PPC Audit Checklist: What to Review Before Changes
Before anyone touches bids or budgets, look at what is really happening in the account. These are the eight things we check, in plain terms.
Reviewed by Nadya, Co-Founder and Director of Paid Media
The short answer
A good audit starts with tracking and ownership, then works through settings, search terms, ads and landing pages. Write down what you find and why you are changing it. Do not assume a change will help until the numbers you trust say so.
Eight things to review in a PPC account
Work through them in order. The first two decide whether you can trust anything else.
- 01
What counts as a lead
Write down the actions that matter to the business, like a call from the ad, a quote form or a booked estimate. Then check that each one is tracked once, and only once.
- 02
Who owns the account
Make sure the business can log in as an admin, sees the billing, and knows which agency or manager account is linked. If you cannot get in, fix that first.
- 03
Campaign settings
Check location, language, schedule, budget and bidding against what you actually want. A plumber in Orlando does not need ads showing in Tampa at 3 a.m.
- 04
Search terms
Open the search terms report and read what people actually typed. Look for searches you would never want to pay for, and add them as negative keywords.
- 05
Ads and offers
Read every ad. Are the prices, offers and promises still true? Does each ad send people to the right page?
- 06
Landing pages
Click your own ads on a phone. Does the page match the search, load quickly, and make it easy to call or fill out a form?
- 07
Tracking and reports
Check that conversions are set up correctly, the date ranges make sense, and any sudden jump or drop in the numbers has an explanation.
- 08
Change log and next step
Write down what you found, what you decided to change, who approved it, and what you will look at afterward to see if it worked.
Fix the numbers before you act on them
Picture a roofer whose account shows a low cost per lead. On a closer look, the "lead" being counted is anyone who views the contact page. The real number of calls and forms is much lower. Every bid and budget change made on the old number was a guess.
That is why tracking comes first. Once you know each call and form is counted once, the search terms report and landing page reports start to tell you something useful. Then you can decide where to spend more, where to spend less, and which pages need work.
If you want help, see how we handle paid search or ask us to look at your account.
Evidence and review
Google says you choose which actions count as conversions in your account, and it offers reports that show how your landing pages perform, including on mobile. Its landing page guidance says the page should match the ad and make the next step easy. Those pages back up the order of this checklist: get tracking right, then judge the pages and the spend.
Questions about PPC audits
What is a PPC audit?
It is a structured look at a paid search account before anyone changes it. You check tracking, settings, search terms, ads and landing pages, then decide what to fix first.
Why check tracking before anything else?
Every other decision depends on the numbers. If calls are counted twice or forms are not counted at all, you could cut a campaign that works or keep one that does not.
How often should a Google Ads account be audited?
Do a full review before a new person or agency takes over, and after any big change to the business, like a new service or location. Search terms are worth checking much more often.
Can I audit my own account?
Yes. This checklist is written so an owner can work through it. A second pair of eyes helps most with tracking, which is the easiest part to get wrong.
Does an audit mean the account needs a rebuild?
Not always. Many audits end with a short list of fixes. A rebuild only makes sense when the structure or tracking is broken in ways small changes cannot fix.
Keep reading
Want a second pair of eyes on your account?
Tell us what you are seeing. We will start with tracking and tell you what we would check next.
