How to Do a Google Ads Audit That Increases ROAS

A Google Ads account that has been running for any significant period of time almost always contains a combination of campaigns that are working well and campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and settings that are silently consuming budget without generating proportional commercial returns. The audit process is the diagnostic that reveals which is which, and it is the starting point for the optimisation work that improves ROAS by eliminating waste and redirecting spend toward the activities generating the strongest commercial outcomes.

Most ROAS problems are not platform problems. They are account problems: structural decisions that distribute budget poorly, keyword strategies that attract irrelevant traffic, bidding configurations that are not calibrated to the account's actual conversion economics, and ad copy or landing pages that fail to convert the traffic the campaigns are generating. Every one of these problems is visible in the account data once you know where to look and what to look for.

This guide walks through a systematic Google Ads audit, from account-level settings through campaign structure, keywords, ad creative, landing pages, and bidding, with specific attention to the findings most reliably associated with ROAS improvement when they are addressed.

Start With Conversion Tracking Verification

Before any other audit activity, verify that conversion tracking is working correctly. Every other audit finding and every subsequent optimisation decision depends on conversion data, and conversion data that is inaccurate, duplicated, or missing makes every downstream analysis unreliable.

The conversion tracking audit has three components. First, confirm that the conversion actions being tracked are the actions that actually reflect commercial value. Tracking page views or time on site as conversions generates impressive conversion numbers that have no relationship to the commercial outcomes the campaign is supposed to generate. The conversion actions that matter for ROAS are purchases, qualified lead form submissions, phone calls with meaningful duration, and other actions that directly or closely precede commercial value.

Second, check for duplicate conversion tracking, which occurs when the same conversion action is counted by multiple tracking implementations and inflates conversion counts. A purchase tracked by both the Google Ads tag and an imported Google Analytics goal is counted twice, making ROAS appear higher than it actually is. Duplicate tracking is more common than most advertisers realise and is frequently the explanation for ROAS figures that look better in the platform than the actual business outcomes justify.

Third, verify that conversion values are being passed correctly for e-commerce campaigns where different products have different values. A campaign where all conversions are counted with an arbitrary fixed value rather than the actual transaction value generates ROAS calculations that have no meaningful relationship to actual revenue return.

Review Account Structure and Campaign Organisation

Account structure affects both the quality of performance data and the ability to make precise budget and bidding decisions. An account with poor structure generates mixed performance signals that make it impossible to identify which specific activities are generating strong results and which are underperforming.

The structural issues most commonly associated with poor ROAS include brand and non-brand keywords mixed in the same campaigns, which allows the high conversion rates of branded searches to mask the poor performance of non-brand acquisition campaigns. Brand searches from people who already know the business convert at very high rates and very low costs. Non-brand searches from cold audiences convert at lower rates and higher costs. Mixing them generates an average that looks better than the non-brand performance actually is, concealing the true cost of new customer acquisition.

Product or service categories mixed in the same campaign create similar masking effects. High-margin products with strong conversion rates can compensate in aggregate metrics for low-performing products that are consuming budget without generating proportional ROAS. Separate campaigns for each significant product or service category reveal the performance of each individually and allow budget to be concentrated toward the categories generating the strongest returns.

Geographic markets mixed without segment-level visibility conceal the performance variation that almost always exists across different locations. A campaign targeting multiple cities or regions in a single campaign may be generating strong ROAS from one city and poor ROAS from another, with the aggregate masking a reallocation opportunity that segment-level reporting would make obvious.

Audit the Keyword Portfolio for Relevance and Performance

The keyword audit is typically where the largest ROAS improvement opportunities are found, because keyword portfolios accumulate irrelevant, underperforming, and duplicative keywords over time that consume budget without contributing to commercial outcomes.

Begin the keyword audit by pulling keyword performance data for the full account history and sorting by cost. The high-spend keywords that have generated zero or very few conversions relative to their spend are the most immediately actionable findings. A keyword that has spent twenty times the target cost per conversion without generating a single conversion is not a keyword in a learning phase. It is a keyword that is generating traffic without commercial intent, and the budget it is consuming would generate better returns directed almost anywhere else in the account.

Match type analysis reveals whether the keyword portfolio is structured to capture high-intent searches efficiently or whether it is generating broad traffic that includes significant proportions of irrelevant queries. Broad match keywords without strong negative keyword coverage generate the widest and least controlled traffic in the account. If broad match keywords represent a large proportion of spend in a poorly performing account, reviewing the search term data for those keywords will almost certainly reveal significant proportions of irrelevant queries that have been incurring cost.

Keyword duplication across ad groups and campaigns creates internal competition where the account is bidding against itself for the same search queries, artificially inflating CPCs and generating performance fragmentation that makes optimisation harder. Identifying and consolidating duplicate keywords into single, well-structured ad groups reduces this internal competition and improves the efficiency of the account's total auction spend.

Analyse the Search Term Report for Wasted Spend

The search term report shows the actual queries that triggered the account's ads, and it is the most direct window into how much of the campaign spend is reaching genuinely relevant audiences. Most accounts with ROAS problems have significant wasted spend on irrelevant queries that negative keyword coverage has failed to exclude.

Pull the search term report for the longest available period and filter for queries that have generated significant spend without conversions. These are the queries where budget is being consumed by audiences whose search intent does not match the campaign's commercial objective. Adding them to the negative keyword list stops the bleeding immediately.

Also look for search terms that are generating strong conversion performance and are not already being directly targeted as keywords. High-performing search queries that are being captured through broad or phrase match targeting rather than exact match keywords represent an expansion opportunity: adding them as exact match keywords gives direct control over bids for those specific high-performing queries.

The negative keyword audit alongside the search term analysis should examine negative keyword lists at both the campaign and account level to identify gaps in the exclusion coverage. Common gaps include job-related searches, competitor brand names where competitor targeting is not a strategic objective, free or low-cost alternative searches where the business's product is paid, and geographic locations outside the campaign's intended service area.

Review Quality Scores and Their Components

Quality Score is Google's assessment of the relevance and quality of each keyword, ad, and landing page combination, and it directly affects both the ad position the account achieves and the CPC it pays for that position. Low Quality Scores generate higher CPCs for equivalent positions, which directly suppresses ROAS by increasing the cost side of the equation without improving the revenue side.

The Quality Score audit examines the three component scores, expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience, to identify which component is dragging down Quality Scores for the keywords where low scores are most commercially significant, meaning the keywords with the most spend and highest CPCs.

Below average expected CTR indicates that the ad copy is not compelling enough to earn clicks at a rate consistent with search intent. The fix is usually more specific and more relevant ad copy that matches the search intent of the keyword more closely. Below average ad relevance indicates a mismatch between the keyword and the ad copy, often because the keyword and the ad are in an ad group that groups too many different intents together. The fix is tighter ad group organisation with more specifically targeted ad copy for each intent cluster. Below average landing page experience indicates that the page the ad leads to is not serving the searcher's intent effectively, whether through slow loading speed, poor message match, or content that does not address what the searcher was looking for.

Evaluate Bidding Strategy Configuration

Bidding strategy misalignment is a consistent driver of poor ROAS that is often overlooked in audits that focus primarily on keywords and creative. The bidding strategy determines how aggressively the account bids and toward what objective, and a strategy misconfigured for the account's data volume or commercial objective generates systematically poor bid decisions that undermine ROAS regardless of how good the keywords, ads, and landing pages are.

Smart bidding strategies including Target CPA and Target ROAS require sufficient conversion volume to learn effectively, typically at least thirty to fifty conversions per month and ideally significantly more. Accounts with smart bidding strategies enabled but insufficient conversion volume generate erratic bidding behavior as the algorithm attempts to optimise toward targets with inadequate data. These accounts often generate better results with manual bidding or Maximise Conversions strategies until conversion volume reaches the threshold that makes Target CPA or Target ROAS viable.

Target settings should be reviewed against actual historical performance rather than set aspirationally. A Target ROAS set significantly above the account's historically achieved ROAS restricts the algorithm's ability to bid competitively in most auctions, limiting the volume of conversions in pursuit of an efficiency level the market will not consistently support. The appropriate target is set based on what the account has historically achieved at acceptable volume levels, adjusted incrementally toward the desired efficiency as the algorithm demonstrates it can sustain the improvement.

Portfolio bid strategies that group campaigns under a shared automated bidding target can generate efficiency improvements for related campaigns but can also allow underperforming campaigns to pull down the bidding performance of high-performing ones. Reviewing which campaigns are included in portfolio strategies and whether the groupings still make commercial sense is a standard audit step for accounts using this feature.

Audit Ad Creative Performance

The ad creative audit examines whether the copy and extensions in each campaign are generating the click-through rates and conversion rates that reflect the quality of traffic the campaigns are reaching, and identifies the specific underperforming creative elements that are suppressing ROAS through poor CTR or post-click conversion performance.

Responsive Search Ad asset performance ratings reveal which individual headlines and descriptions the algorithm has rated as low performers based on the engagement data it has accumulated. Low-rated assets that are still active in the ad are pulling down the average performance of the RSA by limiting the combinations the algorithm can use. Replacing them with new assets that take genuinely different creative approaches provides the fresh combinations that allow the algorithm to find better-performing configurations.

Ad extension coverage reveals whether the account is using the full range of available extensions that increase the information density and clickability of the ads without increasing CPC. Accounts with limited extension coverage are generating smaller, less informative ads in the same auctions as competitors whose fuller extension use generates larger, more compelling ad presentations. Sitelink extensions, callout extensions, structured snippets, and call extensions are the most consistently impactful additions for accounts with incomplete extension implementation.

Review Landing Page Performance by Campaign

Landing page performance is the conversion side of the ROAS equation, and landing pages that fail to convert the traffic campaigns are generating suppress ROAS regardless of how efficiently the campaigns are generating clicks.

The landing page audit examines conversion rate by landing page across the account, identifying the pages where conversion rates are significantly below the account average and diagnosing the specific failure points responsible. Common landing page issues that suppress conversion rates include message mismatch between the ad's specific promise and the landing page's opening content, page load speed problems that cause visitors to abandon before the content loads, conversion paths with excessive friction from too many form fields or too many steps to complete the desired action, and insufficient social proof to overcome the trust barriers that prevent conversion for new visitors.

For campaigns generating significant spend toward landing pages with consistently poor conversion rates, prioritising landing page improvements or replacing the destination with higher-performing alternatives generates immediate ROAS improvement because the same traffic that has been generating poor returns begins converting at better rates.

Assess Audience Targeting and Bid Adjustments

The audience audit examines whether the account is using the targeting refinements available through audience layering to concentrate spend on the highest-converting audience segments, and whether the bid adjustments applied to different audiences reflect actual performance differences.

Remarketing list performance data reveals whether warm audiences who have previously engaged with the brand are being bid on at premiums that reflect their higher conversion rates. Previous website visitors, previous purchasers, and previous lead form submitters typically convert at significantly higher rates than cold audiences and warrant positive bid adjustments that prioritise reaching them in search auctions.

Demographic performance data by age, gender, and household income reveals whether specific demographic segments are converting at significantly above or below average rates, warranting bid adjustments that concentrate spend toward the strongest-performing segments. These adjustments are particularly impactful for campaigns with tight ROAS targets where concentrating spend on the most commercially responsive audience segments directly improves overall efficiency.

Compile Findings and Prioritise by ROAS Impact

The final audit step is consolidating all findings into a prioritised action list organised by the estimated ROAS impact of each change. Not all audit findings have equal commercial significance, and the optimisation work that generates the fastest and largest ROAS improvement should be prioritised over changes with smaller or more uncertain impact.

The findings most reliably associated with significant ROAS improvement when addressed are conversion tracking inaccuracies that are either understating or overstating performance, high-spend keywords with zero or very low conversion rates, search term wasted spend from inadequate negative keyword coverage, smart bidding targets misconfigured for the account's data volume, and landing pages with conversion rates significantly below the account average.

For brands managing a performance marketing program where Google Ads ROAS directly determines the channel's commercial viability, conducting a structured audit on a quarterly basis, or whenever ROAS shows a sustained decline from its historical baseline, maintains the account health that prevents the gradual accumulation of inefficiencies that quietly erode returns over time.

Final Thoughts

A Google Ads audit is not a one-time remediation exercise. It is a periodic diagnostic that reveals the specific inefficiencies that accumulate in any actively running account over time as market conditions evolve, campaign configurations drift from optimal settings, and the competitive environment introduces new challenges that the account's existing structure was not designed to address.

The accounts that sustain the strongest ROAS over time are not those launched with the best initial setup. They are those reviewed and improved most systematically, with the discipline to find and address the specific underperformance drivers that an honest audit reveals rather than the comfort of surface metrics that look adequate without revealing what is being left on the table.

Visit Foxtale Media and let's audit your Google Ads account to find exactly where your ROAS can improve.