Google Ads Audit for Contractors

Your Google Ads report says the account produced nineteen conversions. The office remembers five real calls, two were for work you do not offer, and nobody can explain the gap without opening three dashboards. That is a good reason to ask for a second opinion.

Your Google Ads audit should narrow one business decision. It should tell you what the available evidence supports changing, what deserves a closer look, and what I would leave alone. It should not hand you a dramatic score, call every setting an emergency, or pretend that one look at the account can guarantee the next month of work.

Start with the decision you are trying to make

If you are considering a switch, you need a different review from the owner whose campaign simply stopped producing calls. One question is about continuity and control. The other is about serving, traffic, measurement, the page, the phone, or the market.

The useful opening question is not “Can you audit my account?” It is “What do I need this review to help me decide?”

You may be trying to decide whether to stay with the current agency, whether a reported lead problem is real, whether tracking can be trusted, whether the account is buying the right local demand, or whether paid search is even the current constraint. I can shape the review around that decision without pretending every account needs the same investigation.

If you are still judging the person or company running the account, the guide to checking whether your Google Ads agency is doing a good job gives you useful outside checks. This page covers the account-specific review I can do for you.

Access changes what an audit can honestly prove

A useful review can begin before you grant account access. Public ads, the destination page, the visible offer, current competitors, your own call experience, and the reports you have received can expose a real mismatch. They cannot reveal the full search-term history, campaign settings, conversion configuration, account change history, or which goals bidding is using.

That makes public evidence a valid starting point, not a substitute for the account.

An outside review can answer a bounded question

If you have no access yet, I can still look at the customer path and the evidence you already possess. That can be enough for a simpler account and a narrow decision. It may show that the ad promise and the landing page disagree, that a form does not work on mobile, or that the report is counting something your office does not recognize.

I will also tell you what I cannot see. A display URL does not prove the final landing page. A public ad does not reveal the keyword or search term that triggered it. A screenshot of a conversion total does not establish what Google counted.

Read-only access supports a deeper account review

Google lets an account owner grant different permissions, and its access-level documentation shows that read-only users can view campaigns and reports but cannot edit campaigns. That lets me inspect the account without authorizing a change.

With the account available, I can compare the public story with the structure underneath it. I can look at which services and areas the campaigns are trying to reach, what the account calls a conversion, what search demand appears in the available report, and what changed over time. Google's change history and search terms report are evidence surfaces, but neither tells the whole business story on its own.

The review path can therefore vary. A straightforward outside finding may fit one conversation. A more complex account may need a first call to settle the question and access, time for me to inspect the evidence, and a second conversation to walk through what I found. I will set that expectation before asking you to do anything.

What I am looking to reconcile

I do not begin by hunting for a long list of mistakes. I begin with the places where the account and the business can disagree.

The demand the account is buying

The campaigns may be reaching the wrong service, the wrong area, or a version of the job your crew does not want. They may also be reaching exactly the right people while demand is temporarily thin. Those are different problems with different next moves.

The distinction matters because a quiet calendar does not automatically prove that targeting is broken. A real audit separates what the account bought from what the market offered and from what happened after contact.

What the account calls a conversion

Google Ads uses conversion goals to tell its bidding systems which actions matter. Google's current conversion-goal documentation explains that campaigns can use account-default or campaign-specific goals. A conversion total can therefore include calls, forms, imported outcomes, or actions that no longer match the business decision.

I compare that definition with the calls and forms your office actually recognizes. The conversion-tracking guide explains the mechanics in more depth. The audit question is simpler: do the reported actions resemble the customer contacts you believe you received?

The path from click to conversation

The ad can buy a relevant visit and still lose the person on a vague page, a broken form, a hidden phone number, or an after-hours call that nobody returns. That is not an excuse to blame the website for every bad campaign. It is a reason to inspect the entire customer path before declaring that the platform, the agency, or the market failed.

The report versus the business outcome

A report may be technically accurate while answering the wrong question. Cost per conversion is not cost per booked job. A phone call is not automatically qualified work. A contact can be useful even if it did not close on the first conversation.

The plain-English Google Ads reporting guide helps you read the recurring report. In an audit, I use those numbers to locate the disagreement, then I keep the conclusion as narrow as the evidence allows.

A finding needs evidence, consequence, and a next decision

“Your Optimization Score is low” is not a useful finding by itself. Neither is “your competitors are aggressive” or “the account needs restructuring.” Each statement may be true, but none tells you why it matters to your business.

A useful finding names what was observed, what that observation can affect, how confident I am, and which choice it changes. It may sound like this: the campaign reports calls as primary conversions, but the office records fewer real conversations, so bidding may be learning from a broader action than the business intends. The next step is to reconcile those records before changing bids.

That is different from turning the account into a red-flag theatre production. Some settings are simply old. Some structures are unusual but functional. Some recommendations would create disruption without solving the owner's problem.

I will tell you what I would leave alone. Restraint is part of the audit.

The priority also has to match the cost of acting. A mislabeled report column may be annoying but harmless. A conversion goal teaching the account to chase the wrong action can change which auctions it enters. A service-area mismatch can spend money outside the crew's practical reach. A handoff that leaves the business without direct access can turn a routine agency change into a continuity problem.

Those are not equal findings. I rank them by the decision they affect, the evidence behind them, and the downside of waiting. That gives you a short list you can discuss instead of a wall of warnings designed to make every setting sound urgent.

What you leave with depends on the review

The useful output is a clear decision, not a particular file format.

For a smaller external review, that may be a live walkthrough of the public findings and a short explanation of what can be checked next. For a fuller internal review, it can include a shareable summary of the account evidence and the priority issues discussed. I do not promise the same PDF, page count, or presentation for every business because the question and the available evidence are not the same.

You should leave knowing four things:

1. What I could verify.
2. What is still an inference or an open question.
3. What deserves attention first.
4. What I would not change yet.

You should also know who owns the next action. Some findings belong with the current manager because they need an explanation or a correction inside the account. Some belong with the office because the advertising record cannot establish what happened to a call. Some belong with you because they change the service, area, or capacity the business wants to advertise. A useful review does not push every problem back into Google Ads merely because that is where the review began.

If I believe a question cannot be answered from the available material, I will say what additional evidence would resolve it. That may be read-only account access, a matching period from the phone system, a list of the services the office actually accepted, or simply more time for a new campaign to collect meaningful activity. “Not proven yet” is a more useful answer than false precision.

If the evidence points toward a handoff, the guide to Google Ads account ownership and switching agencies explains the continuity decisions that matter. Direct business control of the account comes before a clean transition.

What a Google Ads audit cannot promise

An audit cannot guarantee a future cost per lead, a certain number of calls, an immediate recovery, or a finding of agency wrongdoing. It cannot establish what happened inside a CRM or phone system I cannot inspect. It cannot make a seasonal market produce demand that is not there.

It also does not authorize implementation. If you hire me for broader management after the review, I will agree that scope with you separately. If you keep the current agency, you can use the findings to ask better questions. If paid search is not the binding problem, the honest answer may be to fix something else first.

The review is not a certification of the business, the agency, the landing page, or the tracking stack. It is a decision aid built from the evidence that can be checked. A clean finding today does not mean a setting cannot drift later, a phone route cannot break, or the market cannot change. Account management is ongoing precisely because those surfaces move.

It is also possible for two explanations to remain plausible. For example, relevant clicks and a quiet phone can point toward the page, the offer, weak local demand, a tracking gap, or a phone-response problem. If the available evidence does not separate them, the right next step is a bounded check that does, not a confident story.

The decision can be to stay put. That is still a useful audit.

Book the review around one real question

Bring the problem in the words you use inside the business: the phone is quiet, the dashboard and the office disagree, the account changed hands, the leads are wrong, or the current manager cannot explain what happened.

I will tell you which review path fits and what access, if any, would make the answer more reliable. Then I will inspect the evidence, explain the limits, and help you decide what deserves attention first.