Google Ads Audit Checklist: 7 Checks, Tracking First

A Google Ads audit is a check of your account to find wasted spend, broken tracking and products that spend and sell nothing.

Start with tracking, because every other number reads from it. Google Ads flags a conversion action that recorded nothing in the last 7 days. Then read your search terms, then your products, then structure, bids and budgets. Change nothing until you finish. Want the tick-box version? Run the free audit.

I also run ZenoX Media, a Google Ads agency. This is the order we read a store account in before anyone touches a bid.

Before You Start: Read Now, Fix Later

An audit is a read. The urge is to fix the first bad thing you see. Don't.

Say you find a junk search term in step 3 and block it. Fine. But if step 2 would have shown your purchases count twice, every number you judged that term by was wrong. Write each problem down with the money it cost. Fix them at the end, biggest first.

You need two things open: your Google Ads account and your Merchant Center account. Pick the last 30 days. If you spend little, pick 90, so each search term and product has enough clicks to judge.

Step 1: Check Consent Mode

In Google's words, "Consent mode lets you communicate your users' cookie or app identifier consent status to Google." It sits between your cookie banner and the Google tag.

It comes in two modes:

• Basic mode. Google tags do not load until the visitor answers your cookie banner. Nothing goes to Google before that.
• Advanced mode. Google tags load right away. While the visitor says no, they send pings without cookies. After a yes, they send full data.

There is no single Google Ads screen for this. It lives in your banner app and your tag setup, so ask whoever set it up which mode you run. Then test it yourself. Open your store in a private window, say yes on the banner, and go through to the thank-you page with Tag Assistant on. Google says you can use it "to check the implementation of your tag and debug any issues." Don't wait for the sale to show up in Google Ads. Google counts a sale that comes after someone interacts with your ad, so your own test order will never show there.

Why first? If the tag can't fire, step 2 has nothing real to count.

Step 2: Check Conversion Tracking

Open the Goals menu, then Conversions, then Summary. Look at the status next to your purchase action.

• Active means it records conversions.
• Needs attention means Google found a problem, but it still records.
• No conversions in the last 7 days means something is off, or nothing sold.

A brand new tag can say Unverified or Inactive. Google says that is "normal for new tags." It turns Active after the first conversion or a test event.

Next, check what counts. Primary actions show in the Conversions column and are "used for bidding." Secondary actions show in All conversions "but not for bidding." For a store, purchase should be the primary action. Add to cart and page views are fine as secondary. If they are primary, Google bids to get you more add to carts, not more sales.

Then check you count each sale once. If two purchase actions are both primary, say one from the Google tag and one imported from Google Analytics, one order can count twice. Quick test: take last week's purchases in Google Ads and last week's orders in your store. They won't match to the order, but Google should not show more sales than you had.

Last, look at enhanced conversions. Google says they "can improve the accuracy of your conversion measurement" by sending order details your store collected, like the email, scrambled first (hashed) so nobody can read them. Worth turning on if your store app supports it.

Our conversion tracking guide walks through the full setup.

Step 3: Read the Search Terms Report

Go to Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. This is what people really typed before they clicked.

Sort by cost, highest first. Then look for terms that spent money and sold nothing. Those are the burning cash rows. Think "free", "used", "repair", "jobs", or a brand you don't sell.

Two things Google tells you up front:

• Terms that "don't have enough query activity are omitted." So the rows won't add up to your full spend. Some of it hides in terms you can't see.
• Negative keywords "let you exclude search terms from your campaigns." You can also build an account-level list that covers your Search and Shopping campaigns in one go.

In an audit, you only mark the terms. Block them at the end. Our search terms report guide shows how to read every column, and these negative keyword examples for stores give you a starting list. Want the dollar total fast? Paste your export into the search terms waste finder. It shows what the waste cost you.

Step 4: Check Products and the Feed

For Shopping, the products are the keywords. Google's Products report "helps you understand the performance of individual products in your campaign." It shows each product's ID, title, status, impressions, clicks and cost per click. Open it inside a Shopping campaign, add cost and conversions, and sort by cost.

You are looking for products that spend and sell nothing. A product that took a real share of the budget and never sold is the same leak as a junk search term. It just hides better.

Then open Merchant Center. Go to Products and click the Needs attention tab. Google says "All product-level issues can be found in the Needs attention tab." Count the disapproved items, and look hard at your best sellers. Google is blunt about what a disapproval does: "Disapproved products stop showing across Google." If a best seller is disapproved, it stops showing, and so do its sales.

New to feeds? Here is what a product feed is in plain words.

Step 5: Check Campaign Structure and Settings

Open each campaign and go to its settings. Four checks.

Networks. Google says Search ads "might appear with search results on websites of Google search partners." Check the Networks setting on every Search campaign and decide if you want that traffic. Then check how it did, if it is on.

Location. There are two options. "Presence or interest" also reaches people searching about your area. Google calls it a best practice on Search. "Presence" is for when you only want people who are in the places you picked. If you only ship to one country, Presence is the one to look at closely.

Overlap. Two campaigns that can serve the same product make it hard to know which bid and budget won. List your campaigns and check that each product has one clear home.

Quality Score. On Search, Google scores each keyword "on a scale from 1-10." It is built from expected click rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. A low score tells you which of the three to fix. Here is how Quality Score works.

Step 6: Check Bids and Budgets

Now, and only now, look at the money settings. They only make sense once steps 1 to 5 are clean.

Target ROAS. Google defines it as "the average conversion value (for example, revenue) you'd like to get for each dollar you spend on ads." It is a percent. Google's own example: $5 in sales for $1 in ad spend is a 500% target ROAS. So check how each target was typed. A target of 3 asks for 3%, not 300%. Your target should come from your own margin, not from a blog. The break-even ROAS calculator does that sum from your margin.

Limited by budget. Note every campaign that shows it. From 17 August 2026, Google changed how budget-limited campaigns with a target bid. They now aim closer to that target, even when you change the budget. A campaign that was beating its target may now drift back toward it. Google says it won't change your targets or budgets for you. So if a capped campaign got worse after that date, check the target before you blame the ads.

Step 7: Check Auto-Apply and Change History

This is the step for "I didn't change anything."

Auto-apply. Google says "When you turn on 'Automatically apply recommendations', the recommendations will apply regularly." Open the Recommendations page and look at the auto-apply settings. Note which types are on, and decide if you want each one changing your account on its own. Here is which ones to leave off.

Change history. Open Change history in the Campaigns menu. Google says it "lists the changes made to your account, campaigns, and ad groups during the past 2 years." Read the weeks before any drop. Look for who made each change, you, a teammate, or Google. If the drop came with no change at all, this list of why Google Ads stop working is the next place to look.

How Often to Run a Google Ads Audit

Google does not set a schedule for this. Here is ours:

• The full 7 steps: when you take over an account, before you raise the budget, and after a sudden drop you can't explain.
• Search terms: every week or two, because that leak refills itself.
• Merchant Center Needs attention: whenever you add products.

The full read is a one-time check before you change things. The ongoing tune-up is a different job, and our Google Ads optimization checklist covers it.

What a PPC Audit Is, and What It Is Not

A PPC audit is the same job as above, on any pay-per-click account. On Google Ads, it is this checklist.

If you searched for PPC audit guides and found accounting books, that is a different PPC. Those are PPC audit guides from Thomson Reuters, made for accountants who audit a company's books, not ads.

Run the Free Audit or Ask Media Buyer

You now know the order and the screens. Two ways to do it:

1. By hand. Run the free audit. It has the core checks from this post (tracking, feed, search terms, products, bids, settings and history) as a list you can tick.
2. Ask. Scaley Media Buyer connects to your Google Ads read-only. Ask it which search terms and products spent money and sold nothing, and it answers from your live account. It can't change a thing. You make the fixes.

If you'd like to see the five leaks we find most, read five places Google Ads wastes money. Prices for all three Scaley tiers are on the pricing page.

Where These Facts Come From

Checked on 2026-11-12.

• About consent mode, Google Ads Help - the definition, basic and advanced mode.
• Conversion tracking status troubleshooter, Google Ads Help - Active, Needs attention, and no conversions in the last 7 days.
• Conversions summary page, Google Ads Help - the Goals menu path.
• Set up conversion measurement, Google Ads Help - new tags start as Unverified or Inactive, and a conversion is an action taken after interacting with your ad.
• Use the Google tag for Google Ads conversion tracking, Google Ads Help - check your tag with Tag Assistant.
• About primary and secondary conversion actions, Google Ads Help.
• About enhanced conversions, Google Ads Help.
• About the search terms report, Google Ads Help - where it lives, hidden low-volume terms.
• About negative keywords, Google Ads Help.
• About the Products report, Google Ads Help.
• Issues in Merchant Center, Merchant Center Help - the Needs attention tab, disapprovals.
• About search partners, Google Ads Help.
• About location targeting options, Google Ads Help - Presence and Presence or interest.
• About Quality Score, Google Ads Help.
• About Target ROAS bidding, Google Ads Help - the definition and the 500% example.
• Budget-limited campaigns with a bid target, Google Ads Help - the 17 August 2026 change.
• About applying recommendations automatically, Google Ads Help.
• About change history, Google Ads Help - the past 2 years.
• PPC audit guides, Thomson Reuters - the accounting meaning of PPC audit.