Audit Google Ads Account with ChatGPT

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Who will benefit from this?

In-house marketers can optimize their Google Ads account according to the latest industry-wide agreed standards and best practices.
Agency marketers can use this checklist to onboard new clients efficiently by evaluating potential clients’ Google Ads accounts and identifying new opportunities in reduced time.

How do I access it?

PPC Ads Virtual Assistant (opens in a new tab)
Google Ads Virtual Assistant (ready soon) (opens in a new tab): discover why it's not ready yet here (opens in a new tab).

Where are the best practices sourced from?

Google Ads Help Center (opens in a new tab): Google’s official documentation on how to optimize Google Ads accounts.
r/PPC (opens in a new tab): A reddit community of PPC professionals sharing their experiences and best practices.
Search Engine Land (opens in a new tab): A leading daily publication that covers all aspects of the search marketing industry.
PPC Mastery Blogs & Newsletters (opens in a new tab): Blogs and newsletters from PPC experts sharing their insights and best practices.
Solution 8 Blogs & Newsletters (opens in a new tab): Blogs and newsletters from Solution 8 sharing their best practices and advice.

Full checklist of Google Ads Account Audit by GPT

Performance

What are the following metrics last month compared with the previous period on the account level? Impressions, Cost, Clicks, CTR, CPC, Conversions, CPA, ROAS?
What are the following metrics last month compared with the previous period on the campaign level? Impressions, Cost, Clicks, CTR, CPC, Conversions, CPA, ROAS?
What are the following metrics last month compared with the previous period on the product level? Impressions, Cost, Clicks, CTR, CPC, Conversions, CPA, ROAS?

Account settings

Is this account using a final URL suffix or working tracking template?
Is auto tagging enabled?
What is the inventory type for all campaigns running on YT or Display? (Expanded, Standard, or Limited)
What sensitive content has been excluded? (Tragedy conflict, Sensitive social issues, Profanity and rough language, Sexually suggestive, or Sensational and shocking)
Is Google Merchant Center connected to Google Ads? Google Ads API (opens in a new tab) only allows Adzviser to pull the Google Merchant Center Connection status. Please manually check Google Analytics 4 and YT Channel connections.

Negative keywords & placements

Are there any placement exclusion lists on the account level? (YouTube channels, YouTube videos, Website urls, Apps, or App categories)
Are there any shared negative keywords lists? How many campaigns are using this list?

Audience

Are remarketing lists added to the account?
What is the “membership status” of all the lists? Are they set to open?
Are the sizes of remarketing lists big enough to target in the campaigns? (At least 1000 for search to serve; at least 100 for display to serve)

Conversion tracking

What conversion actions have been configured? Adzviser pulls all the active conversion actions from the account settings
Are the important conversion goals(s) set as primary (bid optimization and reporting), and less important conversion goal(s) secondary (observation)?
Are there any offline conversion tracking set up (i.e. STORE_SALE, STORE_VISIT), and have they been set up correctly?
Are the conversion goals set up with the Google Ads conversion tag or imported from Google Analytics? Best practice is to use the Google Ads conversion tag instead of the Google Analytics tag. Adzviser pulls all conversion actions as well as their types and origins.
Do the conversion goals have fixed or variable values assigned to them?
How many conversions are being counted (one or all) per click/interaction and is this correct? (for lead gen, most conversions only need to be counted once, whereas for ecom all purchase conversions should be counted)
What are the click-through, view-through conversion windows of each conversion? Are they set correctly? Do they make sense? Requires both manual and automated work.

Bidding strategies

What are the bidding strategies on the running campaigns? Based on the historical conversions, are they correctly picked? Requires further marketer’s scrutiny.
In case tROAS/tCPA is used, have the targets been adjusted to product categories and/or services, and are they aligned with the client’s efficiency goals? Requires further marketer’s scrutiny.
In case tROAS/tCPA is used, is there a max CPC cap and does the selected value make sense? Requires further marketer’s scrutiny.
Is there any Target Impression Share bidding strategy used on branded campaigns? If not, does the selected bidding strategy on branded campaigns make sense?
Are seasonality bid adjustment used and are the values up to date? Requires further marketer’s scrutiny.
Are bid adjustments used on campaigns with a manual CPC/maximize clicks bid strategy, and do that make sense? Requires further marketer’s scrutiny.
Has an ad schedule been configured? Is this up to date, and does it make sense?

Search campaigns

Is there a separate Branded Search campaign to catch branded search traffic, and have branded keywords been added to non-branded campaigns as broad match negative keywords?
Is there a logical and consistent campaign and ad group naming convention?
Do all active campaigns and ad groups contain active elements, such as ad groups for campaigns, keywords and ads for ad groups?
Are the right campaign goals selected for every Search campaign? Requires further marketer’s scrutiny.
Are the geographical targeting settings configured correctly, and how do they perform? Is the location targeting set to “Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations”?
Are the language settings configured correctly? Requires further marketer’s scrutiny.
Are [exact] and “phrase” match keywords used, and does it make sense to use them? Requires further marketer’s scrutiny.
Are there any active good performing keywords?
Is DSA being used and are all relevant pages targeted?
What are the good performing search terms and landing pages?
Is there any traffic going to irrelevant pages that shouldn’t be targeted (i.e. blogs, policy, shipping pages etc.)? Should any pages be excluded?
Are negative keywords (and keyword lists) added to DSA campaigns/ad groups?
Does the ad copy relate to the search (keyword) and is it aligned with the user’s search/buying intent? Requires further marketer’s scrutiny.
Does the ad copy contain clear, specific and appealing messaging?
Does the ad copy contain clear, specific and appealing CTAs that are aligned with the landing pages’ CTAs? Requires further marketer’s scrutiny.
Are RSAs free of pinned headlines and descriptions? If not, is this being tested actively?
Do all campaigns have a minimum of 4 active sitelinks, including descriptions and a unique final URL per sitelink?
Do all campaigns contain a minimum of 4 callout extensions?
Do all campaigns contain a minimum of 1 structured snippets extension?
Do all campaigns contain price extensions, whenever relevant?

PMax campaigns

Is there a logical campaign structure in place? If campaigns are segmented out, is it because of a need for control over budgets, bid strategies and/or targets? If not, why? Does it make sense or should campaigns be consolidated?
Do the Performance Max campaigns contain all essential and recommended elements, such as asset groups, listing groups, audience signals, assets etc. to fully and optimally utilize this campaign type?
Are the geographic targeting locations correctly configured, and if so, how do they perform?
Are the language settings correctly configured?
Is Final URL expansion being used, and if so, are all irrelevant URLs excluded?

Manual auditing

The checklist above is automated by Adzviser GPT. However, manual auditing is still required to ensure the best practices are followed and the account is optimized to its full potential. You can discover more here (opens in a new tab).

Intelligence Mode (Free)Best Practices