Going through an Adwords account is itself a vast task. Often we get confused about a lot of things. On top of that when doing the AdWords account audit, you really do not know the purpose of the campaigns, their structure, cost per lead, etc. You just have to hypothesize things and then start working on that.
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That’s why I am here with a sample Adwords audit report that you can refer to for auditing an AdWords account. Before you proceed further, you should also read Google ads account scoring by Google. It will give you a further in-depth idea of how Google sees your ads account.
Though this guide is mostly for the search & the display campaigns. But apart from that, I have divided the whole auditing process into six main categories.
- Account Level Audit
- Search Campaigns Audit
- Display Campaigns Audit
- Adgroups Audit
- Ads copies audit and,
- keywords audit
Apart from that, you can also include other peripheral audits such as landing page audit, website load time audit, display ads tone and brand persona audit etc. Well, those are also a part of digital marketing and can be added to. Nonetheless, I just wanted to focus on an AdWords account so this audit.
Note:- If you are looking for the Adwords Audit sample template, scroll to the bottom of the post.

Screenshot of the AdWords Account audit report
Each of these audit categories is divided into sub-categories and each of the sub-categories has a set of questions. I am going to list down all the categories, sub-categories and questions for each of them.
Page Contents
Adwords Account level audit
Tracking & linked accounts
- Conversion tracking code working properly?
- Remarketing tracking working properly?
- Adwords connected to Google Analytics?
- Google Analytics connected to search console?
- Is no wrong conversion being tracked?
- Is no redundant conversion being tracked?
- Campaign a/b testing setup?
- There is no Internal competition
Overall Branding
- Any branding campaign running?
- Any branding remarketing audience created?
- Is the competitor targeting campaigns in use?
Auction Insights
- Does impression share look good from the branding perspective?
- Does impression share look good from a business objective?
- Is the average position good?
- Is outranking share high?
Search Campaigns Audit
Overall
- Keywords tightly coupled to campaigns?
- Adgroups tightly coupled to campaigns?
- Is naming convention intuitive?
Campaign Audience Audit
- Any observation set and later used in targeting?
- Has customer list been excluded from the targeted audience list?
- Web visitors based on session duration or bounce rate been excluded?
- Have similar audiences been created from the customer lists?
- Has Adword optimized list been targeted?
- Different bidding strategy utilized & optimized towards the best performing strategy?
Demographics Targeting Audit
- Is bid adjustment done for age groups based on performance?
- Is bid adjustment done for genders based on performance?
- Is bid adjustment done for different household income groups based on performance?
Location Targeting Audit
- Bid adjustment for different locations based on performance?
- Geo-fencing targeting utilized?
Device Targeting Audit
- Device bid adjustment as per the performance?
Campaign Setting
- ECPC enabled & analyzed?
- Was language targeting appropriate as per the targeted audience?
- Is the targeting method as per the campaign objective?
- Is the exclusion method as per the campaign objective?
- Is the delivery method as per the campaign objective?
- Should have DSA been tried as per the campaign objective?
- Search partners were included & the performance was analyzed?
Ad Schedule
- Was ad rotation set up for the best performance?
Display Campaign Audit
Campaign Audience Audit
- Any observation set and later used in targeting?
- Has customer list been excluded from the targeted audience list?
- Web visitors based on session duration or bounce rate been excluded?
- Have similar audiences been created from the customer lists?
- Has Adword optimized list been targeted?
- Different bidding strategy utilized & optimized towards the best performing strategy?
Affinity Audience
- Its targeting or observation (targeting is recommended)
- Affinity audiences
- Custom affinity audience for each category (product/ services)
- General custom affinity audience
- Competitors custom affinity audience
Intent-based audience
- Custom intent audience created for each category (product/ services)
- General in market audience
- General custom in market audience
Keywords
- How optimized the display/video keywords targeting is
- Good use of negative keywords
Demographics Targeting Audit
- Is bid adjustment done for age groups based on performance?
- Is bid adjustment done for genders based on performance?
- Is bid adjustment done for different household income groups based on performance?
Location Targeting Audit
- Bid adjustment for different locations based on performance?
- Geo-fencing targeting utilized?
Device Targeting Audit
- Device bid adjustment as per the performance?
Display Campaign Setting Audit
- ECPC enabled & analyzed?
- Was language targeting appropriate as per the targeted audience?
- Is the targeting method as per the campaign objective?
- Is the exclusion method as per the campaign objective?
- Is the delivery method as per the campaign objective?
Ad Schedule
- Was ad rotation set up for the best performance?
Placement
- Its targeting or observation (targeting is recommended)
- Competitor’s website placement, if possible?
- Targeted on a list of contextual websites
- Targeted on a list of contextual youtube channels
- Ads creatives support desired placements on devices
- Ads creatives support desired placements on websites locations
Adgroups Audit
Overall
- Is naming convention intuitive?
- Ads tightly coupled with ad groups
- Keywords coupled tightly with the ad groups
- Is target CPA promising positive ROAS?
- Is max. CPC bid average of the max. CPC bid of the keywords from keyword planner
Adgroups Audience Audit
- Any observation set and later used in targeting?
- Has customer list been excluded from the targeted audience list?
- Web visitors based on session duration or bounce rate been excluded?
- Have similar audiences been created from the customer lists?
- Has Adword optimized list been targeted?
- Different bidding strategy utilized & optimized towards the best performing strategy?
AdWords Ads Audit
Search Ads Audit
- Responsive search ads being used?
- Normal text ads in use?
- Are DSAs being used?
- Ads have CTA
Display Ads Audit
- HTML ads in use
- Ads have logo
- Ads have CTA
- Ads aligned with the landing pages color palette & content
- Ads highlight brand persona & offerings
- Device specific ads
- Branding specific ads
- Placement specific ads
Ad Extensions
- Sitelinks used?
- Call extensions used?
- Callout extensions used?
- App extensions used?
- Structured snippet extensions used?
- Location extensions used?
- Price extensions used?
- Promotion extensions used?
- Affiliate location extensions used?
- Message extensions used?
- Seller ratings used?
Keywords Audit
Keyword Settings
- Number of keywords used per ad group
- Keyword match type used
- Keyword match type used in the negative keyword
- Use of negative keywords
- Search terms included in the keywords
- Keywords with a low-quality score
- Low performing keywords were paused
- Is keyword there in the headline?
- Is keyword there in the description?
- Is keyword there in the URL?
- Is keyword there on the landing page, preferably in the page title?
- Does the landing page had a good keyword density?
- Mobile speed score of the landing pages
- Is the landing page mobile friendly or responsive?
I also want to state that with time, there will be new features coming into the AdWords and this auditing guide might not suffice to the requirement. However, it can still be used for the basic to intermediate level auditing. Here is the link to the AdWords audit template
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