A Google Ads pay-per-click audit (shortly known as PPC audit) involves reviewing your account structure, keyword intent, and how ad spend flows through the funnel. This approach directly links campaign setup to landing page performance while identifying inefficiencies and clearer optimisation opportunities.

But it’s not that simple because most people usually focus on the less important elements and waste money. We’ve been auditing Google Ads accounts for years, so we know exactly where it goes wrong.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the complete audit process. Plus, we’ll show you the most common issues that ruin your PPC performance and teach you how to prioritise fixes for the best output.

Read on to learn how to take control of your campaigns and improve efficiency.

How to Review Your Google Ads Performance

You review your Google Ads performance by checking seven main areas in order: conversion tracking, account structure, search terms, Quality Score, keyword match types, budget distribution, and ad copy. Most audits take two to four hours, depending on your account size.

Here’s how you should audit your Ads account:

• Conversion Tracking and Analytics: Make sure conversions trigger on the right pages after someone completes a desired action. Then connect your Google Ads account to Google Analytics so you can follow what happens next, from the initial click-through to the outcome.
• Account Structure: Properly organised campaigns give you more control over budget and deliver higher quality scores. That’s why you need to separate campaigns by product type or target audience to prevent mixing unrelated keywords. Each ad group should target tightly themed keywords that share the same intent.
• Search Terms Report: The search terms report shows the real phrases people type before seeing your ads, compared to the keywords you target. For example, a plumber bidding on “emergency plumbing” may appear for “plumbing courses” or “plumbing jobs”, which leads to irrelevant clicks and wasted ad spend.
• Quality Score and Landing Pages: Your Quality Score directly influences how much you pay per click and how competitive your ads are in the auction. Higher scores often lead to lower costs and better visibility, given that your ad text, keyword intent, and landing page message are closely aligned.
• Match Types and Negative Keywords: Keyword match types control how closely search queries relate to your targeted keywords. Broad match keywords often need negative keywords to act as a safety net. It helps keep a PPC campaign focused by refining results over time instead of relying on a fixed number at launch.
• Budget and Bidding: You must check which campaigns use the most ad spend and how that compares to the conversion rate. Branded campaigns often bring paying customers at lower customer acquisition costs, yet many accounts still underfund them.
• Ad Copy and Assets: Strong ad copy supported by relevant assets can improve your click-through rate by increasing relevance and clarity. We recommend including your focus keyword in headlines for better ad quality. Also, test a minimum of two ad variations per ad group consistently, and add sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets.

When all these aspects work properly, your ads reach the right target audience and convert more potential customers.

Detailed Overview of PPC Audit

A PPC audit is a systematic review of your Google Ads account to identify wasted spend, technical problems, and missed opportunities (we discussed the techniques at length in the previous section). The goal is to find actionable insights that improve your return on ad spend.

Let’s get into more detail about the ways these audits work.

Regular Audits Reduce Wasted Ad Spend

Regular audits catch budget-draining issues before they cost you thousands in wasted clicks. They find lost budget on the wrong keywords, broken tracking, or ads showing in irrelevant searches.

We’ve found that most accounts leak one-third of their budget without anyone noticing until they run an audit.

Audits also find out which particular keywords attract potential customers versus irrelevant clicks that will never convert. For instance, a Brisbane law firm might find that they’re paying for searches like “law degree requirements” when they only want “personal injury lawyer Brisbane”.

You can also detect technical issues like broken tracking before they drain money for weeks if you perform regular checks on your Google Ads account.

Recommended Audit Frequency

The truth is, your audit frequency depends on your monthly ad spend and account complexity. In our experience, small business accounts under five thousand dollars monthly need only quarterly audits to catch issues before they become expensive problems.

Honestly, data accumulates more slowly when you’re spending less. That’s why checking every three months gives you enough information to identify certain patterns.

That said, if your account has a monthly budget of over twenty thousand dollars, you’ll need to perform checks weekly. You’ll also have to review the account every quarter to prevent budget waste at scale (especially in competitive markets).

When spending increases, a poorly set up Ad campaign can use up your monthly budget very quickly. For that reason, weekly checks help notice problems early, while quarterly reviews look more closely at strategy and account structure.

Pro tip: Run an immediate audit when your conversion rate drops suddenly, or costs spike without explanation.

What Are Common Issues Found in Google Ads Audits?

Common issues found in Google Ads audits often include poor account structure, missing negative keywords, and bidding strategies that don’t match campaign goals. From what we’ve seen, these three issues constantly appear in audits and lead to inefficient budget use.

We’ll take a closer look at these issues.

Poor Account Structure

Believe it or not, using a single campaign for everything lowers ad quality because it mixes unrelated keywords together. So when someone searches for something specific, like “men’s running shoes”, but sees a general ad, they are less likely to click.

The same problem appears at the ad group level as well. Like, when ad groups contain more than 30 keywords (as a rule of thumb), it becomes difficult to optimise them. Why? It’s because you can’t write relevant ads for many different search intents.

But a well-organised account structure gives you more control over budget distribution. It allows you to pause underperforming ads while keeping high-performing campaigns running smoothly.

Missing Negative Keywords

If you don’t use negative keywords, irrelevant searches can trigger your ads. These incidents gradually drain your budget and reduce the overall efficiency of your ad campaign.

And the problem gets worse when you use broad match keywords without any safety net. Specifically, broad match without negatives shows ads for completely irrelevant searches that only share one or two words with your target keyword.

Take an accounting firm targeting “tax services” as an example. They might show ads for “tax refund status” or “free tax calculator”. It’ll attract people looking for DIY solutions and not professional help.

This is why you need to review search terms weekly to build comprehensive negative keyword lists. This practice will protect you from losing money.

Wrong Bidding Strategy for Campaign Goals

The right bidding strategy aligns ad spend with real business goals instead of vanity metrics. For example, Maximize Clicks bidding can waste money when conversion goals are your priority, since it focuses on volume. This way, you’ll get plenty of clicks from people who have no intention of buying.

And if you go the automated bidding way, remember that it needs sufficient conversion data first to work properly (we’ve found it to be at least 30 conversions per month). Without that volume, the system struggles to learn and often makes inefficient decisions early on.

So, match your bidding strategy to your campaign goal for the best results rather than letting Google choose for you.

How Do You Prioritise Your Audit Findings?

You prioritise audit findings by fixing urgent issues like broken conversion tracking first. After that, you should address high-impact problems like wasted ad spend and then move on to time-consuming improvements, namely testing new ad copy.

Let’s start with broken conversion tracking. You have to fix it first because you can’t measure anything without it. And when it doesn’t work, you’re spending money blindly with no idea which campaigns deliver results and which ones burn cash.

Then come the negative keywords. Deal with them next to stop bleeding your budget on irrelevant traffic. Based on our experience, it takes one to two hours to complete this task, and you’ll notice its impact almost immediately.

Another thing on the priority list is managing your Quality Score. If the score is under five, you often pay more per click because your ads are less competitive than those with higher scores. More precisely, a score of three or four signals low relevance, which means Google expects weaker alignment with what people search for.

And the penultimate one on the list is improving elements that require time, like fixing weak ad copy and optimising your dedicated landing page. These changes take more time but still deliver solid returns (and the impact lasts for a long time).

Once you fix the most urgent problems, you can then focus on improving overall performance. At that point, reorganising the account structure comes last, because it takes even more time and delivers benefits gradually.

Below is an audit priority matrix to help you understand the fix order:

Issue Found	Priority	Typical Impact	Time to Fix
Broken conversion tracking	Urgent	Results can’t be measured or optimised reliably	~30 mins
Missing negative keywords	High	Significant wasted budget from irrelevant clicks	1-2 hours
Poor Quality Score (under 5)	High	Higher cost per click and reduced ad competitiveness	2-4 hours
Weak ad copy	Medium	Lower click-through rate and missed traffic potential	3-5 hours
Unorganised account structure	Low	Harder optimisation and reduced control over the budget	1-2 days

Get Better Results From Your Ads

You’ve reached the end of our guide on auditing Google Ads accounts like a professional. You now know the seven areas to check, which problems drain the budget fastest, and how to prioritise fixes based on impact and urgency.

If you’re looking for an expert to take a look at your account, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team. We’ve been managing Google Ads campaigns for years at SlamStop. Let’s refine your campaigns so every click supports your goals and call to action.