Google Ads Audit: A Free Automated Scan, Then a Written Review From a Senior Practitioner
An audit is worth the decisions it changes. This one starts with Buddy's free automated scan of your account
and ends with a written, prioritized plan from John Williams, who has audited and run accounts across more
than $350M in Google Ads spend.
Step one is free: connect your account to the Buddy auditor at /tools/auditor/app and get a scored report.
John's review goes in dependency order: tracking first (everything else rests on it), then structure,
bidding, search terms, ads, PMax, and budgets.
You get a written findings document with severity, evidence, and a fix for each item, plus a 30/60/90 plan.
Every finding is backed by data from your account and, where it involves a platform rule, a link to Google's
documentation.
The audit is yours whether or not you hire us. No percentage-of-spend fees, ever.
Who needs a Google Ads audit
You inherited an account (new job, new agency, acquisition) and need to know what you're dealing with.
Cost per lead or ROAS drifted and nobody can say why.
You're about to scale budget and want to be sure the money won't go into a leaking account.
You're paying an agency and want an independent read on the work.
If you already know tracking is the problem, start with the narrower
conversion tracking audit instead.
What you receive
Findings document. Each finding has a severity (critical, high, medium, low), the evidence
from your account, the fix, and the expected direction of impact. No made-up "you're wasting 37%" headline
numbers. Where a finding can be quantified from your data, it is.
30/60/90 day plan. Emergency fixes first (usually tracking), then structural changes, then
optimization.
Search term and negative keyword file, ready to upload.
A 2026 changes check: every campaign reviewed against the June 2026 bid strategy relabel, the
August 17, 2026 target-based bidding update, the combined enhanced conversions setting, and the move of
offline conversion uploads to the Data Manager API.
A 45-minute walkthrough call with John to go through the findings and answer questions.
How the audit works, step by step
You connect the account to the free Buddy auditor and get a scored report within minutes.
You grant read access to Google Ads, and ideally to GA4 and Google Tag Manager.
John reviews the account in dependency order, starting with conversion tracking (detailed below).
You receive the written findings document and the 30/60/90 day plan.
John walks you through it on a call, and you decide whether to fix it yourself, with Buddy, or with us.
Behind those steps are two layers of review: an automated scan and a human read of the results.
Layer 1: the free Buddy audit
Buddy is Ahmeego's AI Google Ads agent. It's the same agent the team uses
internally, and it's open source on GitHub. Connect your account and it runs the audit conversationally. It can
also scan your landing pages for tracking issues across ten tag platforms (GA4, GTM, Meta Pixel, Google Ads, and
more), as described on the Buddy auditor page. Buddy only writes to your account
after you explicitly confirm. Every write goes through a preview, confirm, execute, and receipt loop.
For teams who want the full framework, our open-source 250-Point Audit Engine
scores 250 weighted checks across 10 categories. The categories are dependency-ordered and start with tracking,
because everything else depends on it, and the engine generates a 30/60/90 day strategy from the scores.
Layer 2: John's written review
Automated checks find patterns. They don't know that your $90 CPA is excellent because a customer is worth
$4,000, or that a "wasted" keyword feeds your highest-LTV segment. John reads the scan against your economics
and writes the plan.
What John checks, in order
Conversion tracking and goals
Which actions are Primary and which are Secondary. Only Primary actions in goals used for bidding feed the
"Conversions" column (Google Ads Help). Counting settings, attribution, enhanced conversions status, offline imports, consent mode, and any
duplicate tags from GA4 imports.
Structure and budgets
Brand vs. non-brand separation, campaigns spread too thin to train Smart Bidding, overlapping campaigns, and
budget-limited campaigns that matter. Budget-limited Search is the condition under which Performance Max can
serve on your exact-match terms (About Performance Max).
Bid strategies
Strategy vs. data volume, targets vs. achievable CPA or ROAS, leftover bid adjustments the strategy ignores,
and campaigns silently left on Manual CPC after Google retired Enhanced CPC in March 2025 (About Enhanced CPC).
Search terms and negatives
Ninety days of search terms, grouped by intent. Spend on irrelevant queries, missing shared negative lists,
negatives that block good traffic, and match-type choices for the account's data volume.
Ads, assets, and landing pages
RSA coverage (up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions per ad,
per Google), pinning, missing sitelinks and other assets, message match to the landing page, and landing page speed
and tracking.
Performance Max and AI Max
Brand exclusions, negative keywords, search terms report review, asset group design, feed health, and
whether AI Max's Final URL expansion is sending traffic to pages you'd never pick yourself.
Recommendations and auto-applied changes
Which auto-apply recommendations are on, and which "optimizations" were accepted that mostly raised spend.
John's view: an optimization score of 80–90% is healthy, and 100% usually means someone stopped thinking.
What audits most often find
The anonymized audits on our case studies page show the patterns John sees
repeatedly: keywords with no conversions in 90 days eating a large share of budget; no negative keyword lists at
all; conversion tracking that counted page views as conversions; manual CPC bids that hadn't changed in years;
Performance Max taking brand traffic; and revenue-based values steering spend toward low-margin products. His
conversion tracking article
puts it bluntly: most performance problems he has diagnosed trace back to broken or incomplete tracking, not ad
copy or keywords.
A 30-minute self-audit you can run today
Before you talk to anyone, including us, these checks will tell you whether the account has a measurement
problem, a structure problem, or a spend problem. Each takes a few minutes in the Google Ads interface.
Goals > Conversions > Summary. List every Primary action. If any of them isn't money, a
qualified lead, or a booked call, that's finding number one.
Look for duplicates. Do you see the same outcome twice, such as a "Purchase" from the Google
tag and a "purchase" imported from GA4, both Primary? Then conversions are double-counted.
Check each campaign's bid strategy. Any campaign on Manual CPC that nobody chose is probably
a leftover from the Enhanced CPC retirement.
Compare the conversion count to your CRM for the last 30 days. A gap of more than a few
percent in either direction needs an explanation.
Search terms, last 30 days, sorted by cost. Scroll the top 50. Every irrelevant query is
money you can recover with a negative keyword.
Brand vs. non-brand. Are brand terms in their own campaign with their own budget? If brand
and non-brand share a campaign, brand's cheap conversions are hiding non-brand's real cost.
Budget status column. Which important campaigns are "Limited by budget"? For Search, that's
also the condition under which Performance Max can serve on your exact-match terms.
Auto-applied recommendations. Open the Recommendations page and check the auto-apply settings
in its top bar (Google Ads Help). Know exactly which changes Google is allowed to make without asking you.
Change history, last 90 days. Frequent target and budget edits keep Smart Bidding in its
learning phase. Google describes a standard 7–14 day learning period (Google Ads Help).
Landing pages. Click your top five ads on a phone. Slow, mismatched, or broken pages cost
more than any bid setting.
If you find problems in the first four checks, fix measurement before anything else. The
conversion tracking audit exists for exactly that
case.
What a finding looks like
Every item in John's written review follows the same format, so you can hand it straight to whoever will fix it.
The example below shows the format only. It isn't a client result.
Finding: Lead form "page view" set as a Primary conversion Severity: Critical: it affects every Smart Bidding campaign. Evidence: The conversion action fires on the form page load, not on submission. Its count
roughly equals sessions on that page. Fix: Create a submission-based action (thank-you page or a form-success data layer event). Set
it Primary, demote the old one to Secondary, and apply a data exclusion if bidding trained on the bad data. Expected direction: Reported conversions drop, CPA rises on paper, and lead quality improves.
Warn stakeholders before you ship it.
That last line matters. A good audit tells you which fixes will make the dashboard look worse before
the business looks better. If nobody warns leadership, the right fix tends to get reversed.
Questions to ask whoever runs your account now
Which conversion actions are Primary, and why is each one there?
What is our target CPA or ROAS based on: the achievable number, or a number someone wanted?
Which recommendations are on auto-apply?
How much of Performance Max's reported revenue comes from branded searches?
Who actually makes changes in the account each week, and where is that logged?
If the answers are vague, the audit will be especially useful.
Pricing
The Buddy scan is free. The written review is part of the free 30-day audit that comes before any managed
engagement, as described on the pricing page: connect your account, see what's working
and what needs fixing, and pay nothing until you choose a flat monthly fee for ongoing management. There are no
percentage-of-spend fees and no long contracts. If you only want to run the fixes yourself, Buddy Pro is
$9.99/month.
Platforms we work in
An audit touches every system that affects ad performance. These are the official tools we read from.
Yes. The Buddy scan at /tools/auditor/app is free, and the written review is part of Ahmeego's free 30-day
audit for prospective managed clients. No credit card is required.
What access do you need for a Google Ads audit?
Read access to Google Ads is enough for the scan. For the full review, read access to Google Analytics and
Google Tag Manager lets John check the measurement side, which is where most problems start.
Can Buddy change anything in my account during the audit?
Not without your confirmation. Every write goes through a preview, confirm, execute, and receipt loop, so
nothing changes unless you approve it.
How long does a Google Ads audit take?
The automated scan takes minutes. John's written review usually follows within a few business days, depending
on account size and how many systems are connected.
What's the difference between this and Google's optimization score?
Optimization score measures how many of Google's own recommendations you've applied. An audit measures whether
the account makes your business money. They often disagree.
What changed in Google Ads in 2026 that an audit should check?
Four things. Target CPA and Target ROAS were relabeled in June 2026. From August 17, 2026, budget-limited
target campaigns deliver closer to their stated target, so outperforming campaigns can drift. Enhanced
conversions for web and leads became one setting in June 2026. And from June 15, 2026, offline conversion
uploads go through the Data Manager API instead of the Google Ads API.
Do I have to hire you after the audit?
No. The findings and plan are yours. Many teams implement the fixes themselves with Buddy.
Request John's written audit review
Already ran the Buddy scan? Paste the headline findings and John will tell you which three to fix first. Haven't
run it yet? Tell him what feels off.
John, Kristy, or Sandeep will reply.One of the three of us will respond personally within 1 business day. No SDR queue.
Message received.
One of us will reply directly within one business day. While you wait, run a free
Buddy audit on your account.
Top 25 references
The primary sources, standards, research, and tools we rely on for this work. Every link was checked on
2026-10-11. We aren't affiliated with these publishers unless noted.
About Enhanced CPC (ECPC)— Google Ads Help The 2025 ECPC retirement that left many campaigns silently on Manual CPC.
About Performance Max campaigns— Google Ads Help The PMax and Search priority rules every audit checks for brand and exact-match overlap.
Introduction to the Google Ads API— Google for Developers The programmatic interface behind every serious audit and reporting tool, including the open-source Google
Ads API Agent.
Standards & policy
EU user consent policy— Google Google's binding policy for advertisers with EEA, UK, and Swiss users, and the reason consent mode
signals are required there.
Measuring Ad Effectiveness Using Geo Experiments— Google Research (Vaver & Koehler) The method behind matched-market tests, used to measure incremental conversions when platform-reported
numbers can't be trusted.
Industry reports & benchmarks
Google Ads Benchmarks for Your Industry— WordStream by LocaliQ Annually refreshed CTR, CPC, conversion rate, and cost-per-lead benchmarks by industry, useful as a sanity
check rather than a target.
Leading tools
Google Ads Scripts: product overview— Google for Developers JavaScript automation inside Google Ads for alerts, budget pacing checks, and custom reports.
Google Tag Assistant— Google Google's debugger for the Google tag and GTM, including the consent state each hit was sent
with.
Google Ads Editor— Google Google's free desktop app for offline bulk edits, used for large restructures and reviewing changes
before they post.
Google Ads Transparency Center— Google Shows every ad an advertiser is running on Google, which makes competitor message checks quick.
Optmyzr— Optmyzr A widely used PPC management platform for Google and Microsoft Ads rule-based automation, audits, and
alerts.
What is PPC – Pay-Per-Click marketing?— Search Engine Land Search Engine Land's maintained primer on how paid search auctions, platforms, and campaign planning
fit together.
A Complete PPC Marketing Guide— Search Engine Journal A multi-chapter guide from Search Engine Journal covering account structure, keyword research, bidding, and
reporting.
Communities & courses
r/PPC— Reddit The largest practitioner forum for paid search, useful for spotting platform bugs and rollout issues before
they're documented.
Skillshop: Google Ads certifications— Google Google's free training and certification portal for Search, Shopping, measurement, and AI-powered
campaigns.
AI disclosure: This page was drafted with AI assistance and edited by a human. Platform rules and
limits are cited to official documentation as checked on 2026-10-11; Google, Microsoft, and Meta change these
often, so confirm against the linked source before acting. Brand names mentioned in John's background are past
engagements listed on the about page; no current endorsement is implied.
Run the free Google Ads audit now.
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