Action: Every account should be audited at least quarterly, by someone other than the person running it.

Goal: List insights, recommended actions and expected business impact.
 

Step 1: Start by looking at a high-level overview of the account

• Date range
  • Think about what date range should be used for the audit
     
  • Look for consistent data over time. Don’t include periods that contain vastly different types of data. Find consistent recent data covering six months to a year.
     

• Conversions

  • What’s being tracked and what is the measure of success?
     
  • Are macro and micro conversions being used? Macro examples include a lead-gen form being filled out or the sale of a product. Micro examples include a site visitor who looked at more than five pages.
     
  • Is this AdWords account using ‘conv’ and ‘all conv’ well?
     
  • Are values being used well?
     
  • Which metric is used to judge success?
     
  • Which attribution models are being used?
     

• Goals

  • What does winning look like? What is the measure of success?
     
  • How does this relate to the business itself? What the business goals?
     
  • What’s the revenue model of the business? These can depend on the sales cycle and the type of business.
     
  • What’s the breakeven amount? Is there enough wiggle room to improve profit by allowing the cost per sale to be higher?
     

• Structure

  • What campaign types are/are not being used? (search, display, video, shopping, DSA, call only)
     
  • Does the naming convention make sense?
     
  • Why are multiple campaigns being used?
     
  • Which search networks are being used?
     
  • What’s the 80/20 of campaigns? Which are the top 1 or 2 campaigns to focus on?
     

• Settings

  • What campaign settings are being used?
     
  • Are there bidding strategies being used?
     
  • which ad delivery options are being used? Standard or accelerated?
     
  • Which ad rotation options are being used? Are ads being rotated and split tested properly?
     
  • Is there tracking being used?
     

• Automation

  • Are AdWords scripts being used?
     
  • Are auto-rules being used?
     
  • Are external tools like Optmyzr or PPC Samurai being used to help make decisions and make changes at scale?
     

• Labels

  • Are labels being used inside the account? Are they being used well? Is a sensible naming structure in place?
     

• Account level

  • Is the business using any kind of data feeds? Examples include dynamic remarketing and customised ads.
     
  • Do they have negative keyword lists being applied to individual ad groups or campaigns?
     
  • Are placement exclusion lists being used?
     
  • Is account-wide URL tracking being used?

Step 2: Segment the data – dig a little deeper

• Impression Share
  • What’s the overall feel of the potential of the account?
     
  • Is it constrained by budget or ad rank?
     
  • Are there quick wins to be had? If something is being constrained by budget and it’s profitable then remove the budget constraint if possible.
     
• Top v Other
  • Where do the ads show – top of the page or other (bottom)? Is there potential to increase average position?
     
  • Segment the data by a device using Excel or a similar app. What does top v another look like by device?
     
  • Chart the ratio of top v other to understand what’s trending and what’s changed over time.
     
• Devices
  • Which devices are ads being shown on? Which campaigns are running on which device?
     
  • What’s the performance difference between the different devices?
     
  • Are bid adjustments being used?
     
  • Are there quick wins by bidding devices up or down, even at just a campaign level?
     
• Networks
  • Are search campaigns separate from display campaigns?
     
  • Is the Search Partner Network being used? If so, on which campaigns?
     
  • Are there any quick wins to be had? Examples include turning partners on or off.
     
• Geography
  • Which locations are performing particularly well, or are performing badly?
     
  • Are they being bid differently? Is Bid adj. being used?
     
  • Are any locations excluded?
     
  • Check if there’s a big difference between where the user is vs what they’re searching for.
     
  • Are there quick wins to be had by changing bids?
     
• Time
  • Look for seasonal patterns across multiple years or across the last 12 months.
     
  • Are there patterns in ‘day of week’ or ‘hour of day’? Does traffic get very expensive at certain times of the day?
     
  • Are these insights being used to bid differently?
     
  • Do some days/hours need to be bid up or down?
     
• Experiments
  • Are regular campaign experiments being used and being used well?

Step 3: Get granular – delve into the nitty-gritty of AdWords

• Brand
  • Are there brand campaigns set up? Are brand keywords being bid on? Are they being bid on properly?
     
  • Are those brand keywords being bid on in separate campaigns?
     
  • Do brand campaigns have great impression share and very high positions?
     
• Ad Groups
  • What structure is being used? For example, Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs) - one keyword per ad group.
     
  • Follow the money. What are the top ad groups by cost? Where are most of the money being spent?
     
  • What's the range of keywords in those top groups?
     
  • Are there big differences in Cost Per Action or Conversion Rate or ROAS?
     
  • Use a pivot table in Excel to work out how many ad groups there are per campaign. This will give you a high-level overview.
     
• Keywords
  • How many keywords are there in general?
     
  • How are they distributed throughout the account? How many keywords are there per ad group?
     
  • Which match types are being used? Does this account have lots of broad keywords, or mainly exact keywords, or a mixture?
     
  • What’s the relative performance of those different match types?
     
  • What are the top 1-5% of keywords? What are they and how are they performing?
     
  • Are there big differences in the main measures of success – CPA & CR%?
     
• Negative Keywords
  • Are negative keywords being used well?
     
  • Are negative keyword lists being used?
     
  • How often are negative keywords being added?
     
  • Are there easy wins to be had by adding more negative keywords?
     
• Search Queries
  • How closely do search queries match the keywords? Are ads being shown for something completely different than the account owner was expecting? If so, that could be a problem.
     
  • Are there search queries that could be added as positive keywords as well as negative keywords?
     
  • Are new search queries being discovered over time?
     
• Quality Score
  • How many keywords are there with impressions for each quality score? Chart the quality scores for all keywords with impressions to understand the overall quality of the account.
     
  • Roll that up into one big number to see the quality score weighted by impressions.
     
  • What’s the history of the quality score?
     
  • What components of the quality score are consistently below average? This gives you a clue about what needs to be worked on the most to improve the quality score.
     
• Ad Copy
  • Are ads being tested, or are they being split tested?
     
  • Are big differences being tested?
     
  • Overall, how many ads are there per group?
     
  • What type of ads is being used? Legacy ads should not be used unless their performance is really good.
     
  • Are headlines (1 & 2) being tested?
     
  • Are paths being tested?
     
• Extensions
  • Check that all or some of these ad extensions are being used:
    • Expanded site links
    • Callouts
    • Structured Snippets
    • Price extensions
    • Message extensions
    • Review extensions
    • Location extensions
    • Call extensions
    • Auto extensions
  • Every account should at least have expanded, callouts, structured snippets and price extensions (where applicable).
     
• Final URLs
  • Which pages on the website are the ads pointing to? Is the homepage being used too often?
     
  • Is there a wide range of landing pages?
     
  • Does that list look sensible? Are there big differences in the landing pages, or could some be combined?
     
  • Is UTM tracking being used and are they being added to the URLs in a consistent manner?
     
  • Visit the landing pages and audit those too (if time allows).
     
• Audiences
  • Are remarketing lists (RSLA) being used?
     
  • Are they used at campaign level or an ad group level?
     
  • Are demographic bids for search ads being used? If not, could they be?
     
• Shopping
  • Are shopping campaigns being used?
     
  • What’s the ROAS/CPA relative to the other campaigns?
     
  • What shopping platform is the site built on?
     
  • How many different shopping campaigns are being used?
     
  • Are the campaign priorities being well used?
     
• Dynamic Search Ads
  • Audit the DSA campaigns. Are they being used?
     
  • What do auto targets look like?
     
• Call Only
  • Audit the Call Only campaigns. Are they being used?
     
  • Are they working well?
     
  • Are they set up well?
     
• Display Network
  • Which targeting methods are being used?
     
  • Can you map campaigns? Use the free tool at TheDisplayGrid.com to help you think about ways that you can target your display ads.
     
  • Are there placements that could be excluded?
     
  • Are ads running on mobile apps?
     
  • Are bid adjustments being used?
     
  • Are placement exclusions or exclusion lists being used?
     
  • Are category exclusions being used well?
     
  • Is there a lot of testing being done between text ads and image ads?
     
  • Are responsive ads being tested?
     
  • Are Frequency Caps applied to the various campaigns?
     
  • Are Smart Display Campaigns being used?
     
• Remarketing 
  • Are multiple RM lists being created?
     
  • Are multiple durations being used?
     
• YouTube
  • Are YouTube campaigns being used? If not, it can be a missed opportunity.
     
  • What’s the performance like relative to others?
     
  • What’s the goal of these campaigns?
     
  • If YouTube is being used, are remarketing lists being built?
     
• Analytics (this is not a full GA audit)
  • Is there a view for raw data?
     
  • Are filters being used?
     
  • If it’s a retail site, is enhanced ecomm being used?
     
  • Is the currency set correctly?
     
  • Is the right time zone being used on Analytics and AdWords?
     
  • Is site search turned on?
     
  • Are display features enabled?
     
  • Are Analytics and AdWords linked so that data flows properly between the two?
     
  • Are goals well set up (if micro conversions need to be tracked)?
     
  • Are all appropriate goals being imported into AdWords properly?
     
  • Are goal values used well?
     
  • Are events bring tracked well? Are those events being turned into goals?
     
  • Are Analytics remarketing audiences being created?
     
  • If so, are these Analytics remarketing audiences being imported and used in AdWords?