Google Ads account audit
A Google Ads account audit examines account architecture, conversion tracking integrity, budget pacing, and wasted spend, then returns a prioritized remediation plan with effort estimates. Kodelytics audits at the structural level — how the account is built and whether its conversion data can be trusted — not at the level of headline rewrites.
Most audits arrive as a checklist of surface observations: add negative keywords, tighten ad groups, test more headlines. Useful, occasionally. But if conversion actions are double-counting, if a location's conversions aren't attributable, or if the account's structure means budget can't move to what works, optimizing ad copy on top of it is measuring a bent ruler more carefully.
The distinction matters commercially. Surface optimizations produce a few percent, repeatedly, forever. Structural corrections produce step changes and then stop, which is the shape you want: fix it once, and the account stops leaking.
Account architecture is how campaigns, ad groups, budgets, and conversion actions are organized relative to the business's own structure — locations, service lines, margin tiers. Architecture decides what budget can respond to; creative decides how well it performs within those limits.
What's actually wrong
These are the symptoms buyers of this service recognize before they can name the problem.
- The conversion count in Google Ads doesn't match GA4, the call tracking platform, or the CRM — and nobody can explain the gap.
- Multiple conversion actions fire on the same user event, so "conversions" is inflated by an unknown factor.
- Budget is spread evenly across campaigns rather than concentrated where CPA is defensible.
- Search terms reports show spend on queries with no commercial intent, month after month.
- Smart Bidding is optimizing toward a conversion action nobody has verified.
- Performance changed after a platform update and nobody can isolate what moved.
What the engagement includes
- Account architecture review: campaign and ad group structure, match type strategy, and whether the structure lets budget follow performance.
- Conversion tracking integrity audit — every conversion action traced from the user event through GTM to the platform, checking for duplication, missed events, and unverified primary actions.
- Bid strategy assessment against the conversion data actually available, including whether Smart Bidding has enough clean signal to work.
- Budget pacing and spend distribution analysis, by campaign, by location, and by device.
- Wasted spend identification from search terms, placements, audiences, and geographic reports, quantified in dollars.
- Landing page and conversion path review at the tracking level: form submissions, call events, booking platforms.
- Competitive and auction insight context where the vertical makes it meaningful.
- A prioritized remediation plan: each item with an owner, an effort estimate, and expected impact.
How wasted spend is quantified
Wasted spend is reported as a dollar figure over a defined window, not as a percentage or an adjective, and each dollar is traceable to the query, placement, audience, or geography that produced it. Anything not traceable is excluded from the number, which usually makes it conservative.
That figure exists to make the remediation plan fundable. "Restructure the account" is a cost; "$14,200 a quarter is going to queries with no commercial intent" is a decision.
What the audit deliberately does not cover
Creative performance. Kodelytics does not review ad copy quality, image or video assets, or landing page design and messaging. Those matter and belong to your creative team or agency partner.
The audit stops at the tracking layer of the landing page: whether the form, call, chat, and booking events fire correctly and reach the platforms. Whether the page persuades anyone is someone else's expertise, and pretending otherwise is how audits become generic.
What gets examined, and why it's ranked that way
| Layer | Failure mode | Financial effect |
|---|---|---|
| Conversion tracking | Duplicate, missing, or unverified actions | Every downstream decision is wrong |
| Account structure | Budget can't follow performance | Structural ceiling on ROAS |
| Bid strategy | Optimizing to unverified signal | Systematic overspend on low-quality events |
| Budget pacing | Even spread across uneven performance | Slow, continuous margin loss |
| Search terms / placements | Spend on non-commercial queries | Directly quantifiable waste |
| Ad copy and assets | Untested variants | Marginal, and last for a reason |
How it's scoped and priced
Delivered as a fixed-fee engagement, priced on account count, monthly spend, and structural complexity — a single-location account and a fifteen-location MCC are different pieces of work. Turnaround is one to two weeks from access.
The audit is deliberately separable from implementation. You can hand the remediation plan to your own team, and many agencies do. Where Kodelytics implements, that's scoped as a second phase against the plan's own estimates.
Kodelytics does not publish rates. Every engagement is quoted after a discovery call, because the same service name covers materially different amounts of work.Ask for a quote.
What you get at the end
- A written audit document with findings ranked by financial impact.
- A conversion tracking map — every action, its trigger, and its integrity status.
- A quantified wasted-spend figure with the queries and placements behind it.
- A prioritized remediation plan with effort estimates per item.
- A live walkthrough call, recorded, for whoever will implement.
Questions
How long does a Google Ads audit take?
One to two weeks from the point access is granted. Multi-account MCC structures sit at the longer end, mostly because tracking verification is per-property and can't be batched.
What's the difference between this and a free audit?
A free audit is a sales document, produced from the platform's own recommendations in an hour. This one traces conversion tracking end to end, quantifies wasted spend in dollars, and returns a remediation plan with effort estimates — the work takes days, so it's paid.
Do you need access to our account?
Read access to the Google Ads account or MCC, GA4, and Google Tag Manager. Read access is enough for the audit; nothing is changed without written approval.
Will you tell us to fire our current agency?
No. Most audits find structural and tracking issues rather than negligence, and most are fixable by the incumbent team. The deliverable is a plan, not a verdict.
Do you audit platforms other than Google Ads?
Microsoft Advertising and Meta are covered where they share the conversion tracking layer under review. Kodelytics does not audit creative performance on any platform.