label or missing price condition can justify a concrete repair. A different page arrangement may deserve a test. Keep those two levels of certainty visible without forcing every design opinion into an urgent recommendation.

For more complex findings, assign a focused usability or landing-page review. The account audit should make that work specific enough to begin.

Check change history before explaining a decline

Open Change history for the relevant period. Google’s history guidance describes the available account-change record. Compare the timing of material edits with the performance movement, then investigate whether the changed items explain the affected path.

Timing creates a hypothesis. If enquiries fell after a website release, targeting edit and staffing change, the sequence alone cannot identify which one caused the fall. Check the destination, delivery and response evidence before recommending a broad rollback.

Include automation in the review. Inspect enabled rules, scripts, relevant third-party connections and opted-in recommendations. Ask who owns them and what they are meant to do. Automation can be useful; its existence is not itself a defect.

Google’s auto-apply guidance explains how to inspect subscriptions and their history. This helps establish whether an apparent manual configuration has changed through an automated route.

Treat recommendations as proposals to assess

Google’s optimization score changes when recommendations are applied or dismissed. Its score explanation describes what the number represents.

Use the recommendations as questions to investigate against the business brief. A higher score does not independently establish more suitable customers, a sound spending agreement or a functioning contact route.

Likewise, an auditor’s own score out of 100 can obscure the relative importance of findings. Ten minor naming issues should not outweigh one broken enquiry path simply because they produce more checklist marks.

Ask for the consequential observation and proposed decision behind each recommendation. That makes the audit useful even when the owner chooses not to implement a particular suggestion.

Does the account structure support your decisions?

Campaign structure is useful when it gives the business meaningful control and makes results understandable. Start with the services, markets and objectives that require different decisions. Then check whether the account separates or combines them appropriately.

A hypothetical repair business offers routine residential work and specialist commercial maintenance. The services have different capacity, qualification requirements and commercial value. If their activity is combined so completely that the owner cannot allocate spend or interpret outcomes, the audit should identify that control problem.

The remedy is not automatically one campaign for every service. Excessive splitting can create maintenance work and leave each segment with less evidence to evaluate. A more useful recommendation explains which decision needs a separate control and why the current arrangement cannot support it.

Conversely, a proposal to consolidate should address what the business would lose. Would one service absorb budget intended for another? Would a shared goal combine enquiries that have materially different meanings? Would the resulting report still answer the owner’s question?

Build a short campaign map

For the consequential campaigns, note the purpose, campaign type, budget source, chosen goal and destination. Add geography or service line when it changes how the campaign should be judged.

This map often reveals dependencies. Several campaigns may use one landing page or conversion action. A shared budget may serve more than one business objective. A repair to a common component can have broader consequences than the single campaign where the symptom was noticed.

Suppose two campaigns both contain a brochure action through the same custom goal. Changing the shared goal could affect both. The audit should name that scope rather than presenting the issue as an isolated row-level edit.

Naming consistency can help the team understand the map. An unclear name is usually a maintenance problem, however, unless it causes a consequential mistake. Do not let the effort required to rename every campaign displace a problem with goals, spend or the customer journey.

Compare different sources of demand fairly

A campaign reaching people who already know the business may produce a different outcome mix from one introducing it to new prospects. A campaign selling replacement parts has a different job from one acquiring repair enquiries. Those differences should remain visible when reviewing totals.

Avoid ranking every campaign by a single cost-per-conversion figure when the conversion definitions or commercial purposes differ. A cheap supporting action and an expensive accepted service enquiry do not represent interchangeable results.

If the business wants to compare them economically, specify the missing outcome or value evidence. Until that evidence exists, use a narrower conclusion about the metric actually measured. Structural clarity helps the owner decide what needs better measurement without manufacturing precision.

If someone else audits, review the reasoning

Ask the reviewer to show a few consequential findings in full rather than judging the audit by the number of slides or checks. A useful finding includes the observed condition, the affected scope, the business consequence and the next decision.

For example, “Campaign settings are wrong” is not enough. “This campaign uses a custom goal containing brochure interactions, while the agreed outcome is accepted service enquiries” gives the owner something specific to verify.

Ask which conclusions come from direct inspection and which remain hypotheses. The reviewer should be able to explain what would change their view. A recommendation that cannot identify its supporting observation may be a general preference rather than an account-specific finding.

Ask what was not inspected

An account export may support a settings review while leaving form delivery, call routing or CRM outcomes untested. A website visit may reveal an offer mismatch without establishing conversion measurement. Those limits are normal when the scope is clear.

The problem is presenting an untested area as healthy. Ask the reviewer to identify missing access, unavailable records and tests that were outside the assignment. Then decide whether any missing evidence blocks an important business decision.

You can often resolve a gap with a small follow-up rather than commissioning another broad audit. A controlled form test, confirmation of the service area or a sample of intake outcomes may answer the unanswered question.

Separate repairs from experiments in the proposal

A confirmed broken URL is a repair. A different landing-page headline is usually a proposed improvement whose effect needs evaluation. Both can be valuable, but they should not carry the same certainty or promise.

Ask for the verification method and any prerequisites. A goal correction may depend on reliable measurement. A budget increase may depend on capacity and spending approval. A restructuring may affect shared assets or existing experiments.

Finally, make sure the action plan distinguishes advice from completed work. An auditor may have identified a good change without implementing it. The business needs to know who will make it, what authority is required and when the result will be checked. That is enough coordination to turn the audit into useful progress without making the review itself an administrative burden.

Build a five-column action list

The following hypothetical sheet shows how the earlier findings become work. It is deliberately short enough for a business owner to review.

The sheet does not need an invented savings estimate. It needs enough evidence to explain why the next action follows.

For each issue, name a real owner who can act or make the relevant decision. “Marketing” may be too broad when the repair belongs to the website developer or the person approving spend.

Put dependencies before easy wins

If conversion measurement is unreliable, a bidding experiment may need to wait. If a page is broken, fix the path before evaluating its copy. If the business has not confirmed the service area, settle that question before applying location exclusions.

Consider the consequence of waiting, the confidence in the finding, the affected scope and the risk of changing it. Those are useful judgement questions without being converted into an arbitrary numerical score.

Some items can remain accepted or deferred. Explain why and what would cause reconsideration. A low-impact naming inconsistency may reasonably wait while a consequential measurement issue is resolved.

The existing Google Ads account audit kit includes a more detailed scorecard, evidence templates, instructions and fictional records. Use it for a complex handover if helpful. Its calculation examples are static; changing inputs requires recalculating dependent values. It does not connect to an account or make changes.

Verify repairs; leave open questions open

Before implementing a change, define the check that will establish it worked. For a broken form, confirm a labelled test submission reaches the appropriate destination. For a budget repair, confirm the saved configuration and monitoring responsibility. For a goal correction, inspect the campaign selection and relevant reporting.

A performance improvement needs a different kind of follow-up. Allow outcomes to develop and compare an appropriate period or supported experiment. Do not treat a saved setting as proof of a lower acquisition cost.

Preserve the previous configuration and understand how a problematic change could be reversed. Restoring a setting cannot recover money already spent or enquiries already missed, so reversibility should not be overstated.

When the result remains uncertain, say what is still missing. A useful audit can conclude that more evidence is needed for a particular decision. It should not convert incomplete work into a confident forecast to make the final presentation feel finished.

The final conversation should answer four practical questions: what needs attention first, who owns it, what can wait and how the business will know the important work is complete. If you want an external review, talk to Canada Create about your Google Ads account with the business objective, approved media envelope and the reports you currently rely on. Those inputs make the audit about decisions your business actually needs to make.

Frequently asked questions

How do I audit a Google Ads account?

Start with three questions: can customers reach you, is the account measuring the outcome you want, and does its spending configuration match the amount the business approved? Settle those before recommending more keywords, new bids or a bigger budget. Then work through targeting, search terms, ads, destinations and recent changes, noting what you saw, why it matters and the next action.

Why did my Google Ads spend more than I expected?

Compare the actual cost records and current budget settings with the amount the business approved. Daily budgets can carry a full-month reference above the approved media envelope, and separate total budgets or billed costs need their own check. Hold off on raising bids to recover performance until the spending question is answered.

Does advertiser verification come up in a Google Ads audit?

Yes, as part of the first check for notices that should interrupt the review. Record the exact status and any stated deadline for verification, billing or policy notices, and follow Google's official route for each. An account-level notice needs its own process, separate from ad fixes.

How is a Google Ads audit different from an SEO audit?

An SEO audit looks at how a website earns unpaid search visibility. A Google Ads audit looks at the paid account: conversion goals, budgets, bidding, targeting, search terms, ads and the pages they send people to. Both should end with a short list of decisions instead of a score.

Should I hire an agency to audit my Google Ads account?

An outside review can help, as long as you review its reasoning instead of just the score. Ask what was not inspected, and check that repairs are kept apart from proposed experiments. Agree separately who will implement any recommendation.

What should I fix first after a Google Ads audit?

Put dependencies ahead of easy wins. Broken contact routes, measurement that counts the wrong action and budgets above the approved amount come before keyword or bid changes. A five-column action list keeps each finding tied to the evidence, why it matters, the next action, its owner and how the repair will be checked.

Why should a Google Ads audit check conversion goals before performance?

Reported results mean little if the goal counts the wrong thing. In the guide's example, a brochure interaction sat inside the campaign's custom goal while the business wanted accepted service enquiries. Verify what each important action counts and compare it with real enquiries before reading any trend.

Should I stop Google Ads while the account is being audited?

Usually not, since an initial inspection can be completed without changing the account. Urgent findings such as a broken contact route or unexpected spending may justify action, but the owner or account administrator should decide what is appropriate. Avoid paid test clicks during the review.