Paid Search

How to Audit Your Own Google Ads Account

A practical audit you can run in an afternoon. Tracking, structure, search terms, bidding and landing pages, in the order that finds wasted spend fastest.

BenchMarketing editorial team Updated October 2, 2026 3 min read

Most wasted Google Ads spend hides in a handful of places. This audit goes through them in the order that usually finds the most money for the least effort. Set the date range to the last 90 days before you start.

1. Check conversion tracking first

Everything else depends on it. In Goals, list every conversion action and ask:

Is each primary conversion something that matters to the business? Page views and button clicks counted as conversions teach Smart Bidding the wrong thing.
Is anything counted twice? A purchase tracked by both a Google tag and an imported analytics goal doubles the results.
Do the numbers roughly match your CRM or store? A large gap means tracking is broken somewhere.

If tracking is wrong, fix it and stop the audit there. Optimising against bad data makes things worse.

2. Read the search terms report

Sort search terms by cost. Look for spend on searches unrelated to what you sell, competitor names you did not intend to target, and job seekers or people looking for free versions. Add them as negative keywords. In most accounts that have not been audited recently, this is where the biggest savings are.

3. Compare your numbers with benchmarks

The Google Ads median CTR is 6.11% (middle half: 3.2% to 9.8%), median CPC $4.22 and median conversion rate 7.04%. Check your industry's figures too. Use them to spot outliers: a non-brand CTR far below the range points at relevance; a conversion rate far below it points at the landing page or the offer.

4. Review structure

Brand and non-brand in separate campaigns, so brand's strong numbers do not hide weak non-brand performance.
Ad groups focused on one theme each.
Campaign settings: location targeting set to people in your area, not people interested in it, unless you mean it; search partners and display expansion switched off on search campaigns unless you have checked they perform.

5. Check bidding and budgets

Campaigns limited by budget while converting profitably are leaving money on the table.
Target CPA or target ROAS set far from what the campaign actually achieves will either choke delivery or overspend.
Smart Bidding needs conversion volume. Campaigns with only a few conversions a month may do better grouped together under a portfolio strategy.

6. Look at ads and landing pages

Each ad group should have at least one responsive search ad with a good spread of headlines. Check that every final URL loads, is fast on mobile and matches the ad's promise.

7. Write down what you change

Keep a dated log of changes. When performance moves, you will want to know why.

See the Google Ads benchmark hub or the Quality Score guide.

About the figures

Benchmark figures in this article come from the BenchMarketing dataset and update when the benchmark pages do. Each benchmark page lists its sources and period; see our methodology.

Sources

Google Ads Help: About the search terms report

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