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Google Ads & PPC audit
An independent, fixed-fee audit for UK businesses, of Google Ads, Microsoft Ads or ChatGPT Ads. It establishes how your account is performing today and quantifies the room for improvement, if there is any.
When an audit is the right call
Three situations bring most people here. The audit is the same job in each; what you do with it afterwards is what differs.
You run it yourself
You built the account, it spends every month, and you'd like it checked by a specialist. The audit marks the homework once and you carry on running it.
You inherited it
A new role, a bought business, or the person who set it up has left. Nobody currently in the room built it, and the decisions behind it weren't written down.
You pay someone else to run it
And you can't tell whether the fee is earning its keep. There are checks you can run yourself first, and the audit runs them across the whole account.
Haven't advertised yet? There's nothing to audit. That's the account build instead.
The PPC audit, or the tracking audit?
| PPC audit | Conversion tracking audit | |
|---|---|---|
| The question | Is the account performing, and how much room is there to improve? | What exactly is the tracking counting, and what does it take to fix? |
| Tracking | A verdict on whether the numbers can be trusted, with the obvious faults named | Your records set against the reports, every route a conversion takes mapped, every conversion action and every tag accounted for, consent checked, a test conversion followed end to end |
| Everything else | Wasted spend, coverage, targeting, landing pages, structure, bidding, ads, competition | Nothing outside the tracking |
| You come away with | Findings ranked by what they're worth | A list of fixes, priced |
| Start here if | You want to know how the account is doing | You already know, or suspect, the numbers are wrong |
If the tracking is wrong, fixing it comes first. Performance may improve once it's fixed, and a PPC audit may not be needed at all.
Not sure which of these you are? Thirty minutes on a free call settles whether an audit is the right next step.
Talk through your accountWhat gets checked
Nine areas, and the order matters: whether the numbers can be trusted comes before anything decided on them.
15–30%
of spend is typically recoverable or redeployable in a UK account that hasn't had specialist attention for six months or more.
Each finding carries its own figure, so you can see where that share sits in yours. The do-it-yourself version of the wasted-spend check is in where Google Ads budgets leak.
- Google Ads
- Microsoft Advertising
- ChatGPT Ads
Microsoft Advertising and ChatGPT Ads accounts are audited too, on their own or alongside Google. Where a platform works differently, the checks follow it: ChatGPT Ads has no keywords to bid on, so there the audit looks at context hints, targeting and measurement instead.
Tracking
Whether the numbers can be trusted at all: a verdict, with the obvious faults named, such as duplicate tags, soft actions counted as primary and missing enhanced conversions. Going through it tag by tag is the conversion tracking audit.
Wasted spend
Search terms, placements and audiences with no conversion history. Landing pages and ads that take the click and lose the customer. Keywords priced beyond what the sale is worth. Whether negative keywords follow a system or were added as problems surfaced. Quantified in pounds per month.
Coverage
The other side of the same coin. Search terms already converting that were never added as keywords, and demand in your market the account doesn't bid on at all.
Targeting
Location settings, including whether ads reach people in an area or merely interested in it. Performance by device, where it differs enough to make a campaign difficult to optimise as it stands, and whether the cause is the landing page or how your customers use each device.
Landing pages
Whether the page each ad sends people to matches what they searched for, works on every device, and makes the next step obvious.
Structure
Campaign organisation, match type strategy, budget fragmentation, cannibalisation.
Bidding
Whether the strategy suits your conversion volume, and whether targets generate profit or just volume.
Ads
Click-through rate, and whether the copy differentiates the product and positions it correctly. Asset coverage, extension usage, message match against landing pages.
Competition
Auction insights, impression share lost to budget vs. rank, realistic headroom.
What I find most often
The same problems turn up in account after account. The biggest of them has a number attached.
One B2B account, roughly
£70,000
spent over a year or two on searches that were never going to become customers
On a B2B account I've worked on in the past, roughly £70,000 went over a year or two on searches that were never going to become customers. Google had matched its keywords to consumer brand searches, people typing a well-known company's name to find its website. The real terms stay private, but the pattern is the same as a workplace catering company paying for searches like greggs opening times
That's why the audit looks for a systematic negative keyword structure, not just whether some negatives exist. The do-it-yourself version is in where Google Ads budgets leak.
-
Biggest offenderIrrelevant search terms, too few negative keywords, and no systematic structure for them
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Location targeting set incorrectly, or less well than the business needs
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Ad copy with a poor click-through rate, that doesn't differentiate the product or position it correctly
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Keyword gaps: searches the business should be showing for and isn't
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A big oneLanding page issues: the ad earns the click and the page loses the visitor
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Substantial differences in performance by device, which make a campaign difficult to optimise. They can point to a landing page problem, or simply to how your customers behave on each device
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Bid strategies that don't suit the account
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Keyword match types left unused
Want a figure on yours? Every finding in the audit carries its own, in pounds per month wherever it can be counted.
Get your account checkedWhat I need access to
Read-only access to the ad accounts, and eyes on everything behind them that I can get. The audit can only judge the numbers it can trace.
Nothing moves because of the audit. It moves when you decide it should, and whoever you choose does it. Once we've been through the findings, you can remove my access or leave it in place.
On Google Ads, in three steps
- Open Admin
- Choose Access and security
- Add my email address with Read only access, the level Google offers for exactly this. It shows campaigns, reports and settings, and allows no changes to any of them
On Microsoft Advertising and ChatGPT Ads, it's the most limited access each platform offers that still shows the whole account.
Then everything that touches the numbers
- Google Analytics: Viewer
- Tag Manager: Read
- Any other tool your tracking or leads pass through
If an agency runs the account and you can't add a user yourself, that's worth knowing before anything else. You should own your account and hold admin access to it, whoever manages it; the agency article covers how to ask.
What you get
A written audit within a week or so, depending on my availability, then a call where we go through it together.
Ranked by value
Every finding ranked by what it's likely to be worth, in pounds per month wherever it can be counted.
Says what to change
Each one specifically enough for whoever does the work to act on it.
A call to go through it
Where you can ask about anything in it.
A document that's yours
Implement it with me, with your existing provider, or in-house. There's no obligation to buy anything else.
The PPC audit doesn't repair your tracking.
- Built from scratch, tracking is controlled work: I set the structure, so it's included in a new account build
- Repairing what somebody else configured is forensic. Undocumented tags, duplicate conversions, changes nobody wrote down
- That sits in the conversion tracking audit and repair, and the PPC audit will tell you whether you need it
What it costs
A fixed one-off fee, agreed before any work starts.
It's quoted after the intro call and sized to the account: a single-location account with one campaign is a smaller job than a multi-market one running Shopping and Performance Max.
For an account that already exists, the audit is also the way into ongoing management. Buying one commits you to nothing further; how the monthly fee is set is on Services.
The intro call
Thirty minutes, before anything is bought. Where we find out whether an audit is the right thing to buy at all.
The audit
One price, agreed up front. No hourly billing, and no scope creep once it's agreed.
Want a number for your account? It's quoted after the call, before any work starts.
Get a quote for your accountCommon questions
What access do you need?
Read-only access to your ad accounts, plus view access to everything behind them: Google Analytics, Tag Manager and anything else your tracking passes through. It lets me see everything and change nothing, and you can remove it whenever you like.
How long does it take?
You get the written audit within a week or so, depending on my availability, then we go through it together on a call.
Is the audit paid?
Yes. The audit is a fixed one-off fee, agreed before any work starts. The free part is a 30-minute intro call beforehand, which settles whether an audit is worth buying for your account.
Microsoft or ChatGPT Ads too?
Yes. I audit Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising and ChatGPT Ads accounts, on their own or together. Where a platform works differently, the checks follow it: ChatGPT Ads has no keywords to bid on, so there the audit looks at context hints, targeting and measurement instead.
Can my agency use it?
Yes. The document is yours, and every finding says what to change, so your agency, a new provider or someone in-house can act on it. There's no obligation to have me do the work.
Does it fix my tracking?
No. It gives a verdict on whether the numbers can be trusted and names the obvious faults, such as duplicate tags or soft actions counted as primary conversions. Finding every fault and fixing it is the conversion tracking audit and repair, sold separately, and the PPC audit will tell you whether you need it.
Not sure an audit is what you need?
Thirty minutes, free. What's happening in the account, whether an audit is likely to find enough to be worth its fee, and what it would cost.