PPC audit that shows where the budget goes
We review an account that is already running: what counts as a conversion, how campaigns are built, which search terms you pay for, how bids and budget are split and where the ads lead. You get a written list of problems with a decision for each.
A PPC audit helps when the ads are already running and money is being spent, but nobody can say clearly what it buys. It also helps before you raise the budget or hand the account to a new contractor.
When it fits
when it fits
- The ads have run for a few months and the report shows plenty of conversions, yet sales receives far fewer calls and forms.
- Your agency or freelancer has changed and you want to know what was left in the account.
- You plan to raise the budget and do not want to scale what already works badly.
- You want an independent view before paying for more management.
when not now
- There is no account yet or the ads started last week. There is not enough data; a proper setup is the better start.
- We cannot get access to the account. An audit from screenshots is not an audit.
- You need a guaranteed number of leads after the fixes. No honest audit can give you that.
What we check and in what order
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01
Conversions
What counts as a contact: calls, submitted forms, email clicks. Duplicates, minor actions in the conversion list, calls that never reach the report.
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02
Structure and search terms
How services and locations are split, whether campaigns compete with each other, which search terms you really pay for and which negatives are missing.
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03
Bids and budget
Whether the bid strategy fits the data, how the budget is split and whether the most useful campaign is capped by its daily limit.
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04
Ads and landing pages
Whether the ad promises what the page shows, how the page loads on a phone and how easy it is to call from it.
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05
List and decisions
A written list of problems in priority order, each with a decision: fix it yourself, hand it to us, or stop it.
Contacts counted separately
This comes from an account we ran ourselves, not from an audit of someone else's. For PILLAR, which sells solar carports in Germany, we set up tracking so that phone, email and forms counted as separate contact events. In Q1 2025 the account recorded 142 of them: 72 phone contacts from Search, 60 email clicks and 10 completed forms. This split is the first thing we check in an audit.
THE QUESTIONS
WE HEAR MOST.
How much does a PPC audit cost?
It depends on the number of campaigns, markets and languages, on the state of tracking and on whether we get analytics access. A single search campaign and a multi-country account are different jobs. We agree scope and price in writing before we start.
What access do you need?
Read-only access to Google Ads and, if possible, to analytics and Tag Manager if you use it. Plus one thing no access can replace: how many enquiries your team actually received last month. Without it we cannot check the report against reality.
Will you change anything during the audit?
No. We work with read-only access. Any change happens only after you decide what to do with it.
How is this different from Google's own recommendations?
The in-account recommendations do not know which enquiries matter to your business, and some of them simply suggest a higher budget or broader keywords. We check the account against what your sales team sees and set priorities from that.
Do we have to keep working with you afterwards?
No. The list stays with you and your team can work from it. If you want to hand some fixes or the ongoing management to us, we agree that separately.
Other directions
Sound like
your task?
Send the company name, your rough monthly budget and what a useful enquiry is for you. We will reply in writing with where the audit starts and what access we need.
PPC audit: how it runs and what you get
A PPC audit answers a plain question: what exactly are you paying for, and which part of that spend brings enquiries. We take a Google Ads account that is already running, compare it with what actually reaches your sales team and hand back a written list of problems, from the most expensive to the smallest. Below is what sits behind each step, what drives the price and when you do not need an audit at all.
The audit is a standalone job. You are not signing up for management afterwards. If you later want us to run the account, that is covered on the Google Ads page.
What a Google Ads audit covers
The five checks listed above are the frame. Inside each one there are things a standard report does not show:
- change history: who changed what and when, and whether auto-applied recommendations are quietly broadening keywords or raising budgets;
- location settings: whether ads target people in your area or people merely interested in it, which often brings clicks from countries you do not serve;
- conversion sources: whether goals imported from analytics duplicate the ones set up in Google Ads, and which of them drives bidding;
- Performance Max and search partners: how much budget goes outside standard Search and whether you can see what it buys;
- schedule and devices: whether ads run overnight when nobody answers the phone, and how mobile and desktop enquiries differ.
None of this is broken by default. The audit tells you which of these settings actually costs money in your account and which you can leave alone.
How the PPC audit runs
It starts with a short written brief: what you sell, where, what a useful enquiry looks like and how many of those your team received last month. That last figure carries the whole audit. Without it we can only compare the report with itself.
You then give us read-only access to Google Ads and, where possible, to analytics and Tag Manager. We change nothing. The order is fixed: conversions first, then structure and search terms, then bids, budget, ads and landing pages. If conversions are counted wrongly, every conclusion about bids and keywords will be wrong too, so tracking comes first.
Each item on the list states what is wrong, roughly how much of the budget it touches, how to check the fix and who should do it: your team, us, or nobody, when pausing the campaign is the simpler answer. We walk through the list with you so that every point is clear before anyone acts on it.
What drives the price of a Google Ads audit service
There is no single price, because accounts vary a lot. The cost depends on:
- the number and types of campaigns: Search, Performance Max, Display, YouTube;
- the number of markets and languages;
- the state of tracking: whether Tag Manager is in place, whether calls are counted, whether enquiries come back from your CRM;
- access to analytics and to sales data;
- how much history there is: a few months of activity or years of changes by different contractors.
We agree scope and price in writing before we start. We do not promise a number of leads, a cost per enquiry or a date by which results change. The audit shows what is in the way; what happens next depends on which fixes are made and on your market.
Who the audit is for, and who it is not for
It makes sense once the ads have run for at least a few months and the account holds real data: clicks, spend, some conversions. It is useful before switching agency, before raising the budget and whenever the report and your sales team tell different stories.
It is not worth it if there is no account yet or the ads went live last week. There is nothing to analyse, and a proper setup is the better start. It also will not help when the problem lies outside the ads: calls go unanswered, the price is well above the market or the offer is missing from the site. We will flag those things, but they are not fixed inside Google Ads.
Common mistakes an audit uncovers
The most expensive mistake is rarely where people look for it. Owners watch the cost per click while the money leaks earlier, in what gets counted as a result. A few typical patterns:
- views of the contact page or form starts sit among conversions, so the report shows noticeably more “leads” than you actually get;
- calls from the ad are counted but calls after a site visit are not, so automated bidding learns from half the picture;
- one broad campaign covers every service and the cheap queries eat the budget meant for expensive ones;
- negatives have not been updated for months and nobody opens the search terms report.
How calls, email clicks and forms can be tracked as separate contact events is shown in the PILLAR case study, and the wider tracking logic is in our article on conversion tracking in B2B Google Ads.
Next step
Get in touch through the contact page. Send the company name, your rough monthly ad budget, the markets you advertise in and who runs the account today. If you know how many enquiries your team received last month, include that figure too. We will reply in writing with where the audit starts, what access we need and what the scope covers.