Google Ads Audit Checklist: 23 Points That Cost Advertisers Money

Campaign architecture (points 1-6)

Brand and non-brand separated. Match types consistent within campaign. Negative keyword lists curated. Budget pacing reviewed in aggregate. Ad groups themed around single intent, not product category. Naming convention identifies purpose at a glance.

Match types and negatives (points 7-11)

Broad match used deliberately, not accidentally. Search terms report reviewed weekly. Negative lists prevent cross-campaign competition. Exact match for brand and high-intent commercial only. Close variant matching understood and negated where variants drift from intent.

Bid strategy and conversions (points 12-17)

Bid strategy matches conversion volume. Conversion actions deduplicated. Conversion value passes through to bid signal. Enhanced Conversions enabled where applicable. View-through conversions not inflating reported ROAS. Offline conversion import wired for B2B and multi-touch. The fast version of point 12 alone is the 20-minute bid-strategy audit: campaign-by-campaign, compare the bid strategy to the trailing 30-day conversion count and flag every mismatch.

Performance Max (points 18-21)

PMax has brand negatives at account level. Asset groups themed by margin tier. Customer list uploaded as audience signal. Search insights reviewed weekly and low-intent query themes negated.

Attribution and reporting (points 22-23)

Google Ads attribution model matches GA4 model. Number reported to business matches platform number. Attribution mismatch is a common cause of marketing-finance disagreement; resolving it is usually one week of cleanup.