Most Google Ads accounts are not failing because of the wrong bidding strategy or a poor landing page. They are failing because of accumulated structural debt: decisions that made sense six months ago and were never revisited. A proper audit does not just surface symptoms. It traces problems back to their root and gives you a clear action list.

This checklist covers the seven areas that consistently separate high-performing accounts from average ones. Work through each section and document what you find. The goal is not to optimise everything at once; it is to prioritise the three to five changes that will move the needle fastest.

Campaign Structure

• 1. Are you using consolidated campaigns or single keyword ad groups (SKAGs)? SKAGs had a logic in the era of exact-match purity, but Google's keyword matching is now far more flexible. Consolidated campaigns with tightly themed ad groups give Smart Bidding more signal to work with.
• 2. Are match types being used with intention? Broad match in an account without strong negative keyword lists is a budget leak waiting to happen. Phrase and exact match still have a role, particularly in the early stages of a campaign before you have enough data to trust broad.
• 3. Are campaigns segmented by funnel stage? Brand, generic, competitor, and category terms each have different CPCs, intent signals, and conversion rates. Lumping them together distorts your bidding targets.
• 4. Are you separating Search and Display? Running them in the same campaign limits your ability to control budgets and optimise bids independently.
• 5. Are you using campaign experiments for structural changes rather than making live edits that cannot be attributed?

Bidding Strategy and Smart Bidding Signals

• 6. Are your conversion actions correctly weighted? Google's Smart Bidding optimises toward whatever you tell it to. If form fills and phone calls are both set as primary conversions with equal value, the algorithm will chase volume rather than quality.
• 7. Do you have at least 30 conversions per month before switching to Target CPA or Target ROAS? Automated bidding under that threshold produces erratic results because the machine-learning model lacks sufficient data. Google’s own Smart Bidding guidance recommends this threshold before applying tCPA.
• 8. Are your tCPA or tROAS targets based on actual historical performance, not aspirational numbers? Setting a tCPA 40% below your actual CPA forces the system into a perpetual learning state.
• 9. Are you using bid adjustments for device, location, and audience without overriding Smart Bidding? Bid adjustments on top of automated strategies can create conflicting signals.
• 10. Have you allowed at least four weeks after a major bidding change before evaluating performance? The learning phase needs time.

Quality Score Components

• 11. Is expected CTR below average for any high-spend keywords? This signals a messaging mismatch between what users are searching and what your ads say.
• 12. Is ad relevance suffering across ad groups with too many loosely related keywords? Tightly themed ad groups with headlines that mirror search intent are the most reliable fix. Google's Quality Score documentation identifies ad relevance, expected CTR, and landing page experience as the three core components.
• 13. Is landing page experience rated below average? Check page speed, content relevance, and whether the page delivers on the ad's promise. A slow mobile page will drag Quality Score regardless of how good the ad copy is.
• 14. Are you tracking Quality Score at the keyword level over time? It is not a default column. Add historical Quality Score and current Quality Score to your keyword view.
• 15. Are keywords with Quality Score below 4 consuming significant budget? These keywords are costing you more per click than they should. Either improve the ad and landing page, or pause them.

Ad Copy and RSA Asset Coverage

• 16. Do you have at least one Responsive Search Ad per ad group rated "Good" or "Excellent" for Ad Strength?
• 17. Are you using all 15 headline and 4 description slots? Leaving slots empty reduces the algorithm's ability to test combinations. Best practices for RSAs from Google recommend maximising asset coverage.
• 18. Are you pinning assets with a specific reason, not as a default? Excessive pinning limits combination testing and typically lowers Ad Strength. Pin position 1 only when brand or legal requirements demand it.
• 19. Do your headlines include the primary keyword, a value proposition, and a call to action, distributed across the available slots?
• 20. Are descriptions adding information that headlines do not cover, rather than repeating the same message?
• 21. Have you reviewed the asset combination report to identify which pairings are serving most and whether they are converting?

Audience Layering

• 22. Are in-market audiences applied at observation level to all campaigns? Even if you are not adjusting bids, collecting data on how different in-market segments perform is valuable.
• 23. Are remarketing lists set up for all key site segments: all visitors, product/service page viewers, cart abandoners, past converters?
• 24. Is Customer Match enabled and populated with a regularly refreshed CRM list?
• 25. Are you using audience bid adjustments based on actual performance data rather than assumptions?
• 26. Are similar segments being monitored for performance, with the understanding that Meta often outperforms Google for lookalike-style prospecting?

Negative Keywords and Search Term Hygiene

• 27. Is there a shared negative keyword list applied across all campaigns?
• 28. Are search term reports being reviewed at least weekly?
• 29. Are irrelevant broad match terms being added as negatives promptly?
• 30. Are brand terms excluded from generic campaigns to avoid inflating CPA with easily attributable brand traffic?
• 31. Are competitor terms managed in a dedicated campaign or deliberately excluded if they are unprofitable?
• 32. Are there any negative keywords that are accidentally blocking high-intent queries?

Conversion Tracking and GA4 Integration

• 33. Is conversion tracking firing only on confirmed conversion events, not on page views or button clicks that do not represent genuine intent?
• 34. Are primary and secondary conversion actions correctly categorised? Primary actions drive bidding; secondary actions are for reporting only.
• 35. Is GA4 linked to Google Ads and are GA4 key events being imported? This provides a broader conversion picture, particularly for longer consideration cycles.
• 36. Are enhanced conversions set up? This uses hashed first-party data to recover conversions lost due to cookie restrictions. It typically improves measured conversion rates by 5 to 15 percent.
• 37. Is there a conversion window set that reflects your actual sales cycle? A 30-day window on a product with a 90-day consideration cycle will undercount conversions.

Performance Max

• 38. Are you running Performance Max only once your Search campaigns have consistent conversion data? PMax needs signal to work effectively, and launching it into a cold account produces poor results.
• 39. Are asset groups structured by product category or service line, not by audience?
• 40. Are audience signals informed by Customer Match lists, remarketing lists, and custom intent segments? These are suggestions to the algorithm, not hard constraints, but they accelerate the learning phase.
• 41. Have you excluded brand terms from Performance Max using brand exclusions? Without this, PMax will harvest branded traffic and inflate its own performance metrics.
• 42. Are search themes being used to guide PMax toward relevant queries in the absence of keywords?
• 43. Are you reviewing the asset performance labels and replacing assets rated "Low" at least quarterly? Google’s Performance Max resources recommend regular asset review cycles.

Budget Pacing and Impression Share

• 44. Are any campaigns consistently hitting daily budget caps before the end of the day? This suggests either underfunding or poor budget allocation relative to opportunity.
• 45. Is impression share for top-performing campaigns above 70 percent? If not, is the constraint budget or Ad Rank?
• 46. Is impression share lost to budget being addressed differently from impression share lost to rank? The solutions are different: one requires budget increase, the other requires Quality Score or bid improvements.
• 47. Are budgets reviewed against seasonality and demand patterns, not just set and left on annual autopilot?

Landing Page Alignment

A final note that cuts across every section above: your landing page is not a separate problem from your Google Ads account. It is part of it. Google scores landing page experience as one of the three components of Quality Score, and a page that does not match ad copy intent will drag down both your ad rank and your conversion rate simultaneously.

If your audit surfaces issues across multiple areas, prioritise conversion tracking accuracy first. Everything else you optimise is only as trustworthy as the data feeding it.

For a structured view of how paid search fits into your broader growth framework, the Viaduct Generation Execution service covers channel activation across search, social, and programmatic. To explore how your current account measures up, start with the Growth Engine Explorer.