How to audit a Google Ads account in 30 minutes
A senior PPC manager doesn't spend two days on an audit. They spend 30 minutes. They know exactly which 6 views of the Google Ads interface surface 90% of the problems — and exactly what "looks healthy" vs "needs immediate attention" on each one. This is that checklist, with the pass/fail thresholds that actually matter.
The 6 steps
- Search terms sweep — where 40–60% of waste lives
- Quality Score audit — the silent CPC inflator
- Budget pacing — who's hitting the cap, who's coasting
- Auction insights delta — competitor movement, week-over-week
- Ad approval state — the forgotten dead ads
- Conversion tracking integrity — the one that invalidates everything
Step 1 — Search terms sweep (5 minutes)
Where: Google Ads → Insights & reports → Search terms.
What to do: set the date range to the last 30 days, sort by Cost descending, add a filter Conversions = 0.
What to look for:
- Any search term that has spent more than 2× your target CPA with zero conversions — add as an exact-match negative keyword at account level.
- Modifier queries with free/tutorial/reddit/how-to/jobs/careers — add those as account-level negatives regardless of spend.
- Wrong-geo queries (someone in Vietnam searching for "plumber tallinn") — likely a targeting setting issue, fix the campaign geo.
Verdict thresholds: Healthy = under 10% of spend is on non-converting search terms. Watch = 10–25%. Red flag = above 25% — drop everything and fix this first.
Step 2 — Quality Score audit (5 minutes)
Where: Keywords view. Click the columns icon → add Quality Score, Expected CTR, Ad relevance, Landing page experience.
What to do: sort by Cost descending. Look at the top 50 by spend.
What to look for:
- Any keyword at QS ≤ 5 that's generating real spend — open the components to see which of the three dropped.
- If Expected CTR is "Below average" — your ad copy isn't compelling enough at this auction; rewrite.
- If Ad relevance is "Below average" — the ad doesn't mention the keyword theme; add it to a pinned H1 or a description line.
- If Landing page experience is "Below average" — the LP doesn't match the keyword intent, is slow (>3s LCP), or missing trust signals.
Verdict thresholds: Healthy = top-50 keywords average QS ≥ 7. Watch = 6. Red flag = ≤ 5 — you're paying 20–40% more than you should per click.
Deep dive on this step: see the full wasted-spend breakdown, which uses QS decay as one of its four categories.
Step 3 — Budget pacing (3 minutes)
Where: Campaigns view. Add column Search lost IS (budget) — it tells you what fraction of eligible impressions you missed because your budget ran out.
What to look for:
- Any campaign above 15% Lost IS (budget) that's ROAS-positive — raise the daily budget (or tighten the hour-of-day schedule so you spend only in peak conversion hours).
- Any campaign under 1% Lost IS (budget) with below-average conversion rate — it's over-budgeted, move money to constrained high-ROAS campaigns.
Verdict thresholds: Healthy = no campaign > 15% or < 1%. Watch = 1–2 campaigns out of range. Red flag = half your portfolio is budget-constrained.
Step 4 — Auction insights delta (5 minutes)
Where: pick your top 10 revenue keywords (sort Keywords by conversion value). For each one, open Auction insights from the row menu.
What to do: compare last 7 days vs previous 7 days for the same keyword.
What to look for:
- Any competitor whose impression share jumped >10% — they raised bids or broadened match types. Decide whether to match or concede.
- Any competitor who suddenly disappeared — opportunity to raise bids and reclaim position cheaply.
- Your own impression share dropping without a budget reason — usually QS decay (Step 2) or someone outbidding you.
Verdict thresholds: Healthy = top-10 keywords' impression share stable or rising. Watch = 1–2 keywords losing IS. Red flag = broad IS erosion across multiple keywords — a new competitor is spending aggressively.
Step 5 — Ad approval state (2 minutes)
Where: Ads tab. Filter Status ≠ Eligible.
What to look for:
- Anything Disapproved for more than 48 hours — policy fix, rewrite, or request review. Every hour an RSA is disapproved in a 3-RSA ad group cuts auction presence by up to 33%.
- Anything Limited — usually a trademark or restricted-product rule. Often fixable by removing a single word.
- Anything Paused that's been paused > 60 days — either replace or archive. Stale paused ads clutter your dashboard and tempt you to count them as "in-flight".
Verdict thresholds: Healthy = no disapproved ads, no limited-status ads > 1 week old. Red flag = a disapproved ad older than 48 hours — you're leaving auctions.
Step 6 — Conversion tracking integrity (10 minutes — the only slow step)
Where: Tools → Conversions. Then the Status column on each conversion action.
What to do: open each conversion action. Check three things:
- Status = Recording conversions. If it says "No recent conversions" on a goal you know fires, tracking is broken.
- Count setting matches the goal. Lead form = "One". Purchase = "Every". This is the single most common mis-configuration — and it either inflates or deflates your reported CPA by 2–5×.
- Conversion window matches your buying cycle. E-commerce impulse buy = 7 days. B2B SaaS demo-to-trial-to-paid = 60–90 days. A default 30-day window on a long cycle undercounts conversions and makes Smart Bidding underperform.
Then do a live test: click your own ad (from an incognito window on a different device), land on the site, convert. Check Google Ads 3 hours later — you should see +1 on that conversion action. If not: GTM/gtag/tag assistant debugging is the next hour of your life. Without this step, every other finding in this audit is built on sand.
Verdict thresholds: Healthy = every conversion action shows recent conversions and live-test fires. Red flag = any mismatch, missing tag, or zero-conversion state on a goal that should be firing.
After the audit
Write down every red flag and rank by estimated monthly impact on spend, not by how easy the fix is. The 30-minute audit typically surfaces 8–15 action items — work the top 3 this week, not all 15 in a panic.
If the list looks overwhelming: AdsBrain runs this exact 6-step audit on your account automatically every morning, ranks findings by expected impact, and emails you a prioritised version. See an illustrative example. First paid analysis is $49 one-time (refundable within 7 days), daily reports are $199/month. We never touch your campaigns — you apply the fixes.
Frequently asked
Can I skip Step 6 if my tracking "looks fine"?
No. Broken conversion tracking is the #1 cause of "my Google Ads isn't performing" — because the performance is real, you're just not measuring it. Budget 10 minutes and verify every conversion action, every month, without exception.
How often should I re-run this audit?
Weekly for Steps 1, 3, 5 (they drift fast). Monthly for Steps 2 and 4 (structural). Quarterly for Step 6 (unless you deploy a site change, in which case re-test immediately).
What if the audit turns up nothing?
Then you've got a well-run account. Next targets are ad creative A/B testing, new keyword mining, and audience layering — which take longer than 30 minutes and reward a different kind of thinking (growth, not maintenance).
Related reading: How much are you wasting on Google Ads? (benchmark calculator) · Sample daily Brain Advisor report