Google Ads Audit across Lincolnshire

What a proper Google Ads audit actually involves

Most so-called audits are automated reports with a logo on them. They flag issues the platform’s own interface already shows you, make vague recommendations, and end with a pitch to take over your account.

A proper audit is different. It’s a senior specialist going through your account with real scrutiny — looking at campaign structure, keyword lists, match types, negative coverage, bid strategies, ad copy, landing pages, and conversion tracking. Cross-referencing what the account is set up to do with what it’s actually doing.

I’m Stevie Morris. Twelve years in Google Ads, £2M+ in spend managed directly, Google Partner and Microsoft Ads certified. I’ve audited accounts managed by freelancers, agencies, and business owners. The same problems come up repeatedly — and they tend to cost more than people expect.

What the audit covers

• Campaign and ad group structure — is the account organised in a way that gives the algorithm clear signals, or is budget and Quality Score being diluted?
• Keyword strategy and match types — what are you actually matching against? Are broad match keywords spending on irrelevant queries?
• Negative keyword coverage — missing negatives are one of the most common sources of wasted spend. We check what’s there and what should be.
• Bidding strategies — are your bid strategies aligned with your conversion data? Smart Bidding without clean data is just automated waste.
• Ad copy and extensions — are your ads differentiated, does your copy match intent, are all available extensions in use?
• Landing page alignment — do your ads and landing pages speak to the same thing? Misalignment kills conversion rates and Quality Score.
• Conversion tracking — are you measuring the right events, are they firing correctly, is there duplication or attribution confusion?
• Search term analysis — what is your budget actually being spent on? This alone often reveals significant wasted spend.

Why Lincolnshire businesses get audits done

The most common trigger is a nagging feeling that performance has plateaued or declined and nobody can explain why. Sometimes it’s a new owner inheriting an account they didn’t build and don’t fully trust. Sometimes it’s a business that’s grown significantly and suspects the account structure hasn’t kept pace.

Across Lincolnshire — whether you’re a trades business in Lincoln, an ecommerce brand based in Grantham or Spalding, or a services company covering the county and into Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire — the underlying problems tend to be the same: keyword sprawl, inadequate negatives, bid strategies running on bad conversion data, and tracking that isn’t measuring what the business actually needs it to measure.

An audit surfaces all of that in one place, with a clear priority order for fixing it.

How the audit process works

1. Enquiry callWe talk through your account, your situation, and what’s prompting you to get an audit. This helps scope the work correctly and makes sure the audit focuses on what matters most to your business.
2. Account accessYou grant read-only access to your Google Ads account and, where relevant, Google Analytics and Tag Manager. We never need edit access to conduct the audit.
3. Audit and analysisWe go through the account systematically — structure, keywords, bids, copy, tracking, search terms. Everything gets looked at by a senior specialist, not an automated tool.
4. Findings and recommendationsYou receive a clear written report covering what we found, what it’s costing you, and what we’d recommend fixing and in what order. We walk through it with you on a call.

Tracking problems are more common than most businesses realise

Conversion tracking is where a large proportion of audit findings live. Businesses assume that because they set up tracking once, it’s working correctly. In practice, tracking breaks silently — website changes, tag conflicts, attribution model mismatches, duplicate conversions all create data that looks fine on the surface but is misleading underneath.

If your Smart Bidding strategies are optimising toward bad conversion data, every optimisation is making the problem worse, not better. An audit that catches a tracking issue before you scale spend is significantly more valuable than one that catches it afterwards.

This is especially relevant for Lincolnshire businesses investing in Google Ads to drive local enquiries or online sales — the tracking foundation has to be right before the platform’s automation can work in your favour.