The 12-Step Google Ads Audit to Reclaim Your ROAS

Not everything broken in a Google Ads account shows up in the metrics.

Spend could be consistent.
ROAS might be holding.
Even your top campaign could be converting.

But something feels off.

The business isn’t scaling like it should.
Your CAC isn’t getting better.
Your team says performance is fine, but no one’s betting their bonus on it.

So you audit.

Because you need to figure out where the disconnect is:

Between business objectives and what the platform’s optimizing for
Between the landing page and what users are actually searching
Between the conversion data and the outcomes that actually matter

This is the part that no dashboard really shows you.

This is the baseline audit we run in-house because it works. It’s the fastest way to understand what’s actually happening inside a Google Ads account.

No fancy models. No predictive dashboards. Just 12 clear steps to figure out what’s driving results, what’s quietly wasting money, and where the disconnect might be between the metrics and the business reality.

If your performance looks fine but feels off — start here.

1. Start with the website.

Before you even open the account, go to the site.

Would someone who searched “[your keyword]” feel like they landed in the right place?
Is the value prop obvious above the fold?
Is this a sales page — or a brochure?

Most wasted spend isn’t necessarily an ad problem. It’s misalignment between the keyword and the landing page.

2. Open the account. Go straight to conversions.

This tells you what the machine thinks success is.

Are we optimizing for purchases or newsletter signups?
Are there multiple conversion goals?
Are they all weighted equally?
Where are those actions firing (check the Webpages tab)?

What you optimize for = what Smart Bidding learns to chase.

Bad signals = expensive guesses.

3. If multiple conversion actions are live, segment campaigns by goal.

Each campaign should have one objective.

If you’re optimizing toward different conversion actions within the same campaign — or worse, across a group of campaigns — the algorithm isn’t optimizing. It’s split-testing your budget.

There are edge cases where custom goal sets make sense. But they complicate attribution, distort your performance data, and require a much more careful, segmented analysis to make any sense of what’s actually working.

Filter by conversion action and assess each campaign set on its own terms.

4. Check the “Time Lag” report.

This tells you how long it usually takes for a user to convert.

If your average time-to-purchase is 7 days, don’t evaluate campaign changes after 48 hours.

This is how false decisions get made — and why some campaigns look worse than they actually are.

5. Zoom all the way out. Set the date range to “All Time.”

Look for trendlines in:

CPC
Conversion Rate
ROAS
Spend

Now cross-reference them with:

Launch dates
Product releases
Seasonality
Competitive landscape
Landing page changes
Agency transitions (it happens)

This is where you start seeing system-level shifts — not just isolated dips.

6. Build filtered views for each strategic segment.

Segment by:

Conversion action
Campaign type
Audience
Product line
Region

Then repeat your trend analysis for each.
This prevents false assumptions — like assuming one campaign’s ROAS trend applies to the whole account.

7. Zoom in. Set a 30–90 day window.

Now look for more subtle shifts:

Are CPCs creeping up?
Is performance volatility increasing?
Are Smart Bidding targets being missed more often?

This tells you if you’re quietly heading toward inefficiency.

8. Search Terms Report: Find where your money actually went.

Sort by:

Spend (where budget flowed)
Impressions (where visibility occurred)
Conversions (where the action happened — or didn’t)

Ask your team:

“Would we choose to bid on this term on purpose?”
“If we had to pay for this query manually, would we?”

If not, it needs to be sculpted out. Otherwise, the machine keeps learning from noise.

9. Repeat the same check across:

Devices
Geographies
Products
Audiences
Placements
Landing pages

This is where you spot structural waste, traffic that’s never going to convert but looks harmless in a blended view.

10. Creative review: Are your top-spending ads pulling their weight?

Sort by:

Spend
Conversions
CTR
Conversion rate

If the top spenders aren’t also top performers, something’s broken in the message-match.

And it’s costing you.

11. Bid strategy vs actuals.

Pull actual ROAS/CPA against targets.

If the gap is wide and persistent, the issue is deeper:

Poor signal quality
Delayed conversion windows
Algorithmic confusion
Creative or audience misalignment

The worst thing you can do is ignore the drift and hope Google self-corrects.

12. End with decisions, not dashboards.

A proper audit should leave your team with:

Specific hypotheses to test
Budget reallocations based on actual return
A list of negative keywords to sculpt out waste
Conversion tracking issues to clean up
Opportunities to align bidding strategy with real business goals

If they leave with a report but no decisions, it wasn’t an audit. It was a recap.

Want to start auditing like this?

We documented the entire process inside The Ultimate Digital Advertising Library — the resource suite we built inside the AdVenture Academy.

Inside, you'll find:

✅ A full-step audit checklist
✅ Our ROAS/CAC calculator to set performance goals based on real business math
✅ Pre-built filters and scripts to catch waste
✅ Walkthrough videos from real agency audits
✅ And 16+ digital advertising courses

→ Start your free trial here

See you next week,
Isaac