Google Ads accounts drift. Bids creep up, irrelevant search terms sneak in, landing pages go stale, and suddenly your cost per lead has doubled with no obvious reason.
A quarterly health check keeps that from happening. It doesn’t need to take all day. It just needs to be consistent and thorough enough to catch the things that quietly drain your budget.
Here are 10 things worth checking every single quarter.
1. Your Conversion Tracking Is Actually Firing
Before anything else, confirm your conversions are being recorded correctly. This sounds basic, but broken tracking is more common than most people admit.
Use Google Tag Assistant or check the Diagnostics tab in your Google Ads account. Make sure every form submission, phone call, and thank-you page visit is being captured – and that you haven’t accidentally double-counted anything.
If your data is wrong, every other decision you make in this audit is built on sand.
2. Search Terms Are Actually Relevant
Your keywords control what you want to show for. Your search terms show what you’re actually paying for. These two things are often very different.
Pull your search terms report and filter for the last 90 days. Look for anything obviously off-topic or outside your service area. Add negatives aggressively – this is one of the fastest ways to recover wasted spend.
If you’re seeing broad match keywords pulling in random traffic, consider tightening to phrase or exact match until performance stabilises.
3. Negative Keyword Lists Are Up to Date
Negative keywords don’t maintain themselves. Every quarter, spend 15 minutes looking for new irrelevant terms to block.
Common culprits in lead gen accounts: job-related searches, competitors using your brand, DIY or how-to queries, and searches from outside your service area. Build shared negative lists so changes apply across campaigns without extra work.
4. Ad Copy Is Still Competitive
Ads written 12 months ago were written for a different market, different competitors, and maybe a different offer. Quarterly is a good time to reassess.
Check your asset performance labels in responsive search ads. Swap out anything rated ‘Low’ and test headlines that speak more directly to the outcome your leads are looking for – not just features.
If your CTR has been sliding, stale copy is often the cause. Fresh messaging matters more than most advertisers realise.
5. Landing Pages Load Fast and Convert Properly
Click-through rate gets a lot of attention. Conversion rate after the click gets ignored. These two things are equally important.
Run your landing pages through Google PageSpeed Insights. Check mobile load time especially – most lead gen traffic arrives on a phone. Make sure forms work, phone numbers are clickable, and the page message matches the ad that sent people there.
If you’re seeing strong CTR but weak conversion rates, the landing page is usually where the problem lives. For a deeper look at this pattern, this breakdown of why PPC campaigns stop converting covers the most common culprits.
6. Bidding Strategy Matches Your Current Goals
Bidding strategies that made sense six months ago may not make sense now. If you’ve recently hit a target CPA or accumulated more conversion data, it may be time to adjust.
Target CPA and Maximize Conversions work best with consistent conversion volume – at least 30 conversions per month per campaign is a reasonable benchmark. If you’re below that, manual or enhanced CPC may actually give you more control.
Check that you’re not over-bidding on low-intent keywords or under-bidding on the ones that consistently close into real customers.
7. Budget Is Allocated to What’s Actually Working
Take a campaign-by-campaign look at where your money is going versus where your best leads are coming from. These don’t always match.
It’s common to find that one campaign is eating 60% of the budget but generating a fraction of qualified leads. Redistribute toward what’s converting, and set budget caps on anything that’s spending freely without results.
Also check impression share. If your best campaign is losing impression share due to budget, that’s often the first place to reinvest.
8. Audience Lists Are Applied and Populated
Remarketing and audience bid adjustments are underused in lead gen accounts. Quarterly is a good time to check that your lists are still collecting users and actually applied to campaigns.
Look at: website visitors, past converters (to exclude or bid differently), and customer match lists if you’re uploading CRM data. Even setting bid adjustments of +15% for warm audiences can meaningfully lower your cost per lead over time.
If none of your campaigns have audiences applied, you’re leaving efficiency on the table.
9. Location Targeting Reflects Where You Actually Serve
Location targeting settings drift, especially if campaigns have been duplicated or restructured over time. Confirm that each campaign is only targeting the areas where you can actually take on new customers.
Also check the location report to see where your impressions and conversions are actually coming from. You may find spend leaking into areas outside your service zone – or that certain zip codes or cities are performing significantly better than others.
Tightening location targeting is one of the simplest ways to improve lead quality without changing bids.
10. Quality Score and Account-Level Health Signals
Quality Score isn’t a perfect metric, but it’s a useful early warning system. Keywords with scores below 5 are worth investigating – usually it’s a mismatch between the keyword, the ad, and the landing page.
Check your account-level recommendations tab with some skepticism. Google’s automated suggestions are not always aligned with your actual goals. Evaluate each one before applying it. Accepting recommendations blindly has burned more than a few accounts.
Look at overall impression share, average position trends, and any policy flags. These give you a fast read on account health before you go deeper.
Putting the Checklist Together
Running through these 10 points takes between 60 and 90 minutes if you’re organised. Most accounts will surface at least two or three clear improvements every quarter.
The goal isn’t perfection – it’s consistency. Accounts that get reviewed regularly outperform those that are left alone, even if the individual changes seem small.
Build this into your calendar now so it doesn’t slip through when things get busy.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should a Google Ads quarterly audit take?
For most small to mid-sized lead gen accounts, 60 to 90 minutes is enough to cover the core checkpoints. Larger accounts with many campaigns may need a half day.
Should I do this myself or hire someone?
If you’re comfortable in the platform, running your own quarterly check is completely doable using this framework. If you’re not sure what you’re looking at in certain areas – especially conversion tracking or bidding strategy – a second set of eyes is worth it.
What’s the most common issue found in lead gen audits?
Wasted spend from irrelevant search terms and broken or mismeasured conversion tracking. These two problems appear in the majority of accounts that haven’t been audited recently.
Can I use Google’s built-in recommendations instead of doing a manual audit?
You can reference them, but don’t rely on them exclusively. Google’s recommendations prioritise spend and automation, which isn’t always the same as what’s best for your lead quality or cost per acquisition.
How often should I run a full audit beyond quarterly checks?
A light monthly review of spend, search terms, and conversions is a good habit. The full 10-point check every quarter catches the bigger structural issues that monthly reviews can miss.