Google Ads Checklist: Setup and Audit
Both checklists sit on one page. Part 1 is the 17-step launch checklist for a new account. Part 2 is the 16-point audit and optimisation checklist for an account you already have, and it starts where every audit should: proving the conversion tracking is telling you the truth. Print either part or save the whole thing as a PDF, free and without handing over an email address.
Work directly with Chris, Ana, and Audrey
Meet the team →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. An account with broken or misconfigured tracking cannot be optimised, because every number you would optimise against is wrong.
- Tracked conversions are not leads. Google Ads counts website phone-link clicks alongside real calls and form submissions, so segment by conversion action before you believe a lead count.
- Never judge an account on its blended cost per conversion. Performance Max skews to click-to-call and drags the account average down, making Search campaigns look expensive.
- Sending ad traffic to your homepage instead of a page built for the ad is the most common and most expensive mistake in Google Ads.
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 one 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 quietly re-enabled.
Which half of this checklist do you need?
Never run 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, out of managing 200+ campaigns and more than $3M in ad spend for Australian service businesses over 8 years.
Still deciding whether ads are the right channel? Read SEO vs Google Ads first, and what Google Ads management costs if you are budgeting. If the business you are 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.
In order. The tracking stage is not optional and it does not come last: an account that launches without working conversion tracking spends real money on data you cannot use.
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 is the one people skip, and it is the one that pays
Our client Pro Roof and Gutter, a roofing company in northern Adelaide, runs 2 conversion-first landing pages built for the ad traffic rather than pointing paid clicks at the general website: one for roof replacement, one 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.
Note the language: tracked conversions, not leads, and a stated window. Enhanced Conversions, GTM, GA4 event tracking and call tracking are all in place, which is what makes the figure measurable rather than estimated.
The Google Ads audit checklist: 16 checks on an account that already runs.
Work top to bottom. The order matters more than the items, because stages 2 and 3 are only meaningful 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.
If stage 1 turns up problems, fix those before touching a bid. There is no point tuning a target CPA against a conversion count that includes every accidental tap on a phone number. The usual reason tracking broke in the first place is a website change, so if you have just rebuilt or moved the site, work the SEO migration checklist alongside this one. For the same ground framed around symptoms rather than steps, see why your Google Ads aren't working.
The Google Ads optimisation checklist: weekly, monthly and quarterly.
An audit is a snapshot. Optimisation is the routine you run afterwards, and it is where the compounding happens. Most accounts that underperform are not badly built, they are simply never touched between quarterly reviews.
Every week
about 30 minutes
- Pull the search terms report and add negatives. This is the single highest-return recurring task in any account.
- Check spend against budget pacing, so no campaign runs dry mid-month.
- Scan for conversion actions that stopped recording. A tag breaks silently and nobody gets an alert.
Every month
about 2 hours
- Review performance campaign by campaign, never on the blended account average.
- 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.
- 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 re-enables on its own: 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 landing pages on a phone, not a desktop.
If you only ever adopt one line from this page, make it the weekly search terms report. Adding negative keywords on a schedule, week after week, does more for cost per lead in most small accounts than any bid strategy change.
Optional bonus
4 pieces of checklist advice to ignore in 2026.
All 4 still appear on Google Ads checklists that carry this year's date. All 4 are holdovers from a version of the platform that no longer exists.
✕Set mobile bid adjustments to -100%
Reasonable when mobile landing pages were terrible. For a local service business in 2026, mobile is where most calls come from, so -100% switches off the device producing your best leads. Leave it at 0%.
✕Pause any keyword with a Quality Score below 5
Quality Score is a diagnostic made of expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. It is not a bid input. A keyword scoring 4 that produces leads at a price you are happy with should stay. Pause on cost and conversions, then use Quality Score to explain why something is expensive.
✕Set ad rotation to rotate indefinitely
This made sense when you manually A/B tested 2 static text ads. Responsive search ads already test combinations continuously, so rotating indefinitely slows the system down without giving you cleaner data. Leave it on Optimise.
✕Judge the account on its blended cost per conversion
The blended average is the number agencies quote because it flatters. It mixes Search form fills with Performance Max click-to-call taps, and those are not the same product. Ask which campaign types and conversion actions sit inside any cost per lead you are shown.
The pattern is the same each time: advice written for manual bidding and static text ads, left in place after Smart Bidding and Performance Max changed what the levers do.
Google Ads checklist questions.
Is there a PDF version of this Google Ads checklist?
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 shows the account is a mess?
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 does not answer.
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.
Ran the audit and found something you'd rather not fix yourself?
The checklist is free and stays free, whether you use it yourself or hand it to whoever runs your account. If you would rather someone worked through the findings with you, Chris manages Google Ads for a flat $800+GST/month, with ad spend paid straight to Google in an account you own.
130+ five-star reviews across Australia · 200+ campaigns managed · 8 years Adelaide-based