PPC audit services that rank findings by what they cost you
You have probably been offered several free audits already. Most are automated scans that surface a long list of alarming sounding issues, because a long list wins the pitch. A useful audit tells you which three things are costing money and what everything else can safely wait for.
Written to be handed to whoever is running the account, including an agency that is not us.
What are PPC audit services?
PPC audit services are a one off diagnostic of a paid advertising account: where the money is going, how much of it is buying demand you already had, whether the conversion tracking is measuring the right thing, whether campaign structure lets you see what is working, and which specific changes would return the most for the least effort.
It is deliberately separate from management. An audit is a piece of analysis you own, not the first step of an onboarding.
If the findings are things your existing team can act on, that is a good outcome and you should not need us again.
How to tell an audit from a sales document
This applies to ours as much as anyone else’s. Four tests worth applying to any audit you are handed.
Findings should carry a number, not a severity badge. A red flag labelled critical tells you nothing. What matters is that brand traffic inside Performance Max is costing roughly four thousand a month, and that missing ad extensions are worth doing at some point. Without money attached, everything looks equally urgent, which is exactly what a sales document wants.
Length is a warning sign. An automated scan produces forty seven issues because that is what scanning produces. A real account usually has three or four things that genuinely matter and a long tail that does not. If nothing has been prioritised, nobody has actually thought about your account.
A good audit contains things that do not lead to hiring anyone. Some findings are settings changes taking ten minutes. If every single recommendation happens to require ongoing management from the firm that wrote it, that is worth noticing.
It should say what is working. Accounts that have been running a while usually have something set up well. An audit that finds nothing good is either looking at a genuinely terrible account or is not really looking.
The reason to be blunt about this is that a free audit is the standard sales mechanism in this industry, and you are entitled to know what you are reading.
What we check
In roughly this order, because the early items usually explain the later ones.
| Area | What we are looking for | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Brand and non brand split | How much spend goes on your own name | The most common way an account looks better than it performs |
| Conversion tracking | Duplicates, wrong actions, missing values | Automated bidding optimises confidently towards bad data |
| Search terms | What you actually paid for, not what you targeted | Where waste hides and where unexpected demand shows up |
| Negatives and exclusions | Coverage at account and campaign level, including in PMax | The strongest remaining control now that matching is automated |
| Campaign structure | Whether segments are visible or blended into one number | You cannot manage what the reporting will not separate |
| Bids against margin | Targets compared to what a conversion is actually worth | Plenty of accounts have never established this number |
| Shopping feed | Attributes, disapprovals, title quality | On eCommerce accounts this is usually the largest single gap |
| Landing pages | Where the clicks arrive and what happens next | Sometimes the account is fine and the page is the problem |
The landing page row occasionally produces the most useful finding in the whole audit, which is that your advertising is working and something after the click is not.
What we usually find
Not a promise about your account, just an honest account of what recurs.
Brand traffic inside Performance Max
Almost always present when no dedicated branded campaign exists. Usually the single largest finding, and the one that makes reported performance look excellent.
Negatives never revisited
Set at launch and left. With automated matching broadening reach, a stale negative list is a slow leak that widens over time.
Conversions counted more than once
A form firing twice, or a thank you page counted alongside the event. The account is not lying, it is measuring the same thing repeatedly.
Targets with no relationship to margin
A cost per acquisition target chosen because it sounded reasonable, never checked against what a customer is actually worth.
Products advertised into a loss
Lines whose margin cannot support the click price, running because they arrived with the catalogue rather than because anyone chose them.
Everything in one campaign
High and low margin, brand and non brand, all blended into an average that always looks acceptable and never tells you anything.
If you want to sanity check a budget alongside the audit, our Google Ads budget calculator works from your own conversion value rather than from an industry average.
What happens, and what you get
Read access, not admin
We need to look, not to change anything. Read only access is enough and it means nothing in your account moves without you deciding it should.
A short conversation first
What a conversion is worth, what your margins look like and what you think the problem is. An audit without that context measures activity rather than value.
Findings ranked by money
Each with an estimated monthly cost or benefit, the effort involved, and who could do it. Not a severity colour, a number and an owner.
A call to walk through it
Including the parts you should ignore. You keep the document and you are free to hand it to whoever runs the account.
When an audit is not what you need
Three situations where we would tell you to save the money.
When the account is very new. Below a few weeks of data there is nothing meaningful to diagnose, and automated bidding has not finished learning. An audit at that stage measures noise and produces confident conclusions about it.
When you already know the answer. If you are aware the tracking is broken or that nobody has touched negatives in a year, you do not need paying for a document confirming it. Fix the known thing first and audit afterwards if the picture is still unclear.
When the real problem is elsewhere. If the product page does not convert or the margin cannot support your market’s click prices, no account level finding changes that. We will say so in the audit, and it will be the most useful sentence in it.
The situation where an audit genuinely earns its fee is the common one: spend is meaningful, the reporting looks acceptable, and nobody can explain why growth has stopped.
How much do PPC audit services cost?
A fixed fee for the full audit, with no obligation to do anything afterwards and no assumption that we will be the ones doing it.
Initial review
A first look at brand and non brand split, tracking accuracy and obvious waste, so you know whether a full audit is worth commissioning. Free.
Full audit
Everything in the scope table, findings ranked by money with effort and owner attached, plus a call to walk through it. Fixed fee, yours to keep.
Implementation, if you want it
Optional and quoted separately. Plenty of clients take the document and have their own team act on it, which is a perfectly good outcome.
If the audit does not identify more in recoverable waste than it costs, we will say that plainly rather than padding the list to justify the fee.
After the audit
PPC management
Ongoing management if you would rather hand the account over than run the findings yourself. Flat fee, never a percentage of spend.
See PPC management →Google Ads management
Campaign types, Performance Max structure and brand separation, which is where most audits point first.
See Google Ads →Google Shopping Ads
Feed quality and product data, usually the largest single finding on an eCommerce account.
See Shopping Ads →Common questions about PPC audits
Some are, most are automated scans built to win a pitch. The tells are consistent: a long list of issues with no money attached, severity colours instead of estimated cost, nothing identified as working well, and every recommendation happening to require ongoing management from the firm that wrote it. Apply those tests to any audit you receive, including ours.
Read only. We need to look at the account, not change anything in it, so nothing moves without you deciding it should. For eCommerce accounts we will usually also want read access to Merchant Center, because on those accounts the feed is frequently where the largest finding is.
Almost certainly, because every account has something. The more useful question is whether what we find is worth acting on. Plenty of findings are genuinely minor and we will label them that way, and a good audit also says which parts of your account are set up well.
Yes, and a fair number of clients do exactly that. The document is written to be actionable by whoever runs the account, with each finding carrying an effort estimate and a suggested owner. If your existing team can implement it, that is a good outcome and cheaper for you than switching.
Typically a few working days from getting access, depending on how many campaigns and products are involved. The analysis is not the slow part. Waiting for access, and for a short conversation about what a conversion is genuinely worth to you, usually is.
No, and the audit is priced as a standalone piece of work for that reason. Implementation is quoted separately if you want it. An audit that only makes sense as the first step of an onboarding is not really an audit, it is a proposal with charts.
Once a year is plenty for a well managed account, or whenever something changes that nobody can explain. Auditing more often than that usually indicates a monitoring problem rather than an audit need, and continuous monitoring is a cheaper way to solve it.
Find out what your account is actually costing you
We will start with a free initial look at your brand and non brand split, your tracking accuracy and the obvious waste, then tell you whether a full audit is worth commissioning. Sometimes the honest answer is that your account is fine and the problem is elsewhere. No obligation, no sales pitch.
Get my PPC audit- Findings ranked by money
- Effort and owner per item
- Yours to keep