How to audit a Google Ads account

Start with the business goal and access

An account audit should produce a short, evidence-backed decision list. Begin by confirming the account ID, owner, currency, time zone, markets, products and the business outcome you are buying. A lead, a qualified lead and a paid customer are different outcomes.

Record existing permissions, active automations and the person who can approve changes. Export a dated baseline and inspect change history before editing. If an agency, automated rule and another operator can all change budgets, a recommendation alone cannot explain what happened.

1. Confirm what the account calls a conversion

Check the conversion actions used by each campaign: purchase, submitted lead, phone call or another goal. Inspect their status and whether their values and counting choices match the business. A page visit should not silently stand in for a completed sale.

Test the relevant journey using native tag diagnostics and your normal test procedure. Compare event delivery with store or CRM records. The totals need not match exactly because attribution, time zones and reporting dates differ; investigate the discrepancy instead of declaring either system wrong.

• Troubleshoot Google conversion tracking

2. Separate urgent faults from uncertain performance

A broken destination, unavailable product or campaign serving a market you cannot sell to can justify a narrowly scoped pause while you investigate. Document the affected entity and reason. Do not pause the whole account because one report looks poor.

For performance decisions, inspect historical conversion delay and compare equivalent periods. Recent clicks can receive conversions later. Segment brand and non-brand demand before comparing acquisition costs.

• Understand conversion delay

3. Follow the largest spend questions

Sort campaigns and reported search terms by cost. Inspect intent, landing-page match, locations, devices and schedules where the evidence warrants it. An irrelevant query is a different problem from a relevant query whose sales have not arrived.

For example, a shop selling new bicycles may find repair-service queries. Review a narrowly scoped negative after checking the offer and match type. A relevant bicycle query with no purchase needs a tracking, stock, page and sample-size review before exclusion. Some low-volume queries are withheld; the report is not a complete record of every search.

• How to use the search terms report
• Google’s report documentation

4. Make a reviewable decision log

These illustrative entries show the evidence needed, not findings from a Muze customer account.

5. Choose a tool for the actual job

Native diagnostics help test event delivery. A bulk editor helps post reviewed changes. An audit tool can flag recurring account issues. Muze can help investigate connected advertising data conversationally; it does not independently prove that your checkout or conversion tag works.

A useful first request is: “For this account and date range, rank the biggest spend questions. Show the metrics, chosen conversion action and missing evidence. Separate urgent faults from performance hypotheses.” Review the resulting evidence before authorizing a change.

• Compare audit, editing and analysis tools
• Find wasted ad spend

Finish with a small set of owned actions

For each approved action, record the owner, affected campaign or query, rollback option and next review date. Keep simultaneous changes limited enough to interpret the result. Judge success against the agreed business outcome after an appropriate reporting window, rather than an audit score alone.