How do I audit my Google Ads account?

Work through tracking, targeting, search terms, ads, landing pages and budget, in that order. Tracking comes first because without it you can't tell which of the other changes helped.

Should I use Presence or Presence or interest location targeting?

Presence or interest is Google's default and reaches people who've shown interest in your area as well as people in it. Many local service businesses prefer Presence so ads only reach people actually in their service area. Check the locations report and decide based on where your real customers are.

How often should negative keywords be added?

Review the search terms report at least weekly when a campaign is new, then every few weeks once it's stable. Add any search that clearly isn't a customer as a negative keyword.

Is there a free Google Ads reporting tool?

Google Ads has built-in reports and a free report editor, and you can connect it to Looker Studio for dashboards. For most small businesses, the built-in campaign, search terms and locations reports are enough.

Do you manage Google Ads?

Yes. Google Ads management is $250 a month plus your ad budget, paid to Google in your own account. It covers campaign setup, call and form tracking, keywords, ads and weekly optimization. If your ads send people to a weak page, I can also build a landing page for $149.

Free Google Ads Audit Checklist for Small Businesses

The three checks that save the most money

1. Conversion tracking

Without conversion tracking, Google Ads can only optimize for clicks, and you can only judge it by gut feeling. Track the actions that make you money: form submissions, bookings and calls. Google supports several ways to track phone call conversions, including calls made directly from your ads, where you set a minimum call length to count as a conversion.

2. Location settings

Google's advanced location options offer two choices. Presence or interest (the default and recommended option) reaches people in, regularly in, or who've shown interest in your locations. Presence reaches only people in or regularly in your locations. For a plumber or salon that only serves people nearby, check which one you're on and whether ads are showing outside your area. The "Locations" report shows where clicks came from.

3. Search terms and negative keywords

Your keywords are not the same as what people actually search. The search terms report shows the real searches that triggered your ads, and you can add irrelevant ones as negative keywords directly from it. A weekly 10-minute review here usually saves more than any bidding change.

Checking an agency? Ask for read access to the account itself, not just a PDF report. If the account isn't in your name, or you can't see search terms and conversions, that's the first thing to fix. More questions to ask are in my guide on hiring a PPC expert.

Free Google Ads account checklist

The three checks that save the most money

1. Conversion tracking

2. Location settings

3. Search terms and negative keywords

Google Ads checklist questions

Related pages

See it before you pay