Contents
- Order matters: check the measurement before the performance, or you optimize on wrong figures.
- Three points are enough to know if an account is healthy: are the conversions right, is the budget limiting, are the queries relevant.
- An audit ends with three ranked actions, not a list of forty observations.
- Count an hour on a mid-sized account, provided you follow a fixed order. Time is lost exploring without method.
- An account audit judges neither the offer, nor the price, nor what happens after the click.
Start with the measurement, never with the performance
The temptation is to open the account and look at cost per conversion. That's the mistake that wastes the most time: if conversions are misconfigured, everything after is wrong, including what the bidding algorithm has learned.
- The conversion actions
Open the list. How many are there, which are marked primary, and what do they actually measure? A contact-page view declared as a primary conversion is enough to skew the whole account.
- The counting method
In "every" counting, a customer who buys three times counts three conversions. In "one", one. The choice has to match the model: repeat purchases for e-commerce, single counting for lead generation.
- Duplicates
The same form tracked by both the Google Ads tag and the GA4 import doubles conversions. Look for two actions with suspiciously close volumes. The topic is detailed in our article on the gap between GA4 and Google Ads conversions.
Then the structure
- The number of campaigns relative to the budget
A budget of 1,500 euros a month spread over eight campaigns lets none of them reach the learning volume. It's the most common flaw of inherited accounts, and the easiest to fix.
- Brand and non-brand separation
If the two are mixed, the account's average CPA means nothing: brand pulls it artificially down and hides the real performance of acquisition.
- Bidding strategies
A campaign on maximize conversions with three monthly conversions works in the noise. Check that each automatic strategy has the volume it assumes, otherwise revert to manual while rebuilding a history.
Then the relevance
- The search terms
Over thirty days, sort by descending cost and read the top fifty. It's the point that reveals waste fastest: queries unrelated to the offer, or too early in the buying cycle.
- The negatives
An empty list on a broad-match account is a warning. A list of three hundred negatives never reviewed is another: it sometimes blocks queries that have become relevant.
- The landing pages
Does each ad group send to a page that answers its promise, or to the home page? It's the most common cause of a low conversion rate without the account being at fault.
Finally the potential
- Impression share and its two losses
Impression share says whether there's market left to take, and its two losses say by which lever: budget or rank. These are two very different fixes.
- The Quality Score of costly keywords
Look at the three components rather than the score: they point to the step that's stuck. The method is detailed in our article on Quality Score.
- Geographic and time coverage
An account that runs everywhere and all the time while the business only delivers or answers within a limited area pays for useless clicks, with nothing flagging it in the standard reports.
The checklist at a glance
| # | Checkpoint | What should raise a flag |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Conversion actions | A page view as a primary conversion |
| 2 | Counting method | "Every" counting on lead generation |
| 3 | Conversion duplicates | Two actions with almost identical volume |
| 4 | Campaigns relative to budget | More than three campaigns under 2,000 € a month |
| 5 | Brand separation | Brand and non-brand in the same campaign |
| 6 | Bidding strategies | Automatic bidding under 30 conversions a month |
| 7 | Search terms | Costly queries unrelated to the offer |
| 8 | Negatives | Empty list, or a list never reviewed |
| 9 | Landing pages | All traffic to the home page |
| 10 | Impression share | High budget-lost share on a profitable campaign |
| 11 | Quality Score | Below-average component on costly keywords |
| 12 | Geo and time coverage | Serving outside the area actually served |
What the audit won't tell you
An account audit judges neither the offer, nor the price, nor the competition. A flawless account on a poorly positioned offer will produce mediocre results, and no setting will change that.
It says nothing either about what happens after the click beyond the landing page: callback time, quality of sales handling, follow-up. On a lead-generation account, that's often where half the value is lost, and it appears in no advertising report.
These twelve points take an hour on a mid-sized account, and far less when the data is already gathered. It's the kind of check you can ask Adwise directly once the account is connected to the Workspace, rather than opening twelve reports and recomposing the same filters. The Google Ads integration is detailed on the site.
Frequently asked questions
The Adwise team connects Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, GA4 and Search Console so agencies and freelancers can run their campaigns from a single place.
