The Google Ads Audit Checklist: 15 Things to Check in Your Account

If you suspect your Google Ads account is leaking money, you are almost certainly right. Nearly every account I audit has at least three obvious problems hiding inside it, and most owners have no idea because the Google Ads interface is designed to hide them. This checklist gives you the exact 15 things I look at when I audit an account. Work through it in order, take notes, and by the end you will know whether your account is healthy or quietly bleeding your budget.

Why most Adelaide businesses need an audit right now

Google Ads has changed more in the last 24 months than the previous 10 years combined. Smart Bidding is mandatory on most campaign types, Performance Max now swallows budgets whole, and broad match is being pushed in every corner of the interface. The settings that worked in 2022 will actively hurt you in 2026. If nobody has done a proper sweep of your account in the last six months, assume something is broken.

The 15-point Google Ads audit checklist

1. Conversion tracking sanity check

Open Tools and Settings, Conversions. Every conversion you are optimising for must be set to Primary. Phone calls under 30 seconds, page views, and form impressions should be Secondary or off entirely. If Google is bidding toward a conversion that is not actually a sale or lead, nothing else in this audit matters. Fix this first.

2. Search terms report for the last 90 days

Go to Insights and reports, Search terms. Sort by cost, descending. Read the top 50. You are looking for anything irrelevant, anything with your competitors’ brand names, anything with the wrong intent (job seekers, students, freebie hunters). Every irrelevant term is cash set on fire.

3. Negative keyword hygiene

Most accounts have zero account-level negatives. That is the first warning sign. You should have at least a core list of job, free, DIY, cheap, and competitor brand negatives applied at account level. For more on this, read our guide on how Google Ads actually work in 2026.

4. Match type mix

If more than 40 percent of your spend is on broad match without a tROAS or tCPA bid strategy, you have a problem. Broad match only works when the algorithm has enough conversion data to steer it. Under about 30 conversions per month, stick to phrase and exact.

5. Bid strategy audit

Check every campaign. Manual CPC on a new campaign is fine. Maximise Clicks is almost never fine outside of brand campaigns. The sweet spot for most lead-gen businesses is Maximise Conversions with a sensible tCPA cap.

6. Budget pacing

In the campaign view, look at the Budget column. Any campaign showing Limited by budget is either under-funded or bidding too aggressively. Either increase the budget, lower bids, or tighten keywords.

7. Ad group structure

Open each campaign. Count keywords per ad group. If any ad group has more than 20 keywords, it is too broad. Tight themes (5 to 15 keywords per ad group) let you write ads that actually match the search intent.

8. Responsive Search Ad strength

Every ad should be rated Good or Excellent. Check headlines, descriptions, and pinning. If you have pinned every headline, Google is telling you your ad strength is Poor, and you are getting penalised in auction. Unpin at least half.

9. Asset extensions (sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets)

Sitelinks: at least six per campaign. Callouts: at least eight. Structured snippets: at least one. No call extension? You are leaving phone leads on the table. For Adelaide businesses especially, add a location extension linked to your Google Business Profile.

10. Device bid adjustments

Go to Devices in each campaign. Compare conversion rate and CPA across mobile, desktop, and tablet. If mobile CPA is 3x desktop (very common for home services), adjust bids accordingly.

11. Location targeting

Open Locations, Settings. The default setting is Presence or interest. For local service businesses, change this to Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations. Otherwise you are paying for clicks from people browsing from Sydney who will never buy.

12. Geographic performance

Still in Locations, view by user location. You will often find entire suburbs or regional towns eating budget with zero conversions. Exclude them. If you are Adelaide-based, see our Adelaide Google Ads page for local geo-targeting examples.

13. Auction insights

For each top campaign, open Auction insights. Who is your real competition? Are your impression share numbers above 40 percent? If your overlap rate with one competitor is 80 percent and your outranking share is under 50 percent, they are quietly eating your lunch.

14. Quality Score review

Add the Quality Score column to your keyword view. Anything 6 and below needs work on ad relevance or landing page experience. A 3/10 Quality Score roughly doubles your CPC compared to an 8/10.

15. Cost per conversion vs. target

Finally, pull up your last 90 days. Is your actual CPA within 30 percent of target? If not, something structural is wrong, and changing bids alone will not fix it. Use our Google Ads calculator to sanity-check what your target CPA should be based on your average order value.

What Adelaide benchmarks actually look like

For context, here are rough CPC ranges I see across Adelaide accounts in 2026:

• Plumbers, electricians, locksmiths: $12 to $28 per click
• Dentists, physios, chiros: $8 to $22 per click
• Lawyers (family, criminal, personal injury): $18 to $55 per click
• Trades and home services (general): $6 to $18 per click
• eCommerce (Search): $0.80 to $4.50 per click

If your CPCs are 2x these numbers, either your Quality Score is low, your match types are too broad, or you are fighting for keywords you cannot profitably rank on. Budget expectations are covered in more detail on our Google Ads cost page.

When to DIY and when to call in a specialist

If you are spending under $1,500 a month, working through this checklist yourself will usually get you 70 percent of the way to a clean account. Once you cross $3,000 a month, the opportunity cost of every wasted dollar compounds fast, and an outside set of eyes pays for itself inside a week. That is the reason our Google Ads management service runs flat-rate rather than percentage of spend: when I tighten your targeting, I should save you money, not take a commission on how much you burn.

Next step

If you worked through this list and found four or more issues, your account almost certainly needs a structural overhaul rather than a tweak. I do free 30-minute audits where I screen-share, walk through your account live, and tell you exactly what I would change. No sales pitch. Book a free strategy call or phone me on 0403 454 199 (Tuesday to Friday, 9 to 5 Adelaide time).