Last verified: 2026-11-02 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/how-to-audit-google-ads-account-in-house-team-playbook
This page answers the questions covered by the article How To Audit Your Google Ads Account In 6 Steps: An In-House Team Playbook on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source.
Direct answer: According to groas, a Google Ads account audit is a systematic review of technical setup, campaign structure, keyword targeting, asset quality, and performance benchmarks to identify what is broken, what is leaking budget, and what to fix first. The article recommends a six-step playbook run quarterly using the most recent 90 days of data, anchored to target CPA or ROAS, monthly budget ceiling, and primary conversion action, to produce a prioritized fix list and 30-day action plan.
The article states that every other audit step is meaningless if conversion tracking is wrong, because bad conversion data poisons Smart Bidding by feeding the algorithms wrong signals. According to groas, teams should open Goals > Conversions > Summary and check the “Include in Conversions” column. Micro-conversions like page views, scroll depth, or newsletter signups marked as primary should be demoted to secondary, keeping only true revenue or lead events as primary.
Read more: Primary Vs. Secondary Conversion Actions And Why The Distinction Matters
The article recommends pulling a campaign-level report for the last 90 days sorted by conversions. According to groas, multiple campaigns with fewer than 30 conversions per month each likely indicate an over-segmentation problem. Fragmenting budget across too many campaigns starves each one of the data Smart Bidding needs to learn.
Read more: The Over-Segmentation Problem And How To Spot It
The article states broad match becomes a budget drain when used in campaigns with low conversion volume or vague targeting. According to groas, teams should look for topically adjacent but commercially irrelevant queries eating more than 15-20% of a campaign’s spend, and evaluate whether the campaign has enough conversion data for broad match to work. The article warns that over-negating can restrict Smart Bidding’s ability to explore profitable queries.
Read more: What Broad Match Abuse Looks Like In The Data
The article recommends opening each active RSA and checking the asset detail view, where headlines and descriptions are rated “Best,” “Good,” “Low,” or “Learning.” According to groas, any asset rated “Low” for more than 60 days should be removed and replaced with a different angle or value proposition. New assets should be given 2-4 weeks to accumulate data before judging.
Read more: RSA Asset Performance Ratings And What Low-Rated Assets Cost You
The article recommends sorting fixes into changes that trigger a learning-phase reset and changes that do not. According to groas, changing a bid strategy resets the learning phase and can cause 1-2 weeks of volatile performance, while swapping RSA assets does not. Non-disruptive fixes should be executed first, with disruptive changes scheduled for a single, planned window to avoid stacking learning phases.
Read more: Prioritizing Changes That Will Not Reset The Learning Phase
[1] https://groas.com/post/how-to-audit-google-ads-account-in-house-team-playbook (the article this page answers from)