How to Audit Your Google Ads Agency: A Practical Guide for Business Owners
If you pay an agency to manage Google Ads, you should be able to understand what is happening in your account.
That does not mean you need to become a Google Ads specialist. You do not need to know every setting, bidding strategy or campaign type. You do, however, need enough visibility to answer a few important questions:
Do I own and control my Google Ads account?
Is my budget being spent on the right services, products and locations?
Are my ads attracting relevant potential customers?
Is Google measuring genuine leads or sales?
Can my agency explain its strategy in plain English?
Is the account improving over time?
A healthy agency relationship should not depend on blind trust. Your agency should be able to show you what it is doing, explain why it is doing it and connect the advertising data to outcomes that matter to your business.
This guide explains how to conduct a practical Google Ads agency audit, even if you have very little experience using Google Ads.
Is my Google Ads agency doing a good job?
There is no single metric that can answer this question.
A low cost per click does not automatically mean the account is healthy. Cheap traffic can still be irrelevant. A high cost per lead does not automatically mean the agency is doing a poor job, particularly in competitive industries where clicks are expensive or sales take time.
The better question is:
Is the agency using my budget to attract relevant potential customers, measuring meaningful results and making considered improvements based on evidence?
A good review looks at the full chain:
What the campaign is designed to achieve.
Who sees the ads and what they searched for.
Where the budget is being spent.
What happens after someone clicks.
What Google is counting as a conversion.
Whether those conversions become genuine leads, bookings or sales.
What the agency is learning and changing.
You should not judge an agency from one unusual day or one isolated metric. Look for consistent evidence, clear reasoning and a strategy that makes commercial sense.
1. Check that your business owns the Google Ads account
Start with access.
Your business should have direct access to the Google Ads account being used to advertise your business. Ideally, at least one trusted person within your company should have administrative access.
Ask:
Can I sign in to Google Ads using my own business email address?
What is the account’s 10-digit customer ID?
Does someone within my business have administrative access?
Is the agency connected through its manager account?
Who controls billing, linked accounts and conversion tracking?
If we changed agencies, would our campaign history remain with us?
An agency may legitimately manage the account through a Google Ads manager account. The concern is not that an agency has access. The concern is when the client cannot access or retain the underlying account and its history.
Healthy: Your business has direct access and understands who has each permission level.
Worth asking about: You can view reports but cannot see billing, users or linked accounts.
Needs attention: The agency will not give you access, or the campaigns exist only inside an account the agency controls.
2. Understand where your Google Ads budget is going
Your monthly report may show total spend, but an audit should go deeper.
Review how much was spent by:
Campaign
Campaign type
Service or product category
Brand and non-brand activity
Location
Device
Network or channel, where reporting is available
This tells you whether the account reflects your actual priorities.
For example, if your business wants more enquiries for a high-value service, but most of the budget is being spent on a low-value service or on searches for your existing brand name, the headline conversion figure may hide a strategic problem.
Ask your agency:
Which campaign receives the largest share of the budget, and why?
Which products or services are we prioritising?
Is any campaign limited by budget?
How do you decide when to move budget?
Are brand searches reported separately from new-customer activity?
The aim is not to split the budget evenly. The aim is to spend deliberately.
3. Separate brand traffic from non-brand traffic
Brand traffic comes from people searching for your business or brand name. Non-brand traffic comes from searches for the product, service or problem you solve.
Brand campaigns can be useful. They may protect your search result from competitors, give you control over promotional messaging and help users find the most relevant page.
However, brand traffic should be visible in reporting because it often behaves differently from non-brand traffic. Someone searching for your exact business name may already know you, so those clicks and conversions should not automatically be treated as entirely new demand created by the agency.
Ask:
How much of our spend and conversion volume comes from brand searches?
Is brand performance reported separately?
Does Performance Max appear to be receiving significant brand traffic?
Are we distinguishing customer acquisition from demand that already existed?
Healthy: Brand activity has a clear purpose and is separated in analysis.
Needs attention: Strong brand results are used to imply that all campaigns are attracting new customers.
4. Review the searches you are actually paying for
Keywords and search terms are not the same thing.
A keyword is an instruction or theme added by the advertiser. A search term is the phrase a real person typed before seeing or clicking an ad.
The Search terms report is one of the most useful places for a business owner to review traffic quality.
Look for:
Searches that closely match what you sell
Searches for services or products you do not offer
Job, salary, course, training, free, DIY or research-only searches
Searches from unsuitable locations
Competitor searches
Very broad searches with unclear intent
Repeated irrelevant themes
Do not expect every search to be perfect. Google’s matching systems interpret language and close variations, and some searches will require judgement. The important question is whether the agency reviews the traffic and responds when clear patterns of waste appear.
Ask:
How often do you review search terms?
Which irrelevant themes have you excluded recently?
Which searches are generating the best-quality leads?
Are any high-spend searches producing poor business outcomes?
5. Check negative keyword management
Negative keywords help prevent ads from appearing for searches that are not relevant to your business.
A thoughtful negative keyword strategy may exclude themes such as:
Jobs and careers
Training and courses
Free products or services
DIY information
Locations the business does not serve
Products or services the business does not offer
Irrelevant meanings of otherwise relevant words
The correct negative list is specific to the business. An agency should not simply apply a generic list without checking whether it could block valuable traffic.
Ask to see:
Negative keywords added during the past three months
Shared negative keyword lists
Campaign-level exclusions
The process used to identify new negatives
No recent negatives does not automatically prove neglect, but if the account is buying visibly irrelevant searches and nothing is being excluded, it deserves an explanation.
6. Check location targeting
Location settings can quietly waste budget.
Confirm that campaigns target areas the business can genuinely serve. For a local business, that may be a city, suburb group or radius. For an online store, it may be an entire country or selected markets.
Review both:
The locations entered in campaign settings.
The geographic report showing where users were located.
Ask:
Which locations are included and excluded?
Are we targeting people physically present in the service area, or also people showing interest in it?
Are clicks or leads coming from places we cannot serve?
Are separate regions grouped together even though their budgets or performance differ?
If an agency recommends wider targeting, it should be able to explain the commercial reason.
7. Confirm what Google Ads is counting as a conversion
Conversion tracking is one of the most important parts of a Google Ads account.
Google can optimise bidding toward actions marked as primary conversions. If the wrong actions are treated as valuable, the platform may learn to generate more of the wrong behaviour.
Possible conversion actions include:
Completed purchases
Confirmed bookings
Enquiry-form submissions
Qualified phone calls
Email clicks
Contact-button clicks
Page views
Add-to-cart actions
These actions do not all have equal business value.
Ask:
Which actions are marked Primary?
Which actions are Secondary and used for observation only?
Does each conversion fire once, at the correct point?
Are phone calls long enough to indicate genuine enquiries?
Are duplicate conversions being counted?
Are form submissions spam or qualified leads?
Does the agency reconcile Google Ads conversions with sales, booking or CRM data?
Healthy: Primary conversions represent outcomes the business genuinely wants more of.
Needs attention: Soft actions such as page views or button clicks are presented as leads without explanation.
8. Compare reported conversions with lead quality
Google Ads can report that a conversion happened. It cannot independently know whether a lead was relevant, affordable, profitable or likely to become a customer.
That is why the agency needs feedback from the business.
Compare:
Google Ads conversions
Actual enquiries received
Qualified leads
Bookings or purchases
Revenue or estimated customer value
Spam, existing customers and irrelevant enquiries
Ask:
How are you assessing lead quality?
Can we import qualified leads or sales outcomes back into Google Ads?
Are some campaigns producing more conversions but worse customers?
Which campaign creates the strongest commercial outcome, not merely the cheapest reported lead?
An agency should be interested in what happened after the form submission.
9. Understand the purpose of every campaign
Every campaign should have a clear job.
Examples include:
Capturing high-intent searches for a specific service
Promoting products through Shopping
Reaching potential customers across Google with Performance Max
Remarketing to previous website visitors
Building awareness with video, Display or Demand Gen
Protecting branded searches
Ask your agency to explain every active campaign in one sentence:
This campaign targets [audience or intent], promotes [offer] and is measured by [business result].
If the explanation is vague, or several campaigns appear to compete for the same audience without a clear reason, ask how the structure supports the strategy.
10. Ask for transparency in Performance Max
Performance Max uses automation across Google’s advertising inventory. It can be effective, but it should not be treated as a black box that ends the conversation.
Review:
The conversion goals used for bidding
Asset groups and their themes
Creative assets
Audience signals
Search themes
Brand exclusions and negative keyword controls
Final URL expansion
Product or listing groups for retailers
Search-term and search-category insights
Channel performance
Landing pages
Lead or sale quality
Ask:
What role does Performance Max play in the account?
Which inputs and exclusions have we provided?
Which channels, searches, products and landing pages are contributing?
How are we separating brand activity from new demand?
What have we learned from the campaign beyond its headline CPA or ROAS?
Automation still requires objectives, inputs, controls and business feedback.
11. Review the Google Ads change history
The Change history page records many of the changes made within the account.
Use it to understand:
How frequently the account is being actively managed
Which budgets, bids, ads, keywords and settings changed
Whether recommendations were applied
Whether major performance changes followed a specific account change
Which user made a change
More changes do not automatically mean better management. Constant edits can interrupt learning and make results difficult to interpret.
Look for purposeful changes with a clear reason, not activity for activity’s sake.
Ask:
What were the three most important changes made this month?
Why were they made?
What result did you expect?
When will you evaluate whether they worked?
12. Assess the quality of your agency reporting
A useful report should help you make a decision.
At minimum, it should explain:
What happened
Why it may have happened
What the agency changed
What the agency learned
What happens next
What the agency needs from you
Be cautious when a report focuses only on impressions, clicks and platform conversions without discussing search quality, lead quality, revenue, strategy or account changes.
Good reporting also acknowledges limitations. If there is not enough data to draw a reliable conclusion, the agency should say so.
Questions to ask your Google Ads agency
Use these questions in your next review:
What is the primary objective of each campaign?
Which campaign receives the most budget, and why?
How much performance comes from brand searches?
Which search terms are generating the best and worst traffic?
What negative keywords were added recently?
Which locations are spending money?
What exactly counts as a conversion?
Which conversions are Primary and used for bidding?
Are reported leads becoming qualified enquiries or sales?
What is Performance Max contributing by channel, search theme and landing page?
What were the most important account changes this month?
What have we learned, and what will you change next?
You are not testing whether the agency can use technical language. You are checking whether it can explain your account clearly and connect its work to your business.
Warning signs that deserve a closer look
One warning sign alone does not prove that an agency is doing a bad job. It means you should ask for context.
Potential concerns include:
Your business cannot access its own account.
Reports combine brand and non-brand traffic without explanation.
Search terms are clearly irrelevant and are not being addressed.
Conversion totals do not resemble the leads or sales received.
Page views or button clicks are described as qualified leads.
Locations outside the service area repeatedly spend money.
No one can explain the purpose of an active campaign.
Performance Max is described as completely unreviewable.
Reports contain metrics but no strategy, learning or next steps.
The agency becomes defensive when you ask reasonable questions.
The best agency relationships are transparent and collaborative. A good agency should welcome informed questions.
How long should a Google Ads agency audit take?
A first business-owner review does not need to take days.
In approximately 60 minutes, you can complete a structured top-level review of:
Ownership and access
Budget allocation
Brand and non-brand traffic
Search-term quality
Negative keywords
Location targeting
Conversion tracking
Lead quality
Campaign purpose
Performance Max transparency
Change history
Reporting and strategy
The purpose is not to rebuild the account yourself. It is to understand what deserves confidence, what deserves a question and what may need attention.
Use the AIR DIGITAL Google Ads Agency Audit Kit
If you want to complete the review inside your own account, the AIR DIGITAL Google Ads Agency Audit Kit provides the full process in a guided workbook.
No Google Ads experience is required. All you need is access to your Google Ads account.
The workbook gives you:
Plain-English instructions showing where to look
Questions to ask your agency
Healthy, Worth Asking About and Needs Attention indicators
A review of the essential account areas covered in this article
An agency scorecard
Practical next steps based on what you uncover
Access to the live workbook, including future updates
One 15-minute online troubleshooting chat if you get stuck
The audit is designed to help you understand the account and ask better questions. It is not designed to turn you into a Google Ads specialist or encourage you to make rushed changes without context.
Review the Google Ads Agency Audit Kit
Frequently asked questions
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Review what people searched, where the clicks came from, which campaigns used the budget and whether the resulting conversions became genuine business outcomes. Irrelevant search terms, unsuitable locations and misleading conversion actions can all create apparent activity without commercial value.
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Your business should have direct access to the account and its history. An agency can manage it through a linked manager account, but the client should understand its access and should not be unnecessarily locked out of its own advertising data.
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The report should cover spend, traffic, conversion and business outcomes, but it should also explain search quality, important account changes, strategic learning, next actions and anything the agency needs from the client.
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Delivery and urgent issues may need frequent monitoring, while strategic decisions generally require enough time and data to evaluate properly. The right frequency depends on spend, traffic volume, campaign type and business cycle. More changes are not automatically better.
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Not necessarily. Cost per click is influenced by competition, location, search intent, quality and industry economics. The more useful question is whether the clicks are relevant and whether the resulting customers are valuable enough to justify the cost.
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Yes. A business-owner audit can focus on ownership, budget, traffic quality, locations, conversion definitions, lead quality, reporting and strategy. You do not need to manage the campaigns yourself to ask informed questions.
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Yes. Performance Max is highly automated, but an agency can still review goals, assets, audience inputs, search insights, landing pages, product groups, brand controls, channel reporting and business outcomes.
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Do not make several account changes at once. Record what you found, ask the agency to explain the setting or result, and agree on the next action. Some findings have a reasonable strategic explanation; others may require correction.
Final thought
You do not need to know more about Google Ads than your agency.
You do need to know enough to understand what you are paying for.
A good agency should be able to explain how your budget is being used, what the account is learning and how its decisions support your business. The goal of an audit is not to catch someone out. It is to replace uncertainty with better questions, clearer evidence and a stronger working relationship.
Suggested Squarespace excerpt
Not sure whether your Google Ads agency is doing a good job? This practical guide shows business owners how to review account access, budget allocation, search terms, conversion tracking, Performance Max, reporting and agency strategy without needing Google Ads experience.
