Google Ads Checklist: Setup and Audit
These are the checks I run on every Google Ads account I set up or take over.
Part 1 launches a new account properly, Part 2 audits one you already run, and the routine keeps it improving.
Work through it yourself, or I'll run the audit on your account for free.
- Tracking checked first, so every number you read is real
- Clear thresholds for when to pause, fix or scale
- Free to print or save as a PDF, with no email needed
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Meet Chris →Key Takeaways
- A Google Ads checklist has 2 jobs: launching a new account correctly, and auditing one that already runs. This page does both, separately.
- Start every audit by verifying conversion tracking, because every number you optimise against depends on it.
- Google Ads counts website phone-link clicks alongside calls and form submissions, so segment by conversion action before you read a lead count.
- Judge each campaign on its own numbers. Performance Max leans toward click-to-call and pulls the account average down, which makes Search look expensive beside it.
- A landing page built for each service converts more of the clicks you pay for, so build it before the campaign.
In short: To set up Google Ads, own the account yourself, build a dedicated landing page, get conversion tracking working before you spend anything, then build 1 campaign per service with tight ad groups and a negative keyword list. To audit Google Ads, verify tracking first, confirm who owns the account, then read performance campaign by campaign, work the search terms report, and check which settings Google has switched back on.
By Chris Lourenco, Director, Loudachris Digital Marketing · Last updated 16 October 2026
Got 20 minutes? Start with these 5 checks.
They come from the full audit below and cover the settings that move the most money.
- 1Tracking: open Goals > Conversions, split by conversion action, and confirm each action recorded something in the last 7 days.
- 2Networks: in each Search campaign, confirm the Display Network is unticked and search partners is a choice you made.
- 3Location: set the location option to Presence, so ads show to people in or regularly in your area.
- 4Search terms: sort the last 30 days by cost, read the top 10 and add negatives for any that aren't buyers.
- 5Auto-apply: under Recommendations, switch off anything that changes keywords, ads or budgets without you.
Short on 20 minutes too? Have me run this audit on your account, free.
Which half of this checklist do you need?
New to Google Ads? Work through Part 1 before you launch. Already have an account? Go straight to Part 2, then set up the weekly and monthly optimisation routine that follows it. Every item carries a specific threshold or a stated reason, drawn from my 200+ managed campaigns and more than $3M in ad spend for Australian businesses.
Still deciding whether ads are the right channel? Read SEO vs Google Ads first, and what Google Ads management costs if you're budgeting. If the business you're advertising is a local one, the local SEO checklist is the free-traffic counterpart to this page.
The Google Ads setup checklist: 17 steps to launch a new account.
Work through it in order. Tracking sits in stage 2, before any campaign is built, so your first dollar of ad spend produces data you can use.
2 steps have their own tools: work out what a lead is worth with my calculator, and see how I build the landing page before the campaign.
Stage 1: Before you open Google Ads at all
4 decisions that cost nothing now and a lot to fix in month 3.
- 1
Open the account in your own name, not your agency's
Create the account under a Google login your business controls, then grant your manager (MCC) access. If an agency owns it outright, every keyword, conversion and year of learning history stays with them the day you leave. Check Admin > Access and security.
- 2
Work out what a lead is worth before you set a budget
Average job value multiplied by the share of quotes you win. A roofer on a $6,000 average job who closes 1 quote in 4 can pay $200 per quote request and still be well ahead. That number, not a guess, sets your target cost per conversion.
- 3
Commit to a budget you can run for 90 days
Google spreads a daily budget across the month, roughly your monthly figure divided by 30.4. In most Australian service categories, below about $1,500/month you will not get enough clicks to tell a good keyword from a bad one. Fund 2 campaigns properly rather than starving 5.
- 4
Build the landing page before you build the campaign
Sending ad traffic to your homepage is the most common and most expensive mistake in Google Ads. Build a conversion-first page per service: service and suburb in the H1, a tappable phone number visible without scrolling, a short form, proof. Biggest single lever on conversion rate.
Stage 2: Tracking, before a single dollar is spent
Tracking is not an add-on for month 2. Without it, Smart Bidding is optimising towards nothing.
- 5
Install GA4 through Google Tag Manager, then link it to Google Ads
GTM is the container, GA4 is the analytics, Google Ads is the ad platform. Set up all 3 and link GA4 under Tools > Data manager. In that order you can fix or add a tag later without touching website code.
- 6
Create separate conversion actions for form, call and phone-link click
Do not lump them into one action called Lead. You want a form submission action, a calls-from-ads action and a phone-link click action, each named so you can tell them apart in a report. Segmenting later is the difference between knowing your lead count and guessing it.
- 7
Mark only real outcomes as Primary
A phone-link click is an intent signal, not a conversation: someone tapped a number and you have no idea whether they spoke to you. Set forms and tracked calls to Primary so they drive bidding, and phone-link clicks to Secondary. Skipping this is the top reason reported lead counts flatter the phone.
- 8
Turn on Enhanced Conversions and set a call-length minimum
Enhanced Conversions recovers conversions that cookie loss would otherwise drop, and takes about 20 minutes once GTM is in place. Set a minimum call duration of 30 to 60 seconds so a 4-second wrong number is not counted as a lead.
- 9
Fire a real test conversion and confirm it lands
Submit your own form, tap the phone link on a mobile, place a call through the ad, then check Goals > Conversions and confirm all 3 appear. Google can take up to 3 hours to report one, so test the day before launch. A broken tag spends real money producing data you cannot use.
Stage 3: Build the campaign
Structure, keywords and copy. Simple beats clever here, every time.
- 10
One campaign per service line, one ad group per tight theme
A roofing business runs a roof replacement campaign and a gutter replacement campaign, not one Roofing campaign with 12 ad groups fighting over a single budget. Separate campaigns mean separate budgets, targets and landing pages, so you can kill the loser without touching the winner.
- 11
Build the keyword list from what buyers type, not what you call it
Use Keyword Planner, then sanity-check against your own quote enquiries and Search Console queries. Customers search emergency plumber, not reactive hydraulic services. Aim for 10 to 20 relevant keywords per ad group: a bloated list buries the terms that convert.
- 12
Write the negative keyword list on day 1, not month 3
Start with a shared negative list every campaign uses: jobs, salary, apprentice, free, cheap, DIY, how to, courses, wholesale, supplies, second hand, plus any competitor you would rather not pay to be compared against. This stops the most predictable waste before it happens.
- 13
Pick match types to suit the budget you actually have
Under roughly $2,000/month, start on phrase and exact so every dollar goes to searches you recognise. Broad plus Smart Bidding is what Google recommends and it does work, but it needs conversion data to steer it. Move to broad at 15 to 30 conversions a month, not before.
- 14
Write responsive search ads that survive being shuffled
Give each ad group 12 to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, and pin your primary keyword into headline position 1 so the ad never shows without it. Every headline must make sense beside every other, because Google combines them in ways you did not plan.
- 15
Fill the asset slots to the minimums Google actually serves
Google will not show sitelinks at all below 4, so add 6 to 8 sitelinks, 6 to 8 callouts, at least 2 structured snippet sets, a call asset, a location asset if you have a Business Profile, and 3 to 5 images at both 1.91:1 and 1:1. Assets are a factor in Ad Rank and they make the ad physically taller, so a competitor with full assets pushes you down the page at the same bid.
- 16
Check the settings Google pre-ticks against you
Uncheck the Display Network and decide deliberately on search partners. Set location targeting to Presence rather than the default Presence or interest, which will happily show your Adelaide plumbing ad to someone in Perth reading about Adelaide. Set the ad schedule to hours you can answer the phone.
- 17
Match the bid strategy to your data, and leave mobile bids at 0%
With no conversion history, start on Maximise Clicks with a CPC cap, then switch to Maximise Conversions or a target CPA at 15 to 30 conversions in 30 days. Leave the mobile bid adjustment at 0%. Older checklists still say -100%, which switches off the device most calls come from.
Step 4 in practice: a landing page per service
My client Pro Roof and Gutter, a roofing company in northern Adelaide, runs 2 conversion-first landing pages built for the ad traffic: 1 for roof replacement, 1 for gutter replacement. In the 30 days to 17 July 2026 the roof replacement Search campaign ran a 43.88% conversion rate at $42.66 per tracked conversion.
A tracked conversion there is a call, a form submission or a phone-link click. Enhanced Conversions, GTM, GA4 event tracking and call tracking are all in place, so the figure is measured in the account.
The Google Ads audit checklist: 16 checks on an account that already runs.
Work top to bottom. The order matters as much as the items, because stages 2 and 3 only mean something once stage 1 has passed.
Stage 1: Verify the tracking (do this first, always)
An account without correct conversion tracking cannot be optimised at all, so every number in the rest of the audit depends on these 6 checks passing. Auditors who start with keywords end up optimising towards a fiction.
- 1
Segment by conversion action before you read a single number
Goals > Conversions > Summary, split by conversion action. Google Ads counts phone calls, form submissions and website phone-link clicks all as conversions. If phone-link clicks are a large share, your headline lead count is inflated, because a tap on a number is intent, not a conversation. Do this before you read cost per conversion, or every conclusion after it is wrong.
- 2
Confirm every conversion action recorded something in the last 7 days
Any action showing No recent conversions, Inactive or Unverified is a broken tag that has been quietly poisoning bidding. Check the last recorded date per action, not the account total: one working action can mask 3 dead ones.
- 3
Check what is Primary and what is Secondary
Only outcomes you would happily pay for should be Primary, because Primary is what Smart Bidding chases. Phone-link clicks, page views, downloads and time-on-site goals belong on Secondary. If a phone-link click is Primary, the algorithm has been trained to buy taps.
- 4
Check for double counting
Look for the same outcome tracked twice, usually a GA4 key event imported alongside a native conversion for the same form. Check the Count setting too: lead forms should be One, not Every, so a customer who submits twice is not counted as 2 leads.
- 5
Check Enhanced Conversions status and the call-length minimum
Under Goals > Settings, Enhanced Conversions for leads should read Recording, not Needs attention. On call conversions, confirm a minimum call length of 30 to 60 seconds. Without it, every misdial is reported to you as a lead.
- 6
Confirm GA4, GTM and Google Ads agree with each other
Pull the same 30 days in Google Ads and GA4 and compare form submissions. They never match exactly (different attribution models and windows), but a gap over about 20% means something is misfiring. Open Tag Assistant rather than keep auditing on top of bad data.
Stage 2: Ownership and commercial terms
3 checks that have nothing to do with keywords and everything to do with whether the account is worth optimising.
- 7
Confirm the advertiser owns the account
Admin > Access and security shows who holds what. The account should sit under the advertiser's own Google login with agencies attached as managers. If the agency owns it outright, all campaign history and machine learning stays behind when the relationship ends. Fix this first.
- 8
Read the last 90 days of change history
Tools > Change history. Look for evidence a human made decisions: negatives added, budgets reallocated, ads written, bids adjusted. If the log is empty, or every entry is an automated recommendation applying itself, nobody is managing the account, whatever the invoice says.
- 9
Check how you are being charged
A percentage-of-spend fee means your agency earns more when it spends more of your money, whether or not the extra spend produces anything. Read it alongside the change history: a percentage fee plus a log of budget increases and nothing else is the pattern to worry about.
Stage 3: Where the money is going
Now, and only now, the performance data is worth reading.
- 10
Read performance campaign by campaign, never on the account average
Performance Max conversions skew heavily to click-to-call, so PMax posts a very low cost per conversion and drags the whole-account average down with it. That makes Search campaigns, doing the harder work of producing form fills and real calls, look expensive by comparison. Judge each campaign type on its own numbers, and never quote a blended figure as a cost per lead.
- 11
Pull the search terms report for the last 30 to 90 days and add negatives
Sort by cost descending. Add negatives for anything with clicks and no conversions, plus every jobs, DIY, definition and free query. Then diarise it: negatives get added on a schedule, weekly to fortnightly on a busy account, not once at setup. In many accounts this habit alone pays the management fee.
- 12
Sort everything by cost and find where the budget actually goes
Sort campaigns, then ad groups, then keywords by cost descending. In most small accounts the top 10 keywords carry 60% to 80% of the spend. Any keyword with 20 or more clicks and 0 conversions over 60 to 90 days is a decision waiting to be made. Do not pause on Quality Score alone: it is a diagnostic, not a bid input.
- 13
Check the landing page every ad group actually points to
Click the final URL for each ad group. If more than 1 ad group lands on the homepage, that is your highest-value fix in the whole audit. Check it on a phone: load time, whether the number is visible without scrolling, and whether the headline repeats the search just typed.
- 14
Check the settings that quietly turned themselves back on
Search partners and Display expansion re-enabled, location targeting reverted to Presence or interest, auto-applied recommendations switched on. That last one deserves a hard look: under Recommendations > Auto-apply, Google can add broad match keywords, write ads and raise budgets for you. Turn off anything that changes targeting or spend without your say-so.
- 15
Audit Performance Max on its own terms
Check asset group strength, confirm brand terms are excluded if you do not want PMax buying your own name, review search themes, and ask whether PMax is just harvesting conversions Search would have won anyway. Then look at what those conversions are: if they are overwhelmingly click-to-call, the cheap cost per conversion is not the win it looks like.
- 16
Check impression share lost to budget versus rank, and budget pacing
Add the Search lost IS (budget) and Search lost IS (rank) columns. Lost to budget on a campaign that converts well is the clearest scaling signal in the account. Lost to rank is an Ad Rank problem: bids, ad relevance or landing page experience, in that order. Also check whether the budget runs dry before month end.
2 more checks for 2026 accounts
Run these as well if the account uses Performance Max, AI Max for Search or broad match.
- 17
Check where Performance Max actually serves
Open the channel performance report for each Performance Max campaign and see how the spend splits across Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail and Maps. If your goal is calls from people searching, and most of the money serves on video or Display, adjust that campaign's goals and assets or move budget to Search.
- 18
Read AI Max and broad match search terms by cost
AI Max for Search and broad match both show your ads on searches you didn't list. Sort those search terms by cost, read the top rows first and add negatives for anything that isn't a buyer. Keep exact and phrase match keywords on your core services so they stay covered.
If stage 1 turns up a gap, fix it before you change a bid, so the bid strategy learns from real calls and forms. A website change is the usual reason tracking stops, so if you've just rebuilt or moved the site, work the SEO migration checklist alongside this one. For the same ground framed around symptoms, see why your Google Ads aren't working.
Want me to run this audit for you?
Send me your 10-digit Customer ID and I'll audit your account for free.
You get a written review from me covering the checks this list starts with: conversions, where the spend went, default settings, landing pages and a priority list of fixes.
It all arrives in writing, so you can read it when it suits you.
Advertising in Sydney? I audit and manage accounts there too, as a Sydney Google Ads specialist.
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The Google Ads optimisation checklist: weekly, monthly and quarterly.
An audit is a snapshot. Optimisation is the routine you run afterwards, week after week, and it's where an account keeps improving.
Every week
about 30 minutes
- Pull the search terms report and add negatives.
- Check spend against budget pacing, so every campaign runs the full month.
- Confirm each conversion action is still recording. Tags can stop firing after a site change, and Google doesn't always flag it.
Every month
about 2 hours
- Review performance campaign by campaign, each on its own numbers.
- Pause or rewrite keywords with 20 or more clicks and 0 conversions over the last 60 to 90 days.
- Check Search lost IS (budget) on campaigns that convert, and scale the ones being held back.
- Check results by device and by hour of day, so you know where and when enquiries arrive before you change a bid.
- Refresh the weakest responsive search ad assets rather than rewriting whole ads.
Every quarter
half a day
- Run the full audit checklist above, top to bottom, starting with tracking verification.
- Re-check the settings Google can switch back on: search partners, Display expansion, auto-apply recommendations.
- Revisit what a lead is worth. If your average job value moved, your target cost per conversion moved with it.
- Review every landing page on a phone.
If you adopt 1 habit from this page, make it the weekly search terms report. Adding negative keywords on a schedule is the routine I'd keep above every other.
Optional bonus
Prefer to tick it off on paper or in a spreadsheet? Download the PDF and spreadsheet versions here.
4 checklist habits I've updated for 2026.
Each started as sound advice for an older version of the platform. Here's what I do now, and why.
Leave mobile bid adjustments at 0%
Older checklists said -100%, from a time when mobile landing pages were poor. For a local service business, a phone is where the call starts, so I leave mobile at 0% and let the bid strategy do its work.
Pause on cost and conversions, then read Quality Score
Quality Score is a diagnostic made of expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. A keyword scoring 4 that brings enquiries at a price you're happy with stays on. Use the score to explain why a keyword is expensive.
Leave ad rotation on Optimise
Rotating indefinitely suited 2 static text ads tested by hand. Responsive search ads test combinations as they run, so Optimise gives you the cleaner result.
Judge each campaign type on its own numbers
A blended cost per conversion mixes Search form fills with Performance Max click-to-call taps. Ask which campaign types and conversion actions sit inside any cost per lead you're shown.
Google Ads checklist questions.
Is there a PDF version of this Google Ads checklist?
Is there a Google Ads audit template?
What is the difference between a Google Ads audit checklist and an optimisation checklist?
How often should I audit a Google Ads account?
What should I check first in a Google Ads audit?
Is an AdWords audit the same as a Google Ads audit?
What do I do if the audit finds a lot to fix?
Does this checklist work outside Australia?
Can I run this audit if an agency manages my account?
Related Resources
For when the checklist raises a question it leaves open.
Google Ads Management
Flat-fee campaign management, month to month, in an account you own.
Google Ads Cost Guide
Management fees, ad spend, and a real Adelaide account broken down campaign by campaign.
Why Aren't My Google Ads Working?
The 8 reasons an account underperforms, and how to tell which one is yours.
Google Ads Cost Calculator
Model cost per lead and return before you commit a budget.
Australian Google Ads Benchmarks
Click costs and conversion figures to set your audit findings against.
Google Ads Landing Pages
The 9-part structure I use, with real pages built for Australian businesses.
Found something you'd like handled?
The checklist is free and stays free, whether you use it yourself or hand it to whoever runs your account. If you'd like the findings handled, I manage Google Ads for a flat $800+GST a month, with ad spend paid straight to Google in an account you own.
If your business is in South Australia, see how I work as an Adelaide Google Ads specialist.
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