"We'll audit your account" is one of the vaguest promises in advertising. A real audit isn't a vibe, it's a checklist. Here's what a thorough one covers, roughly in priority order, and what a healthy result looks like.
1. Conversion tracking (check this first)
Nothing else matters if the account is optimising toward bad data. Confirm conversions are firing, deduplicated, and counting things that actually matter to the business, not every button click. Broken tracking invalidates every other finding, so it goes first.
2. Account structure
Are campaigns and ad groups organised so that keywords, ads and landing pages match? Sprawling ad groups with loosely related keywords drag down relevance and Quality Score. Tight, themed ad groups are the foundation everything else sits on.
3. Wasted spend
- Zero conversion search terms burning budget.
- Missing or thin negative keyword lists.
- Brand and non brand tangled together.
- Performance Max spending on branded queries.
4. Bidding and budgets
Does the bid strategy match the goal? Maximise Conversions or Target CPA for lead gen, tROAS for ecommerce with revenue data. And are good campaigns being throttled by budget caps while weaker ones spend freely?
5. Ad copy and assets
Every responsive search ad should use a full complement of headlines and descriptions, with the offer, the location and a clear call to action. Thin ads with three headlines are leaving performance on the table.
What a healthy score looks like
Scoring is a shortcut, not the point, but as a rough guide, an account below about 60 usually has real wasted spend or structural problems worth fixing before anything fancy. Fix the fundamentals first; that's where the quick money is.