What is a Google Ads audit? A 2026 guide

A Google Ads audit is a structured review of every lever that affects performance in your account: structure, keywords and search terms, budgets and pacing, bidding, ad copy, tracking and audiences. The goal is not a score for its own sake — it is a prioritised list of changes that will reduce wasted spend and improve conversions.

Why audits go stale

Most accounts are audited once, at onboarding, and then never again. But accounts drift: new keywords accumulate, competitor auctions shift, creatives fatigue and tracking breaks silently. An audit is a snapshot; optimisation is a process.

That is why the modern approach is continuous auditing — the same checks run on a schedule, with findings turned into actionable recommendations rather than a static report.

What a good audit covers

1. Account structure

• Are campaigns organised by intent, product or geography?
• Is naming consistent enough to automate reporting?
• Are brand and non-brand search separated?

2. Keywords and search terms

• Which keywords spend without converting?
• Which search terms should be added as keywords?
• Which should be added as negatives?

This is usually where the fastest wins live. A single pass over the search terms report regularly uncovers 10–30% of spend going to irrelevant queries.

3. Budget and pacing

• Which campaigns are limited by budget?
• Which are over-spending relative to return?
• Is budget pacing aligned with demand?

4. Bidding

• Does each campaign have a bid strategy that matches its conversion volume?
• Are target CPA / target ROAS values realistic?
• Did any campaign switch strategy before it had enough signal?

5. Ad copy and assets

• Are asset groups full?
• Is CTR trending down on any ad?
• Are extensions (assets) being used everywhere they could be?

6. Conversion tracking

• Are there duplicate conversion actions?
• Are values set correctly?
• Do offline conversions flow back from the CRM?

Broken tracking invalidates everything else. Audit it first.

7. Audiences and targeting

• Are existing customers excluded from acquisition campaigns?
• Are audiences overlapping?
• Are geo and device adjustments evidence-based?

How to run an audit fast

1. Connect read-only access so nothing can change.
2. Pull 12 months of data — 90 days is not enough to see seasonality.
3. Score each category so you can track improvement over time.
4. Prioritise by projected impact, not by number of findings.
5. Apply the top fixes and re-audit to confirm the score moved.

Doing it continuously

The reason most teams stop auditing is time. A manual audit takes days and is out of date the moment it is finished. MyAd runs the same checks continuously, scores the account, and turns each finding into a one-click recommendation with a projected impact.