Free Google Ads Audit for Agencies

A free Google Ads audit for an agency should show whether each client account has a clear goal, controlled ownership, accurate conversion path, approved claims, reproducible reporting, and a defined handoff between media and the client’s CRM or commerce system. Use this worksheet to separate what the agency can prove from what only the client can confirm.

This is an educational self-service review, not legal, privacy, financial, or platform-policy advice. Use approved, de-identified evidence and review Google Ads Help and Google Ads policy guidance.

Write the client contract

Record client, account, manager account, products, markets, budget, currency, time zone, date range, agency scope, client owner, approval path, and reporting audience. Define the outcome: qualified pipeline, purchases, bookings, profit, retention, reach, or another agreed event.

Separate clicks, visits, leads, qualified leads, sales acceptance, opportunities, closed deals, orders, payments, refunds, repeats, and margin. Mark which stages are visible to the agency and which require a client-side join. A dashboard cannot prove a stage the client has not supplied.

Check ownership and change control

Confirm account, analytics, tags, CRM, commerce, call systems, audiences, billing, permissions, shared budgets, and reporting all belong to the right client and market. Review user access and removal process. Use change history to label client-approved, agency-approved, automated, recommended, test, emergency, and unknown changes.

Record how tests are named, who approves copy and budgets, how emergency edits are logged, and how rollbacks work. Do not place client names, customer rows, or confidential instructions into a general audit worksheet.

Review structure and search intent

Map campaigns and ad groups to client goal, product or service, market, page, audience, conversion, budget, and owner. Inspect locations, languages, devices, schedules, networks, audiences, exclusions, negative keywords, budgets, bid strategies, and change history.

Classify searches as product, service, category, brand, pricing, comparison, competitor, support, job, supplier, existing-customer, or irrelevant. Look for one campaign mixing markets, languages, products, or sales motions without a documented reason. Compare representative queries with the ad and destination rather than relying on a campaign label.

Test pages, tracking, and reports

Follow approved test journeys through the ad, page, call, form, cart, checkout, signup, trial, demo, or booking path. Check message match, availability, price, qualification, claims, consent, confirmation, and handoff. A client-owned page or CRM can break a conversion even when the ad account is configured correctly.

Trace click identifiers, consent, analytics events, calls, forms, ecommerce or product events, CRM stages, invoices, payments, refunds, and repeat value. Check event creation, deduplication, source fields, timestamps, time zones, currencies, attribution windows, and offline imports. Separate observed media metrics from client-confirmed revenue or margin.

Pick one question the client asks in monthly reporting and rebuild it from source data. Confirm date range, filters, conversion actions, attribution, currency, time zone, refresh time, and cohort maturity. Record what the dashboard cannot prove.

Check approvals, privacy, and risk

Review current approvals for logos, reviews, credentials, comparisons, savings, guarantees, promotions, performance statements, and regulated-service language. Record source, scope, owner, date, disclosure, and expiry or replacement condition.

Review forms, calls, customer lists, remarketing, enhanced conversions, offline conversions, CRM imports, analytics, vendors, access, retention, and deletion. Keep names, numbers, addresses, health or financial details, credentials, API keys, source code, security findings, and confidential client information out of ad parameters and uncontrolled worksheets. Escalate legal, privacy, security, industry, and platform-policy questions.

Prioritize the handoff

For every issue, record account location, evidence, impact, owner, action, expected behavior, client approval, and proof condition. Prioritize broken conversion paths, wrong ownership, unreliable joins, unapproved claims, access gaps, duplicate events, unsafe data sharing, uncontrolled automation, and demand the client cannot fulfill.

Repeat the original test after the repair and preserve query, ad, page, device, market, consent, event IDs, timestamps, report filters, and expected client record. End with what is proven, what is not proven, what needs client action, what needs agency action, and what remains unknown.

For related context, see how to audit a Google Ads account for agencies, Google Ads audit checklist for lead generation, and best Google Ads audit tools. adz.so can help organize account structure, conversion tracking, and reporting review where its connected workflow supports those checks; the agency and client remain responsible for approvals, claims, data, and final decisions.