A 27-Point PPC Audit Checklist to Find Wasted Spend
A PPC audit checklist should help you find where money is being wasted in a Google Ads account within 2-3 hours. Not every audit needs to be a 40-page document. What you need is a systematic process to check the areas where 80% of waste happens: campaign structure, keyword match types, bid strategies, conversion tracking, and search term reports.
“We audit Google Ads accounts every week. The average account wastes 25-35% of its spend on search terms that will never convert, campaigns that compete against each other, or conversion tracking that’s counting the wrong actions. A proper audit finds that waste in an afternoon,” says Hardik Shah, Founder of ScaleGrowth.Digital.
This checklist covers every area. Print it. Use it quarterly. It works for accounts spending INR 50,000 per month and INR 50 lakh per month.
Section 1: Account Structure (5 Checks)
Check 1: Campaign Organization
Open the campaign list. Can you tell what each campaign targets just from the name? If campaign names are “Campaign 1,” “Test Campaign,” or “Copy of Brand Campaign,” that’s the first red flag. Naming conventions should include: campaign type (Search/Display/PMax), target audience or product, geography, and match type.
Good naming: “Search | Mumbai | Brand Terms | Exact”
Bad naming: “Campaign (4) – Copy”
Check 2: Campaign Overlap
Are multiple campaigns targeting the same keywords? This is more common than you’d think. Pull a keyword report across all campaigns and sort by keyword text. If the same keyword appears in two campaigns, they’re competing against each other in the same auction, driving up your CPC. We find this in roughly 60% of accounts we audit.
Check 3: Ad Group Granularity
Each ad group should contain 5-15 tightly themed keywords. If an ad group has 50+ keywords covering multiple topics, the ads can’t be relevant to all of them. Check Quality Scores. Ad groups where the average Quality Score is below 5/10 usually have a relevance problem.
Check 4: Geographic Targeting
Go to Settings > Locations for each campaign. Check two things: first, are you targeting the right locations? Second, and this is critical, is the location option set to “Presence: People in your targeted locations” or “Presence or interest: People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in”? The default is the second option, and it means your Mumbai campaign might show ads to someone in Dubai who once searched for Mumbai hotels.
Change it to “Presence” for almost every campaign.
Check 5: Device Performance
Pull a device report. Compare CPA across mobile, desktop, and tablet. In many Indian B2B accounts, mobile traffic has a 3-4x higher CPA than desktop because the landing pages aren’t optimized for mobile. If mobile CPA is more than 2x desktop CPA, apply a -30% to -50% mobile bid adjustment while you fix the landing page.
Section 2: Keywords and Match Types (6 Checks)
Check 6: Match Type Distribution
What percentage of spend goes to broad match vs. phrase match vs. exact match? In a well-optimized account, exact and phrase match should carry 60-80% of spend. If broad match is eating more than 40% of budget, you’re likely paying for irrelevant traffic.
This doesn’t mean broad match is bad. Google’s broad match has improved significantly since 2023, especially when paired with Smart Bidding. But it needs guardrails, which brings us to the next check.
Check 7: Search Term Report Review
Pull the search term report for the last 90 days. Sort by cost. Read through the top 100 search terms by spend. How many are relevant? In an unaudited account, we typically find 20-40% of the top search terms are irrelevant.
Mark every irrelevant term. Calculate the total spend on irrelevant terms. This number is your “waste figure.” It’s usually the most impactful finding in any PPC audit.
Check 8: Negative Keywords
How many negative keywords does the account have? A mature account should have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of negative keywords organized in shared lists. If the account has fewer than 50 negatives, the search term report review will be ugly.
Check for negative keyword conflicts too. Sometimes a negative keyword blocks a term you actually want. Google Ads has a “conflicts” report under Keywords > Negative Keywords.
Check 9: Keyword Quality Scores
Export all keywords with their Quality Scores. What percentage have a QS of 7 or above? Target: at least 60% of spend-weighted keywords at QS 7+. Keywords with QS below 4 are costing you significantly more per click due to the ad rank penalty.
| Quality Score | Estimated CPC Impact | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 8-10 | 20-50% below average CPC | Scale these |
| 6-7 | Average CPC | Optimize ad relevance and landing page |
| 4-5 | 25-50% above average CPC | Improve or pause |
| 1-3 | 100-400% above average CPC | Pause immediately and restructure |
Check 10: Low-Performing Keywords
Filter for keywords that have spent more than 2x your target CPA without a single conversion. These are burning money. Either pause them, move them to a separate campaign with lower bids, or check if the landing page is the problem.
Check 11: Keyword Intent Alignment
Are your keywords aligned with the right stage of the funnel? Informational keywords like “what is PPC” shouldn’t be in the same campaign as transactional keywords like “PPC agency Mumbai.” The conversion rates will be wildly different, and mixing them makes optimization impossible.
Section 3: Ads and Extensions (5 Checks)
Check 12: Ad Strength and RSA Coverage
Every ad group should have at least 1 Responsive Search Ad with “Good” or “Excellent” ad strength. Check how many ad groups have only one ad, or ads with “Poor” strength. Google’s recommendation of 3 RSAs per ad group is overkill for most accounts, but 1-2 with decent strength is the minimum.
Check 13: Ad Copy Relevance
Read the ads. Do the headlines include the primary keyword for that ad group? Does the description mention the value proposition and include a CTA? We see many accounts where the same generic ad copy runs across 20 different ad groups. That kills relevance and Quality Score.
Check 14: Extension Coverage
Check for: sitelink extensions (minimum 4), callout extensions (minimum 4), structured snippet extensions, call extensions (if applicable), and location extensions (if applicable). Missing extensions means smaller ads that get fewer clicks. Google’s own data says extensions improve CTR by 10-15%.
Check 15: Ad Testing Velocity
When was the last new ad created? If the newest ad is 6+ months old, the account isn’t testing. Ad fatigue is real, even in search. We refresh ad copy every 60-90 days in active accounts.
Check 16: Landing Page Alignment
Click on every ad. Does the landing page match the ad’s promise? If the ad says “Free SEO Audit” and the landing page is a generic homepage, you’re wasting clicks. Landing page experience is one-third of Quality Score, and misalignment kills conversion rates.
Section 4: Bidding and Budget (4 Checks)
Check 17: Bid Strategy Appropriateness
What bid strategy is each campaign using? Manual CPC, Maximize Clicks, Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, Target ROAS? The right strategy depends on the campaign’s maturity and conversion volume.
Rule of thumb: campaigns with fewer than 30 conversions per month shouldn’t use Target CPA or Target ROAS. Google’s algorithm doesn’t have enough data to optimize. Use Maximize Conversions without a target until you have 30+ conversions, then layer on a target.
Check 18: Budget Constraints
Are any campaigns “Limited by budget”? Check the recommendation tab. If a profitable campaign is being capped by budget, you’re leaving money on the table. Reallocate from underperforming campaigns.
Check 19: Impression Share Analysis
Pull impression share data for your top-performing campaigns. If search impression share is below 70% for your brand campaigns, competitors are showing up on your brand terms and you’re losing clicks. For non-brand campaigns, impression share above 50% is usually good. Below 30% means you’re barely visible.
Check lost impression share due to rank vs. budget. Lost IS (rank) means your bids or Quality Scores need to improve. Lost IS (budget) means you need more budget.
Check 20: Dayparting and Schedule
Pull a day-of-week and hour-of-day report. Is there a pattern? Many B2B accounts see conversions concentrated Monday-Friday, 9am-6pm. If you’re spending on weekends with zero conversions, apply a -100% bid adjustment for Saturday and Sunday.
We’ve seen accounts waste 15-20% of their budget on off-hours traffic that never converts.
Section 5: Conversion Tracking (4 Checks)
Check 21: Conversion Action Review
Go to Tools > Conversions. How many conversion actions are set up? What’s counted as a primary conversion? This is where we find the most dangerous problems. Common issues: counting page views as conversions, counting email clicks as conversions, double-counting the same form submission through both Google Ads tag and GA4 import.
If your conversion count seems too high, your CPA is artificially low, and you’re making bad decisions based on inflated data.
Check 22: Conversion Tracking Accuracy
Submit a test conversion on your website. Does it fire correctly in Google Ads? Check the tag status in Google Tag Manager. Look for “Still learning” or “No recent conversions” flags. We’ve audited accounts spending INR 10 lakh per month where the conversion tag had been broken for 3 weeks and nobody noticed.
Check 23: Attribution Model
What attribution model are your conversion actions using? If it’s still “Last click,” you’re likely undervaluing your upper-funnel campaigns and over-investing in brand. Google deprecated last-click as the default in 2023, but many accounts haven’t updated. Use data-driven attribution if you have enough conversion volume (typically 300+ conversions per month), or position-based if you don’t.
Check 24: Cross-Device and Cross-Campaign Tracking
Are you tracking conversions that happen after the click on a different device? Enable cross-device conversions in your conversion settings. For B2B, where someone might click an ad on mobile and convert on desktop the next day, this is essential.
Section 6: Performance Max and Display (3 Checks)
Check 25: Performance Max Asset Group Review
If the account runs PMax campaigns, check each asset group. Are the images, headlines, and descriptions relevant to the targeting signals? PMax campaigns are black boxes, but the asset groups are the one thing you control. Low-quality assets mean low-quality placements.
Also check: what percentage of PMax spend goes to Search vs. Display vs. YouTube vs. Discover? Use the Insights tab. If 80% of PMax spend is going to Display placements, you’re probably not reaching high-intent searchers.
Check 26: Display Campaign Placement Review
If running Display campaigns, pull the placement report. Where are your ads actually showing? We frequently find ads appearing on children’s game apps, low-quality news aggregators, and parked domains. Exclude placements with high impressions and zero conversions. Add placement exclusions for mobile app categories that aren’t relevant.
Check 27: Audience Signals and Remarketing
Are remarketing audiences set up? Is the account using Customer Match lists? Check the audience manager. Every account should have at minimum: website visitor audiences (30, 60, and 90 day windows), converter audiences (to exclude from prospecting), and customer lists uploaded for lookalike targeting.
How to Prioritize What You Find
After running through all 27 checks, you’ll have a list of issues. Prioritize them by estimated impact:
| Priority | Issue Type | Typical Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | Broken conversion tracking | All optimization decisions are wrong |
| Critical | Missing negative keywords (high irrelevant spend) | 15-35% budget savings |
| High | Geographic targeting set to “presence or interest” | 10-20% budget savings |
| High | Campaign overlap/cannibalization | 15-25% CPC reduction |
| Medium | Missing ad extensions | 10-15% CTR improvement |
| Medium | Poor Quality Scores | 20-40% CPC reduction over time |
| Low | Dayparting optimization | 5-15% efficiency gain |
Fix the critical items first. They’re usually responsible for more wasted spend than everything else combined.
We run PPC audits as part of our paid media management. If you’ve gone through this checklist and found issues you’re not sure how to fix, or if you want a second opinion on what you’ve found, send us your account details and we’ll do a deeper analysis.