Google Ads Audit: The Checklist to Work Through
META TITLE: Google Ads Audit Checklist for Shopify Stores
META DESCRIPTION: A Google Ads audit checklist built from Google's own documentation: change history, auto-apply, conversion settings, negatives, budgets and feeds.
SLUG: google-ads-audit
TAGS: Google Ads audit, PPC audit, Google Ads checklist, conversion tracking, negative keywords, Performance Max, Shopify ads
A Google Ads audit is a settings and measurement review of a live account. You check what the account is set to do, then check whether the numbers describing it can be trusted.
A good audit ends with a short list of changes and the evidence behind each one. A weak one ends with a score. Google's own optimization score reaches 100% when you apply or dismiss every recommendation.
Below is a Google Ads audit checklist you can work through in order. Every figure in it comes from Google's or Shopify's own documentation, and later sections name their sources where they differ.
Google Ads Audit Checklist: Start With Account Controls
Account settings decide what campaigns are allowed to do, so check them before keyword performance.
Change History Before Anything Else
Change history is, in Google's words, a list of "the changes made to your account, campaigns, and ad groups during the past 2 years." It covers "when you paused your campaign, who added a keyword, and the amounts of your previous budgets."
Start here because it dates every problem you find later. A conversion drop on the same day as an edit points you at a cause.
Check Whether Auto-Apply Recommendations Are Switched On
Google states plainly what the setting does. "When you turn on 'Automatically apply recommendations', the recommendations will apply regularly." Those recommendations can touch ads, bidding, keywords and measurement settings.
Do not assume this is off. Check it, then look at what it did: "Go to the Recommendations page within the Campaigns menu. Select Auto-apply settings, then select History tab."
For who switched it on, Change history is the place. "You can also confirm the user ID that opted into the recommendations if you go to 'Change history'."
One type has changed. Per Google's auto-apply documentation, "Starting January 26, 2026, the 'Add responsive search ads' recommendation will no longer automatically suggest or apply new responsive search ads."
Treat Optimization Score as an Estimate, Not a Grade
Optimization score is defined as "an estimate of how well your Google Ads account is set to perform." Scores run from 0 to 100%, and they grade setup, not results.
One line matters more than the definition. An account "can reach an optimization score of 100% by applying or dismissing all recommendations." Dismissing a recommendation raises the score without changing the account.
Conversion Tracking Checks for a PPC Audit
Every performance question in a PPC audit depends on the conversion setup. Check these three things before judging any campaign.
Primary Versus Secondary Conversion Actions
Only primary actions steer bidding. Secondary conversion actions "are for observation only." They report in the All conversions column "but not for bidding, even if the goal they are included in is used for bidding."
Find the purchase action and confirm it is primary. A purchase left as secondary stops guiding spend.
Conversion Counting and Conversion Windows
"Every conversion" is the default for website conversion actions, along with in-app actions, Analytics transactions, mobile number clicks and imported conversions. That is correct for sales. It is wrong for leads, where one person submitting twice is still one lead.
Windows have defaults too. Without customisation the click-through window "is 30 days" and the view-through window "is 1 day." Click windows can be set "anywhere from 1 to 30, 60, or 90 days for Search and Display campaigns depending on the conversion source."
A long buying cycle against a 30-day window can undercount sales, and that shows up later as weak ROAS.
Which Attribution Model the Account Uses
According to Google's attribution documentation, "the 'Data-driven' model is the default attribution model for most conversion actions." First click, linear, time decay and position-based models "are no longer supported by Google."
If the account's reporting habits still assume last click, the comparisons are stale. That caution also applies when you compare channels, as our Google Ads vs Facebook Ads guide explains.
Search Terms and Negative Keywords in a Google Ads Account Review
This is the part of a Google Ads account review merchants expect. Two documented limits change what you can conclude here.
Pull the Search Terms Report and Accept It Is Incomplete
Use the report "to know how your ads performed when triggered by actual searches within the Search Network," as Google puts it.
It will not reconcile to your full spend. Terms "that don't have enough query activity" are left out to "keep with our standards on data privacy." Record that gap rather than hunt for the missing rows.
Check Negative Keywords Against Their Known Limits
Negative keywords leak in two documented ways. They "don't match to close variants," so a near miss can still trigger an ad. An ad also "might still show" on searches "longer than 16 words," if the negative "follows that 16th word."
Account-level negatives cover more inventory than most people expect: Search, Performance Max, App, Shopping, Smart and Local campaigns. Each account can hold 1,000 of them.
Check the structural ceilings while you are in here:
- 10,000 negative keywords per campaign
- 5,000 keywords per negative keyword list
- 100 Performance Max campaigns per account
Campaign Settings to Check in an AdWords Audit
Search Partners and Location Targeting Defaults
"When you create a campaign for the Search Network, search partners are included by default." They stay on unless somebody turned them off.
You cannot audit those placements from data. Google "doesn't provide information detailing the website where your ad was shown on the Search Network," unless the campaign is Performance Max.
Location targeting has a similar default. It reaches people "likely to be in or regularly present in your targeted areas, as well as those who show interest" in them. Most campaigns "notice a decrease in impressions" when you tighten it.
A lift figure for this setting exists, and it is a vendor claim with narrow limits. Advertisers switching from Presence to Presence or Interest found "+5% more conversions on Search campaigns." Its footnote points to internal data for the Travel, Real Estate and Education verticals, dated 5/21/2022 to 6/1/2022. Do not read it as an ecommerce result.
Check Budget Pacing and Bid Strategy Status
A campaign spending over its daily budget is expected behaviour. On a given day it "might spend up to twice your average daily budget." What holds is the monthly cap: "no more than 30.4 times your average daily budget."
Bid strategy status tells you where the constraint sits. It flags when "many of the keywords using this strategy are Limited by budget," so bids cannot rise enough to hit the goal. Misconfigured conversions get flagged too, and removed conversion actions show as a red X.
Timing matters when you review recent edits. It "can take up to 3 weeks or 1-2 conversion cycles for the bid strategy to calibrate to the new objective."
Shopping and Performance Max Checks for Shopify Stores
Product Feed Expiry and Review Times
Two checks here, and both are date checks. Confirm the last sync date sits inside 30 days, which is Shopify's documented expiry window for synced product data. Then exclude anything synced in the last 5 business days from your performance read.
Shopify says "Google reviews new products within 3-5 business days after initial sync." Those products are still in review, so they will read as underperformance. Feed disapprovals are covered in our Google Ads for Shopify guide.
What a Free Google Ads Audit Will Not Tell You
A free Google Ads audit grades the account against platform-reported numbers. Those numbers are not causal, and no checklist step makes them causal.
Cassandra, a marketing mix modelling vendor, puts a size on the gap. It reports platform attribution and modelled outcomes differing by a factor of 2 to 5x depending on the channel. Treat that as a vendor claim, because the figure is the sales case for the software it sells.
Read it as an argument for testing, not as a target. Our guide to blended MER unpacks the gap, and the test designs sit in incrementality testing. Judge findings against your own thresholds, set with the break-even ROAS calculator.
What Agency AI and Claude Can Check for You
Agency AI has no feature called an audit. It surfaces recommendations on a trailing 7-day window, judged against a break-even ROAS you set. On both Meta and Google, each recommendation carries an Apply button, and nothing changes until you click it.
Its connector covers the performance half of this checklist, per its tool reference. Claude can pull Google campaigns with spend, revenue, ROAS and conversions, plus Performance Max asset groups. It can also read month-to-date pacing and flag unusual spend or ROAS days from the last 30 days.
The settings half stays in Google Ads. That tool list has no reader for change history, auto-apply, conversion actions, search terms or negative keywords.
Findings can turn into changes from the same chat. Claude can edit a Google campaign's name, daily budget or status. It can pause or start up to 25 campaigns at once, and rename or pause asset groups. Every write waits for your confirmation first.
One prerequisite decides whether any of this helps. Agency AI builds Performance Max from the Shopify catalog via Merchant Center, so Merchant Center must already be linked with approved products. Setup detail sits in our guide to connecting Claude to Meta and Google Ads, and pricing in our Agency AI vs Campaign Autopilot comparison.
Final Thoughts
Work the Google Ads audit checklist in order: controls, then measurement, then keywords, then settings, then the feed. Findings taken from a broken conversion setup are unreliable, so the order matters.
Write each finding with the setting name and the evidence beside it. Skip the score, and give every change time to settle before auditing it again. Cost work continues in our guides on lowering Shopify CAC and creative fatigue.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sources
Google Ads Help supplies change history, optimization score and the auto-apply wording. It also covers the History tab path and the January 26, 2026 responsive search ads change. Google's conversion documentation covers action types, counting defaults, windows and attribution.
Google's keyword documentation covers search terms, close variants, the 16-word cut-off and negative keyword caps. Its campaign documentation covers search partners, location targeting, budgets and bid strategy status.
Shopify's Google channel documentation supplies the feed expiry and review times. Cassandra's benchmarks supply the 2 to 5x gap, a vendor claim. Agency AI details come from its documentation and the connector's GitHub tool reference, checked September 14, 2026.
Free to install. Launch campaigns and pay nothing for your first 30 days.
