10 Things to Check When Auditing a Google Ads Account
Reading Time: ~4 Mins | Written By: Cheryl Goeres
If you’re taking on a new client or you've been running ads on an account for a while, it’s always a good idea to do an audit of Google Ads accounts on a quarterly basis. Here are our top 10 things to check when you’re auditing a Google Ads account.
1. Conversion Settings
The main purpose of running Google Ads is to grow your business by encouraging people to take a specific action once they’ve clicked on your ad. Having conversion actions set up, and set up correctly, in your Google Ads account is important for campaign performance. Whether it’s your account or a client's account, check the conversions that are set up to make sure they are set up correctly.
2. Linked Google Properties
Check to see if additional Google Properties have been linked to the account, such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Having these properties linked allows them to share data with each other which can help build audiences and gain deeper insights into how ad campaigns are performing.
3. Auto-tagging
Auto-tagging allows Google to automatically tag clicks from your ad URLs to show they are from Google Ads. This is turned off by default so you want to make sure it was turned on in the account. To do so, click Settings in the left menu by the campaigns and click on Account Settings. You’ll see a section called Auto-tagging, and here you will be able to see if it’s turned on or not.
4. Bidding
At the campaign level, check to see the bidding option that has been chosen for each campaign. Ideally, you will want to see Maximize Conversions or Conversion Value. These are the most valuable bidding types as they optimize for people who are likely to convert versus ones who are likely to just click on the ad.
5. Locations Targeting
Check the Locations targeting of the campaigns within the account. You’ll want to ensure that the location options are targeting Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations. Having it set to Presence ensures that ads will only be shown to people who live in your targeted areas.
6. Ad Assets (Extensions)
Ad Assets (formerly known as extensions) can help increase an ad’s CTR by providing additional information about the company, product and/or service. It is recommended to have as many of these set up as possible that are relevant to the business.
7. Ad Rank
To check an ad group's ad rank, click on Columns and then Modify Columns. From here, go to Competitive Metrics and select Search lost IS (rank). This will provide you with a percentage of how often ads aren’t shown due to the ad rank being low. With this data, you can then proceed to check the landing page, keywords and ad copy to determine which of these may be contributing to ad rank being low.
8. Ad Groups
Since ad groups are groupings of keywords, you’ll want to check that the keywords in each ad group are closely related. Having keywords that are quite different from each other in a single ad group can negatively impact the campaign. It’s also important to check when there are multiple ad groups that there isn’t keyword overlap between ad groups.
9. Negative Keywords
On the flipside of checking keywords an account is bidding for, you’ll want to check if any negative keywords have been added. In this list, you’ll want to make sure none of the negative keywords would conflict with keywords the account is bidding for. If there are no negative keywords, it would be beneficial to check the Search Terms report to see if there are any keywords showing up that should be added to the negative keywords list.
10. Keyword Quality Score
Keywords are given a number out of 10 for their quality score. The lower the score, the lower the ad rank will be and the less likely the ads will be shown. To see this number, go to Keywords. Then in the Columns you’ll want to Modify Columns. Find Quality Score and select it. You will now see the quality score of each keyword. Depending on the quality score of each keyword, this can be an opportunity to come up with more related keywords for the ad.
While there are many areas to check when auditing a Google Ads Account, these top 10 are a great place to start to help you or your client improve their Google Ads Campaigns.
To learn more about Google Ads, check out our 6-week Digital Marketing Bootcamp.
