A Google Ads audit that follows the click to the checkout.

What we check in a Google Ads audit

Every audit runs the same ten checks, in the order that protects budget fastest. Measurement comes first: if the account counts the wrong thing, every bid, report and recommendation built on it is wrong too.

If you want to run these checks yourself, the table works as a checklist. The sections below explain how we read each area, including the 2025 and 2026 platform changes an account set up two years ago will not reflect.

Updated October 2026 for Google’s Performance Max, AI Max, enhanced conversions and target bidding changes.

Can you trust the conversion numbers?

Every other number depends on this one. We compare conversions in Google Ads with orders in Shopify or leads in your CRM for the same period. A gap in either direction tells us something: more conversions in Google usually means a duplicate tag or a GA4 import counted on top of the Google tag; fewer usually means a broken tag, a consent problem or a checkout on another domain.

Then the setup. Enhanced conversions send hashed first-party data, such as an email address, with each conversion so Google can match more of them to ad clicks. Google reports that early adopters saw a median conversion rate increase of 5 percent on Search and 17 percent on YouTube (Google). Since April 2026, enhanced conversions for web and for leads are a single setting, and Google notes the effect can take up to 30 days to show in reporting (Google Ads Help).

Brands with European traffic also need consent mode. Since March 2024, Google has required advertisers to pass consent signals for EEA users; without them, those users drop out of the audiences used by linked ad products (Google Analytics Help). Google says consent mode modeling recovers more than half of the ad-click-to-conversion journeys lost to consent choices on average, and that advanced mode recovers about twice as much as basic (Google Ads Help).

Is Performance Max spending where you think it is?

Performance Max buys across Google’s channels from a single budget, which is why so much unexamined spend sits inside it. For most of its life it was hard to audit. That changed in 2025: Google raised the campaign-level negative keyword limit to 10,000 in April, then added negative keyword lists, search terms reporting for all Performance Max campaigns and 50 search themes per asset group in August (Google Ads Help). Channel performance reporting has been available in every Performance Max campaign since November 2025 (Google Ads Help).

We use those controls to answer three questions. How much of the spend went to searches for your own brand name, which brand exclusions can block, misspellings included (Google Ads Help)? How much went to people who had already bought from you? And what did Shopping, video and display each return, compared with what the campaign reports as a whole?

The answers often change the read of the whole account. A campaign that reports a strong ROAS while spending heavily on brand searches and returning customers is mostly collecting sales that were already coming. We separate those so the number you scale on is the one that adds customers.

Are bidding, match types and AI Max set up for 2026?

Google recommends judging Smart Bidding over a period with at least 30 conversions, or 50 for Target ROAS (Google Ads Help). A Target ROAS campaign that records a dozen conversions a month has very little to learn from. Since August 17, 2026, budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS also deliver closer to their stated target, so a campaign that used to beat its target by a wide margin may now spend up to it (Google Ads Help). We check every target against what the business can afford.

Match types come next. Google’s own data, from 2020, says moving from phrase to broad match with Smart Bidding produced about 25 percent more conversions on Target CPA campaigns (Google Ads Help). That holds only when conversion tracking is right and the negative keyword list is maintained. Broad match on a broken signal buys broad traffic. Any campaign still set to Enhanced CPC is effectively running manual bidding, because Google stopped supporting it for Search and Display at the end of March 2025 (Google Ads Help).

AI Max for Search launched in May 2025 (Google), and in April 2026 Google announced that Dynamic Search Ads and campaign-level broad match would move to AI Max starting in September 2026 (Google). AI Max includes Final URL Expansion, which lets Google send the click to a different page on your site. We check which pages it is choosing, because a paid visitor sent to a blog post or an out-of-stock product rarely buys.

Is the Shopping feed costing you impressions?

For an ecommerce brand, the Merchant Center feed decides which products can show at all. Google disapproves items preemptively when the price or availability in the feed does not match the landing page or checkout, and other unresolved data-quality issues can lead to account suspension after a 28-day warning period (Merchant Center Help). Products that have a GTIN but are submitted without one may get limited visibility (Merchant Center Help).

We check disapprovals, price and stock mismatches, missing identifiers, and whether product titles use the words people actually search with. This matters more in 2026 than it did: AI Max for Shopping, launched in April 2026, can customize text and expand final URLs inside Shopping campaigns too (Google), so the feed and the product pages it points to both need to be accurate.

The part most Google Ads audits skip: the page after the click

Google rates landing page experience as one of the three parts of Quality Score, alongside expected click-through rate and ad relevance, and defines it as how relevant and useful the page is to the people who click (Google Ads Help). Google also says Quality Score is a diagnostic tool and not an input in the ad auction. It is still the clearest signal Google gives you about the page, and the page is where the paid click turns into revenue or into waste.

This is the half of the audit we fix ourselves. We check message match between the search, the ad and the first screen of the page; mobile load time; whether price, shipping and returns are answered next to the button; and how many fields stand between the visitor and the conversion. Most published Google Ads audit guides stop at the account. We start there and keep going.

The arithmetic is why. At the same spend and the same clicks, a 30 percent lift in landing page conversion rate cuts cost per acquisition by about 23 percent, with no change to bids or keywords. Model your own numbers with the conversion rate calculator, or see how we build landing pages for paid traffic.

Optimization score, ROAS and the number that matters

Google’s optimization score is an estimate, from 0 to 100 percent, of how well an account is set to perform, and an account can reach 100 percent by applying Google’s recommendations or by dismissing them (Google Ads Help). The score measures agreement with Google’s suggestions. It does not measure margin, new customers or cash.

Some of those recommendations can apply themselves. Since January 26, 2026, Google no longer auto-applies new responsive search ads (Google Ads Help), but other auto-apply settings may still be switched on in your account. We list which ones are, and what they have changed.

Then we judge the account on profit. Platform ROAS counts revenue and ignores margin, and it gives Google credit for some customers who would have bought anyway. Break-even ROAS is one divided by your contribution margin: at a 40 percent margin, every dollar of spend has to return $2.50 just to break even. We compare reported ROAS with that line, split new from returning customers, and check the result against your blended numbers in Shopify.

How the free audit works

The audit costs nothing and commits you to nothing. We never change anything in your account.

Request the free audit ↓

Who runs it, and who fixes what

Audits are led by Andrew Cowan, Parah Group’s founder and a former brand-side CMO who scaled 8- and 9-figure DTC stores. Parah Group is a conversion rate optimization agency. We do not manage Google Ads campaigns, which keeps the audit honest: we have nothing to gain from recommending more spend on the account side.

• Account fixes (tracking settings, structure, negatives, Performance Max controls, bidding) are ranked by impact and handed to your in-house team or PPC agency. We are happy to join a call with them.
• Page fixes (landing pages, offers, checkout, on-site tracking) are what we build and test ourselves, through landing pages for paid traffic or The CRO Program.

Signs your Google Ads account needs an audit

WordStream’s study of 15,666 Google Ads accounts in 2025 found that about 29 percent had recorded no conversions in 90 days, and a quarter had no negative keywords at all (WordStream). If any of these sound familiar, the account is worth a second pair of eyes:

• Google Ads reports more conversions than Shopify or your CRM shows for the same period.
• ROAS in the platform looks fine, but blended revenue or profit is flat or falling.
• Performance Max takes most of the budget and nobody has looked at its search terms or channel report.
• Landing page experience shows as Below average on your main keywords.
• Bid strategies sit in learning, or campaigns are limited by budget every day.
• No one has reviewed search terms or negative keywords in the last month.
• Your agency reports platform ROAS and nothing about margin or new customers.
• Auto-applied recommendations are on and no one knows what they changed.

Google Ads audit FAQs

Other audits we run