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Check your own Google Ads account in 30 minutes: seven settings, in the order we open them

Where your ads are allowed to show, what Google counts as a lead, which bid adjustments do nothing, and who can lock you out. Each check sits on a screen Google documents, under the name Google gives it.

By Lonta AIPublished Updated 12 min readHow we write

TL;DR

  • This Google Ads audit checklist has seven settings: location options, where the clicks came from, what counts as a conversion, bid adjustments under automated bidding, the ad schedule, the search terms report, and who holds Admin access. With the account open they take about 30 minutes, and each one is documented on a Google Ads Help page linked below.
  • By default your ads also show to people outside your area who have "shown interest" in it. For a company that drives to the customer, the option to look for is "Presence".
  • Google now turns call recording on by default, unless you turned it off before, and where both numbers are in the US or Canada it counts only the calls its AI judges qualified. Your minimum call length applies only when a call can't be recorded.
  • If a campaign bids with Maximize conversions or Target CPA, its location and time-of-day bid adjustments are not used. Hours switched off in the ad schedule still stay off.
  • An agency manager account marked as "Owner" can remove users from your own account. Check that your own email has Admin access.

What this Google Ads audit checklist looks for

The report an agency sends shows what the account measures. An audit looks at the settings behind that report: who may see the ads, what Google counts as a lead, and which changes are in use. Read-only access is enough to view all of it (access levels); fixing check 7 needs Admin.

1. Who is allowed to see the ads: Location options (3 minutes)

Where: Campaigns → the Settings tab → expand Locations → Location options.

Unless someone changed it, the option reads "People in, regularly in, or who've shown interest in your included locations (recommended)". The alternative reads "Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations". Both labels are from Google's page on preventing clicks outside your targeted locations.

Google's page on targeting geographic locations lists what counts as "interest": location terms in the search, past searches, "A person's past physical locations" and searches on Google Maps.

Google's advanced location options page recommends the default, citing its own data from travel, real estate and education advertisers. Our reading: those are businesses whose customers often search from somewhere else. The same page says to consider "Presence" when "You only want to target users in specific locations and not users who may be in other locations but are still interested in your product or service". That describes a contractor: a furnace repair happens at one address.

Write down: which option each campaign uses. Google warns that "Most campaigns will notice a decrease in impressions when switching away from the default targeting option." The exceptions, and how to draw the area itself, are in matching your ad area to your drive time.

2. Where the clicks came from: Matched locations (5 minutes)

Where: Campaigns → Insights & reports → When and where your ads showed → the Matched locations tab.

Google's page on this report says it shows performance "based on the locations that matched your ads. These locations could be users' physical locations or locations of interest." In the US it goes down to the postal code, per Google's page on measuring geographic performance.

Set the range to the last 90 days and sort by cost. For the top twenty places, get directions from your shop in Google Maps with "Depart at" set to a weekday at 4pm, so Maps estimates the route with traffic. Mark each place as a drive your techs make for a service call, or one they don't.

Google may also show ads in "nearby, closely related areas that normally couldn't be targeted", such as the suburbs of a targeted city (About targeting geographic locations). If you run two shops, look hardest at the places between them: where the two areas overlap, that ground is targeted twice.

1st Choice Plumbing, Air & Insulation · Phoenix, AZRead the case
−48%
Spend outside either service area
Window
Two quarters against the two before
Source
Google Ads

1st Choice Plumbing, Air & Insulation, Phoenix and Prescott. Two shops about a hundred miles apart, and combined targeting that covered a good part of the I-17 between them, nearly an hour from either shop. Then every contested area was assigned to one shop by drive time. Spend outside either service area: −48%. Window: Two quarters against the two before. Source: Google Ads.

Limit: cutting the corridor between the shops improved the cost per booked visit and also removed customers. We have not shown that the corridor is unprofitable at every budget, only that it was the worst use of this one.

Write down: the share of cost that went to places you wouldn't dispatch a truck to.

3. What counts as a lead: the conversions Summary (6 minutes)

Where: Goals → Conversions → Summary.

Which actions are Primary? Primary actions "are reported in the 'Conversions' column in your reports and used for bidding as long as the standard goal they are part of is used for bidding"; secondary ones are "for observation only" (primary and secondary conversion actions). So the bidding chases the Primary actions in the goals a campaign uses, plus the actions in a custom goal, which Google says are used for bidding "regardless of whether they're set as 'primary' or 'secondary' actions." After call reporting is on, "Calls from ads" is "automatically included in your 'Conversions' column" (Measure calls from ads).

Is a tap counted as a call? Two of the five call conversion types in Google's phone call conversion tracking page never see a call. For clicks on a number on your mobile website, "we can only track these clicks, not the phone calls themselves". Clicks on call ads and assets without a forwarding number count "based on Google's estimation of whether a meaningful phone call occurred". If either is Primary, the account is bidding for taps.

Who decides which call counts? Call recording "is now turned on by default" unless you turned it off before, and "Only qualified calls will count as conversions", judged by Google's AI (AI-qualified call leads). Recording works only when both numbers are in the US or Canada; otherwise your minimum call length decides. Find it under Goals → Summary → "Phone call leads" → "AI-qualified call leads" → Edit → "Lead qualification". The recording switch is Admin → Account settings → "Call ads" → "Call recording".

Write down: every Primary action and what it counts. None of them is a sold job. Counting only calls that sold takes an import from your CRM, which Google supports as "Import call conversions"; why cost per lead is the wrong number explains what that changes.

4. Bid adjustments that aren't being used (3 minutes)

Where: the campaign's bid strategy in its settings. Then Campaigns → Locations and Campaigns → Ad schedule, the "Bid adjustments" column.

With Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions or Maximize conversion value, Google's page About bid adjustments says: "If you make a manual bid adjustment to your automated Smart Bidding strategy, it won't be supported." That includes location and time-of-day adjustments. What still works: "While Smart Bidding strategies don't use your manual bid adjustments (for example, +20% on Saturdays), they do respect your Ad Schedule settings." Targeting and exclusions still apply too.

Write down: every campaign on those four strategies that still carries location or schedule adjustments. The campaign isn't broken, but a report that credits a late-evening bid cut for a result is crediting a setting the campaign doesn't use.

5. The hours you pay for: Ad schedule (5 minutes)

Where: Campaigns → Ad schedule. Switch the chart from "Clicks" to cost and open the "Hour" subtab (Set up an ad schedule).

Campaigns run "All day" unless someone set a schedule (About Ad Scheduling). Put three things side by side: cost by hour from this screen, calls by hour from your phone system, and the hours when someone who can book a job actually answers.

  • The clock is the account's. Ad schedules "are set based on your account's time zone", which "is permanently set when you set up your account" (time zone settings). An account opened in another time zone shifts every hour on the schedule.
  • Days off don't shrink the month. "When using ad schedules, your campaigns pace toward a monthly spend of 30.4 times your average daily budget, regardless of how many days your campaign is active in a given month." Turn off Sundays and the other six days carry Sunday's share.
Barbosa Plumbing & Air Conditioning · Dallas, TXRead the case
+22 points
Spend landing in answered hours
Window
120 days against the 120 before
Source
Google Ads

Barbosa Plumbing & Air Conditioning, Dallas. Calls peaked from about half past five to nine in the evening, and the daily budget was mostly spent by mid-afternoon. Moving money into the evening did less than it should have, because some evening calls rolled to an after-hours service that couldn't book a visit. Then the office confirmed which hours were covered, and only those were bought. Spend landing in answered hours: +22 points. Window: 120 days against the 120 before. Source: Google Ads.

Limit: the biggest single change was staffing coverage, which is the client's doing and not ours. We found it; they fixed it.

Write down: the hours you pay for when nobody can book the job.

6. What people actually typed: Search terms (5 minutes)

Where: Campaigns → Insights and reports → Search terms.

Keywords are what the account bids on. Search terms are what people typed. Google's page on the report calls it a list of terms "that a significant number of people have used" and says "Some search terms that don't have enough query activity are omitted". What you see is part of the spend, not all of it. The "Keyword" column, which shows which of your keywords matched, "doesn't show by default"; add it with the columns icon.

Sort the last 90 days by cost and read the top of the list. In the accounts we have taken over, three kinds keep coming back: homeowners fixing it themselves ("how to reset ac breaker"), techs looking for work ("hvac jobs tampa"), and shoppers pricing a product ("portable air conditioner"). Google's advice for these: "If a search term isn't relevant enough to the products or services you offer, add it as a negative keyword."

Reeis Air Conditioning, Plumbing & Electrical · Phoenix, AZRead the case
−29%
Spend on terms that never called
Window
90 days against the 90 before
Source
Google Ads

Reeis Air Conditioning, Plumbing & Electrical, Phoenix. Electrical had been added to an account built for air conditioning, and it bought urgent repairs, planned work and do-it-yourself searches at one bid. Then the diagnostic searches came out and electrical got its own campaign. Spend on terms that never called: −29%. Window: 90 days against the 90 before. Source: Google Ads.

Limit: cutting the diagnostic searches removes future customers as well as non-customers. We accepted that trade at this budget and it would be the wrong trade at a much larger one.

Write down: the ten most expensive terms you wouldn't want your CSRs answering. If you also do electrical work, which electrical searches to split out or block is covered separately.

7. Who can lock you out: Access and security (3 minutes)

Where: Admin → Access and security. The "Access level" column lists every user (Manage access). The Managers tab along the top lists linked manager accounts, with an "Owner" column (ownership of client accounts).

There are five access levels: Email-only, Billing, Read-only, Standard and Admin. Only Admin "Can give account access, change access levels, and cancel invitations from other users" and "Can unlink manager accounts".

A manager account is how an agency connects to yours. Per the same ownership page, "If a manager creates a new account, the manager will automatically become the owner of that account", and admins on the owner manager can "Remove users from the client account". What you keep, as long as someone at your company still has Admin: users of your account "can always unlink a manager with ownership." Before you unlink one, read the checklist for leaving your agency.

Write down: your own email with Admin, a second Admin from your company, and which manager, if any, is marked as Owner. The full ownership check covers six more systems, from tracking numbers to the domain.

What this doesn't cover

  • Whether a call became a sold job. Google Ads sees the call, not the ticket. Closing that gap takes a CRM import and more than 30 minutes.
  • Performance Max and Local Services Ads. The screens above are for Search campaigns. Google says existing Local Services Ads campaigns "will be automatically migrated to a specialized Performance Max campaign type" (Google Ads Help); what that changes is covered separately.
  • Whether recording calls is allowed where you work. Google turns recording on by default and says its use "is governed by the Call Ads Supplemental Terms". State recording law is a question for your attorney.

Do this in your account

The one-screen version, for you or your office manager, with the account open:

  1. Settings → Locations → Location options. Note which option each campaign uses.
  2. Insights & reports → When and where your ads showed → Matched locations. Last 90 days by cost. Mark every place you wouldn't send a truck to.
  3. Goals → Conversions → Summary. List every Primary action and what it counts. Flag any that count taps on a number instead of calls.
  4. Bid strategy and the "Bid adjustments" column. Note location or schedule adjustments on campaigns using the four strategies in check 4.
  5. Ad schedule → Hour, by cost. Lay it next to your call log and the hours someone can book.
  6. Insights and reports → Search terms. Last 90 days by cost. List the terms your CSRs shouldn't have to answer.
  7. Admin → Access and security. Confirm two Admins from your company, then check the Owner column on the Managers tab.

FAQ

How do I audit my own Google Ads account? Open the seven screens in the checklist above and write down what each one shows; it takes about 30 minutes and no software.

Do bid adjustments work with Maximize conversions? Location and ad schedule adjustments don't. Google says a manual bid adjustment on a Smart Bidding strategy "won't be supported". The ad schedule itself and location exclusions still apply.

What call length should count as a conversion? None of the Google pages cited here gives a number. Find the shortest call in your own phone system that still booked a visit, and set the threshold near it.

How often should I run this? Checks 1, 3, 4 and 7 change only when someone changes them or Google changes a default, as it did with call recording: run them now and whenever someone new gets access. Read matched locations and search terms monthly.

Sources

All read in full on September 24, 2026. Every quotation above is from these pages.

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