Google Ads Audit across Devon

What a Google Ads audit actually involves

An audit is a structured review of your Google Ads account with one goal: find what’s costing you money that it shouldn’t be. That means looking at your campaign structure, your bidding, your targeting, your ad copy, your conversion tracking and your search terms — and giving you a clear, prioritised report of what to fix and why.

It’s not a sales document dressed up as an analysis. If your account is well-run, I’ll tell you that. If it has significant problems, you’ll get an honest breakdown of what they are and what fixing them is likely to achieve — without inventing numbers I can’t back up.

I’ve reviewed accounts across 12 years of Google Ads and managed £2M+ in ad spend directly. An audit draws on that experience to give you a faster, more accurate read on your account than most businesses can do internally.

What the audit covers

• Conversion tracking — Is your tracking recording the right events? Is it double-counting? If the data going into Google’s algorithm is wrong, every bid decision is wrong. This gets checked first.
• Campaign structure — Are your campaigns and ad groups set up in a way that gives Google’s bidding system the right signals? Poor structure is one of the most common causes of underperformance.
• Search terms and negative keywords — What searches are actually triggering your ads? Irrelevant traffic burns budget. We look at where your spend is going and what’s missing from your negative keyword list.
• Bid strategies and targets — Are your Smart Bidding strategies set with realistic targets? Overly aggressive targets starve the algorithm; targets that are too loose destroy profitability.
• Ad copy and extensions — Are your ads making the most of the available real estate? Are they saying something meaningful or just filling space?
• Budget allocation — Is your budget distributed across campaigns in proportion to their likely return? Budget inefficiencies are often invisible without a structured review.
• Quality Score and landing pages — A mismatch between ad copy and landing page content raises costs and lowers conversion rates. We flag the worst offenders.

How the audit process works

1. Initial callWe discuss what you’re spending, what results you’re seeing and what specifically you’re unsure about. This shapes the focus of the audit.
2. Account accessYou grant read-only access to your Google Ads account (and Google Analytics if applicable). No changes are made at this stage — this is a diagnostic only.
3. Audit and analysisI work through the account systematically — tracking, structure, targeting, copy, bids and data quality. Issues are documented with context, not just flagged.
4. Debrief sessionWe walk through the findings together. You can ask questions, challenge anything that doesn’t make sense and get clear on the priorities. You leave with the written report.
5. No obligationThe audit is a standalone piece of work. There’s no pressure to move to management or commit to anything further. If you want to continue working together after, we can discuss it — but it’s not assumed.

Who should get a PPC audit?

An audit is the right starting point if you’re spending on Google Ads but not confident the money is working. That’s a common situation — businesses in Devon and across England are often running accounts that were set up years ago, inherited from a previous agency or built by someone who’s since left. The account looks active but nobody’s really looked at it properly in a while.

It’s also worth doing before scaling. If you’re planning to increase your Google Ads budget, an audit first tells you whether the foundations will hold the extra spend — or whether you’d just be pouring more money into a leaky bucket.

Ecommerce businesses and home services trades in Devon make up a significant portion of the accounts I audit. Both have common failure patterns that show up repeatedly — and that are fixable once identified.

Common issues found in Devon business accounts

• Broken or missing conversion tracking — More common than most businesses realise. If Google can’t see your conversions, it can’t optimise for them.
• Broad match keywords with no negative strategy — Broad match without tight negative keyword management bleeds budget to irrelevant searches across the whole county and beyond.
• Single ad groups with too many keywords — Bundling unrelated keywords together means your ad copy can’t be relevant to all of them, which hurts Quality Score and conversion rates.
• Smart Bidding targets set unrealistically — Target ROAS or target CPA set too aggressively can throttle delivery entirely. Too loose and profitability collapses.
• No landing page alignment — Ads pointing to a generic homepage when a specific service page would convert far better — particularly common for trades businesses covering multiple Devon locations.