Google Ads Audit Template 2026: the full checklist (free)

You searched for an audit template because you want something you can actually use today, not a lead magnet that asks for your email before showing you anything. This is the full thing: the same 7 areas our full Google Ads audit checks, with what to look at, exactly where to find it in the interface, and what threshold flags a real problem. No download needed, work through it directly on this page.

One note on thresholds before you start: we don't hand you a fixed number like "flag anything under 5" or "keep CPA under 50", because a fixed number means nothing without your own account's baseline. A Quality Score of 4 is a real problem in an account averaging 8, and a non-issue in an account averaging 3 across the board. Every threshold below is relative to your own account average, which is the only number that's honest.

How to use this checklist

Go area by area. For each check, open the report or screen named under "Where in Google Ads", compare what you see against your own account's average (not an industry benchmark), and if it fails the check, apply the listed action before moving on. Budget half a day for the first full pass; a maintenance pass after that takes under an hour.

1. Wasted spend

This is the fastest area to find real savings in, because it's the most overlooked. Every account bleeds some budget on things that were never going to convert.

• Search terms with real spend and zero conversions: Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms report, last 30-90 days. Flag any term spending above your account's average cost per conversion with no conversions at all.
• Underperforming placements on Display or YouTube: Content > Where ads showed. Flag placements with meaningful spend and no real path to a conversion.
• Keywords spending far above your account's average CPA with no conversions in the same window: Keywords tab, sort by cost.
• Devices or audiences taking a disproportionate share of spend relative to their share of conversions: Devices tab and Audiences tab, compare the two percentages side by side.

2. Budget and bids

This is about whether your money reaches the campaigns worth funding, and whether your bid strategy is actually running the way you think it is.

• Campaigns marked "Limited by budget" that also have a healthy conversion rate: Campaigns overview, Status column. These are campaigns actively losing you sales because the ceiling is too low.
• Impression share lost to budget vs. lost to rank: Campaigns, add the "Search Impr. Share", "Search Lost IS (budget)" and "Search Lost IS (rank)" columns. A high budget-loss number next to a good conversion rate is money left on the table.
• Smart Bidding strategies stuck in "Learning" for several weeks: Bid strategy report under Campaigns. A strategy that never exits learning usually means conversion volume is too low for the bid type you chose.
• Budget allocation vs. conversion share: compare each campaign's share of total spend to its share of total conversions. A campaign converting well below its spend share is overfunded relative to what it's returning.

3. Keywords and Quality Score

Quality Score isn't a vanity metric, it's a direct multiplier on what you pay per click. This section catches the keywords quietly costing you more than they should.

• Quality Score trend per keyword: Keywords tab, add the Quality Score, Expected CTR, Ad Relevance and Landing Page Experience columns. Flag keywords sitting clearly below your account's own average, not an arbitrary number.
• Ad group tightness: Ad groups tab. An ad group mixing unrelated search intents (different products, different buying stages) drags down relevance for every keyword inside it.
• Match type mix: Keywords tab, Match type column. An account running only broad match with no exact or phrase match on its best converters is harder to control and diagnose.
• Keywords with rising CPC and a flat or falling Quality Score across the last two reporting periods: this combination compounds, it doesn't stay put.

4. Search terms and negatives

This is the area with the most compounding effect: a negative keyword you add today keeps saving money every single day after.

• Negative keyword conflicts: Keywords > Negative keywords, use the "conflicting negatives" diagnostic Google surfaces there. A negative silently blocking one of your own active keywords is invisible unless you check.
• Recurring irrelevant query categories not yet excluded: Search terms report, look for the same irrelevant theme reappearing month over month, that's a coverage gap, not a one-off.
• Negative list applied at the right level: Shared library > Negative keyword lists. A list built for one campaign type applied account-wide (or the other way around) causes either missed blocks or good traffic getting blocked.
• Search terms triggering the wrong ad group: cross-check the search term against the ad group it landed in; if the match doesn't reflect real intent, restructure rather than just adding a negative.

5. Ads and landing pages

The best keyword strategy in the world doesn't matter if the ad someone clicks doesn't match what they land on.

• Ad strength rating: Ads & extensions, Ad strength column. Anything below "Good" is Google telling you directly that the ad is under-optimized; add more genuinely distinct headlines and descriptions, not near-duplicates.
• Number of active responsive search ads per ad group: aim for enough live variants that Google's combination testing has real options; one ad per group doesn't give the algorithm enough to learn from.
• Message match: compare your top-served headline against the landing page's main headline. If someone can't find what the ad promised within a few seconds of landing, that mismatch is costing you conversions before they even see your offer.
• Destination URL health: check load time and mobile rendering of the actual landing page, not just that the link works.
• Extensions active and approved: Ads & extensions > Assets tab, check for anything marked "disapproved" or "not eligible".

6. Conversion tracking

Every other check in this template is only as reliable as the data feeding it. If tracking is broken, every number above it is wrong.

• Conversion action status: Goals > Conversions > Summary. Flag anything showing "no recent conversions" or a diagnostics warning icon, both usually mean the tag isn't firing correctly.
• Primary vs. secondary conversion actions: same Conversions page, "Include in conversions" column. Only actions that represent real business value (a purchase, a qualified lead) should count toward bid optimization; set engagement metrics like scroll depth or video views to secondary.
• Duplicate counting: check whether two different conversion actions could fire for the same user action, a form submit and a thank-you page view, for example. If so, move one of them to secondary.
• Enhanced and cross-device conversion settings: Conversions > Settings, confirm enhanced conversions are on if you're sending first-party data, this recovers conversions that cookie-only tracking misses.

7. Targeting and structure

Structure decides how well every check above can even work. A messy account makes every optimization harder than it needs to be.

• Campaign-to-goal alignment: each campaign's stated goal (Leads, Sales, Traffic) should match its actual campaign type and bid strategy, not be a leftover from an old setup.
• Geographic concentration: Campaigns > Locations tab, compare conversion rate across your targeted areas. Spend concentrated in a location performing well below your account average is a targeting fix, not a bidding one.
• Ad schedule performance: Campaigns > Ad schedule (add it if it isn't showing). Hours or days with real spend but a conversion rate well under account average are candidates for a bid adjustment or a dayparting exclusion.
• Audience layering: Audiences tab, check whether audiences are actually set to "Observation" or "Targeting" as intended, an audience accidentally set to Targeting on a Search campaign can quietly cut your reach.
• Account fragmentation: too many near-duplicate ad groups or campaigns split data thin enough that Smart Bidding never gets enough signal per unit to optimize well.

Print this checklist

Use this table as your working copy: print the page or save it as a PDF, and check off each row as you go through your own account.

What a manual pass like this can't do

Working through this by hand is real, and it works, but it has limits: your account average shifts every day, so a threshold you calculate this morning is stale by next week, and cross-referencing all seven areas against each other by hand (a Quality Score drop next to a budget cap next to a tracking gap) takes hours and is easy to get wrong. That's the real difference between running this once a quarter by hand and running it continuously.