Most audit checklists start with ad copy and extensions, which is roughly like checking the paintwork before the engine. Start where the money is going instead.
The checks, in order of how much they usually find
- 1What is the account optimising towards. Open the conversion actions, look at which are marked primary, and ask whether you would genuinely pay for more of each one. This single check finds more waste than anything below it.
- 2Where the money went. Pull the search terms report for the last ninety days and find the spend against terms that never converted. Then look at what those terms have in common, because that is your negative list.
- 3What you are paying per lead against what a lead is worth. If you cannot state what a customer is worth, that is the finding.
- 4Which campaign types are running and why. Performance Max in an account with thin conversion data is the most common expensive mistake in Google Ads.
- 5Budget against bids. A campaign capped at ten pounds a day bidding for twenty pound clicks is not a campaign, it is a lottery ticket.
- 6Then, finally, the ads themselves.
Where AI makes this faster
An audit is mostly reading large amounts of account data and noticing patterns, which is tedious for a person and trivial for a machine. With the account connected, an AI can go through ninety days of search terms in seconds and tell you where the waste is, rather than you scrolling a report.
The useful move is to ask for the diagnosis and the arithmetic, not the conclusion. Ask what the wasted spend adds up to, which terms caused it, and what it would have bought at your target cost per lead. A number you can act on beats a list of observations.
What an audit will not tell you
Three things, and they are usually the real problem.
- Whether your offer is any good. If nobody wants what you sell at that price, a flawless account will simply lose money faster.
- Whether your landing page converts. The account gets people there. Everything after the click is not in the data you are auditing.
- Whether you are chasing the wrong customer. Plenty of accounts run beautifully while bringing in the cheap enquiries nobody wants.
Fix the account first, because it is the quickest. Then look at the three above, because that is usually where the growth actually is.