Find out where your ad budget is leaking.

Conversion tracking: is Google learning from real leads?

Roughly four in ten small accounts have no conversion tracking at all, and many that do are counting page views or button clicks instead of calls and forms. Open the Conversions page and ask two questions: does every conversion action map to a real lead, and are calls being tracked at all? A lead-gen account with a conversion rate above 30% usually has a tag firing twice.

Fail looks like: one conversion action named 'Website traffic,' no call conversions, or Smart Bidding running on fewer than 15 conversions a month. Fix tracking first; everything else in the audit depends on it.

The search terms report: where the wasted spend lives

The search terms report shows the actual queries that triggered your ads, which is never the same as the keywords you bought. Sort the last 90 days by cost, and read the top 100. In most local accounts, 15% to 30% of spend went to searches with no intent to hire: jobs, salaries, 'how to' queries, other cities, and brands you don't carry.

Every one of those should become a negative keyword. If there is no negative keyword list on the account, that alone is usually the single biggest finding.

Location and schedule settings

Two settings quietly drain local budgets. The first is location targeting set to 'presence or interest,' which shows your Greenville ad to people in Ohio researching Greenville. The second is running ads 24/7 when nobody answers the phone after 6pm. Check both, then check that the service area actually matches where you take jobs.

If you can't answer after hours, either turn ads down in those windows or put a missed-call text-back in place before you spend on them.

Campaign structure and match types

A healthy local account has one campaign per core service, tight ad groups of 5 to 20 keywords, and phrase or exact match doing most of the work. A sick one has a single campaign with 200 broad match keywords and a Performance Max campaign eating the brand searches that would have converted anyway.

Check whether branded searches are excluded from PMax and whether Google's auto-applied recommendations have been quietly changing match types.

Cost per lead against what you can afford

This is the step most audits skip. Take your average job value, your gross margin, and your close rate, and work backward to the most you can pay for a lead. Then compare it to the cost per conversion in the account. An account can be 'optimized' by every Google metric and still lose money on every lead.

If you don't know your numbers yet, our ad budget forecast works them out for you before you spend.

Ads, assets, and the landing page

Responsive search ads should have 8 to 12 distinct headlines that say what you do, where, and why you, not 12 variations of the same sentence. Sitelinks, callouts, and call assets should be present. Then click the ad. If it lands on a homepage with a navigation menu and no phone number above the fold, the page is losing a third of the leads the ad earned.

Quality Score below 5 on your core keywords usually points here, not at the bidding.

What is included in a free Google Ads audit?

Ours covers conversion tracking, the search terms report and negative keywords, location and schedule settings, campaign structure and match types, bidding strategy, ad copy and assets, the landing page, and cost per lead against what your business can afford. You get a recorded video walkthrough plus a written list of the three fixes to make first.

How often should I audit my Google Ads account?

A full audit every quarter, and a 15-minute search terms review every month. Accounts drift: Google adds auto-applied recommendations, match types loosen, and seasonal search behavior changes what your keywords attract.

How long does a Google Ads audit take?

A thorough audit of a local account takes us 45 to 90 minutes. We return the recording within two business days of getting read-only access.

Does the audit change anything in my account?

No. We ask for read-only access, look, record, and send you the findings. You or whoever manages the account decides what to change.

What is the fastest way to find wasted ad spend?

Open the search terms report, sort by cost for the last 90 days, and read the top 100 queries. Anything you wouldn't want to pay for becomes a negative keyword. This one step typically recovers 15% to 30% of a local budget.

How much wasted spend does a typical audit find?

In the accounts we audit, the median is around a quarter of monthly spend that could be redirected: irrelevant search terms, out-of-area clicks, after-hours clicks nobody answers, and branded searches being bought through Performance Max.

Should I audit Performance Max differently from Search?

Yes. In PMax, check brand exclusions, search theme leakage, and whether it's reporting conversions that Search or organic would have produced anyway. Treat its reported ROAS with suspicion until you've compared total leads before and after it launched.

Is a free audit better than an automated grader?

A grader compares your settings to averages. It can't tell that a $60 cost per lead is fine for a roofer and ruinous for a lawn service, or that your tracking is counting the wrong thing. A human reads the account in the context of your business, which is what the free audit is for.

What should I do first after the audit?

Fix tracking, then negatives, then location and schedule settings. Those three take an afternoon and usually move cost per lead more than any bidding change.

Who is the audit for?

Local and home service businesses spending $1,000 or more a month on Google Ads. If you haven't started running ads yet, start with the free ad budget forecast instead.