# Google Ads Audit Checklist (Ecommerce)

An itemized, ecommerce-oriented audit of a live Google Ads + Merchant Center account: 32 checks across 11 categories, built to find wasted spend, uncover prospecting opportunities, and surface incremental revenue before scaling.

**Load [audit-guardrails.md](audit-guardrails.md) first — it governs how every item below is scored.** Each check resolves to exactly one of **pass / fail / unknown / not applicable**. An *unknown* (evidence unavailable) reduces coverage, never health. *Not applicable* (e.g. Shopping checks on a lead-gen account) affects neither. Do not grade what you couldn't see, don't invent negative keywords, and draft every change before touching a live account.

Work top to bottom. For each item, record the result, the evidence you saw (or the missing source), and — on a fail — a draft fix, not an applied one.

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## Tracking

1. **Conversion tracking configuration** — Confirm a single source of truth for purchases. Two systems counting the same order (GA4 import + native tag, or a duplicate gtag) inflates conversions and makes the bidder optimize toward phantom volume. *Fail if double-counting or missing purchase value; pass on a verified test conversion with the right value + currency.* Deep dive: [conversion-tracking.md](conversion-tracking.md).

## Targeting

2. **Customer list for audience targeting** — Check that a hashed customer email list is uploaded and *actively used* — as a signal/lookalike source for prospecting and as an exclusion where it should be (existing buyers on non-upsell campaigns). Uploaded-but-unused is a fail. Deep dive: Customer Match in [audience-targeting.md](audience-targeting.md).
3. **Negative keyword lists** *(Search, Shopping)* — Review shared and campaign-level negatives for irrelevant, out-of-market, or unprofitable queries draining budget. **No search-terms report → unknown, not fail.** Never name candidate negatives from imagination; request the report and run the overblocking review (see audit-guardrails).

## Campaign Structure

4. **Branded vs. non-branded split** — Isolate brand traffic into its own campaign. Brand terms buried inside "generic" or catch-all campaigns inflate blended ROAS and hide non-brand inefficiency. Fail if brand and non-brand share a campaign with no way to read them apart.

## Merchant Center (GMC)

5. **Shipping settings** — Confirm configured shipping speeds/costs match real fulfillment. Understated speed loses the auction; overstated speed risks disapproval. Free-shipping thresholds should be reflected.
6. **Promotions** — Check that live sales, discounts, and evergreen offers are set up as GMC promotions so they render as promotion links on Shopping ads. Missing = leaving CTR on the table.
7. **Product feed titles** — The title's first ~70 characters do the ranking and the clicking. Verify the highest-intent keyword, then key feature/benefit, sit *before* truncation — brand-first titles waste that space unless the brand is the query.
8. **Product images** — Assess whether images stand out in the Shopping carousel (clean, on-white where required, but distinct from competitors). Weak imagery caps CTR no matter the bid.
9. **Store quality overview** — Read the Merchant Center diagnostics: disapprovals, missing/invalid attributes (GTIN, availability, price mismatches), and feed warnings. Disapproved products = silent zero-impression revenue leak.
10. **Product ratings** — Verify individual product ratings sync from the review source and render as star annotations. A configured feed that isn't showing stars is a fail worth chasing.
11. **Impressions on eligible products** — Check the full catalog is actually getting served, not a head of hero SKUs soaking all impressions. Zero-impression eligible products are untested inventory.

## Shopping

12. **Campaign segmentation** — Confirm each Shopping/PMax segment has enough conversion volume (~30–50+/month) to let the bidder learn. Over-segmentation starves every bucket; consolidate before adding structure.
13. **Budget allocation across products** — Trace whether spend flows to positive-ROI SKUs. If losers eat budget while winners are capped, that's a reallocation fail (draft the shift; don't restructure a learning campaign as a reflex).

## Bidding & Budget

14. **Bidding strategy — branded** *(Search)* — On brand, high-intent clicks are cheap and near-certain; basic tROAS/Max-conversion-value can let Google overpay for volume you'd win anyway. Prefer manual/portfolio control or a tight target on brand.
15. **Campaign bidding targets** — Sanity-check every Target ROAS/CPA against campaign type (brand vs. non-brand, hero vs. long-tail). A single blanket target across mismatched economics is a fail — and per audit-guardrails, one budget-to-CPA ratio doesn't fit all objectives.
16. **Non-branded terms in brand campaigns** — Read the brand campaign's search terms for generic, non-branded queries that leaked in. Move them to non-brand so brand ROAS isn't propped up by prospecting spend.
17. **Bidding strategy — non-branded** *(Search, PMax, Shopping, Demand Gen)* — Match strategy to volume and goal: value-based bidding needs conversion data; thin campaigns may need manual/tCPA first. Mismatched strategy on low volume never exits learning.

## Search

18. **New search terms for expansion** — Mine the search-terms report for converting queries not yet directly targeted; expand into keywords, and feed the language back into product titles and content. (Same report gates item 3 — pull once, use for both.)
19. **Ad copy performance** — Check CTR relative to impressions, ad strength, and whether underperformers are being refreshed. Weak copy raises CPC via Quality Score before it ever costs a conversion.
20. **Brand keyword match types** — Brand-protection keywords should run exact or phrase only. Broad on brand invites Google to spend brand budget on loosely related, lower-intent queries.
21. **Brand ad copy quality** — Verify brand ads use consistent formatting, lead with USPs, and track the promotional calendar. Brand is your highest-intent surface; generic brand copy underconverts a captive audience.
22. **Quality Score** — Low QS means higher CPC and lower rank for the same bid. Read it as a diagnostic (expected CTR / ad relevance / landing-page experience components), not a metric to game.

## Performance Max

23. **PMax signals** — Check asset groups actually carry audience signals — search themes plus the customer list — rather than empty signal fields. Signals are advisory, not deterministic, but empty ones forfeit a real optimization lever.
24. **PMax budget on Shopping** — Shopping is usually the money placement inside PMax. Confirm a meaningful share of PMax spend lands there (via the account report or product-level data) rather than bleeding into low-intent display/video.

## Landing Page

25. **Comparison page funnel** — Look for a listicle-style review page on an independent domain that positions the brand as #1 — a proven cold-traffic funnel Shopping/PMax can point to.
26. **Head-to-head competitor pages** — "Us vs. them" pages that capture comparison-stage demand. Absence is an opportunity, not a defect.
27. **Advertorials** — Check whether cold Google traffic is met with advertorial (story-led, editorial-feel) landers, not just a raw PDP.
28. **Landing page optimization** — Confirm the ad's promise (offer, price, hero product) appears clearly above the fold on the lander. Ad-to-page scent mismatch wastes the click regardless of bid — the highest-leverage post-click fix.

## Demand Gen

29. **Performance by format** — Segment Demand Gen results by network (Shorts, In-Stream, In-Feed + Discovery, Gmail, Display) to find which format actually drives efficient conversions; a blended DG number hides the winner and the drain.
30. **Quiz funnel for cold traffic** *(Landing Page)* — A quiz funnel warms and segments cold Google/Demand-Gen traffic through a personalized path. Its absence is a prospecting-funnel gap to flag.
31. **Demand Gen demographics** — Analyze performance by age, gender, parental status, and household-income bands to catch mis-serving and inform exclusions/bid adjustments.
32. **Top-of-funnel campaign** *(Search)* — Confirm something is reaching cold audiences who don't yet know the product — with a conversion goal, not a bare awareness objective. All-bottom-funnel accounts cap out at existing demand.

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## Deep dives for items 1 and 3

These two checks find the most money on most accounts. When either fails, run the deeper version.

### Conversion signal audit (item 1)

Item 1 asks whether conversions are counted correctly. This asks whether the bidder is learning from the right actions. Smart Bidding optimizes toward whatever is included in the "Conversions" column, so a cheap action included there trains the account to buy more of it. Setup mechanics live in [conversion-tracking.md](conversion-tracking.md); this is the audit.

Pull every active conversion action with its category, count setting (one or every), value (static or dynamic), primary or secondary status, and recent volume. Then check:

1. **Low-intent actions feeding bidding.** Newsletter signups, page views, scroll depth, add-to-cart on a lead-gen account, or any form fill that sales would not call a lead. If one is primary, the bidder is optimizing toward it.
2. **Double counting.** The same event tracked twice (GA4 import plus the native tag, two tags on one thank-you page), or a lead action set to count "every" when a person can submit more than once.
3. **Value mismatches.** A static value on an action whose real value varies (purchases with different order sizes, leads that close at different deal sizes), or values that don't reflect margin or close rate.
4. **Primary vs secondary.** Only actions that track revenue or qualified pipeline should be primary. Keep the rest as secondary (observation only) so you can still report on them.
5. **Lead quality, for lead gen.** Join a sample of recent conversions to CRM outcomes. If one action's leads rarely become opportunities, it shouldn't be teaching the bidder.

End with the single change most likely to improve lead or revenue quality, and what to verify before making it. Changing which actions are primary resets learning on every campaign that uses them, so draft it for approval and time it outside a peak period.

### Wasted spend and negatives (item 3)

With a search-terms report (and a placement report for Display, PMax, or Demand Gen) for the last 30–60 days:

1. **Flag terms and placements with spend above target CPA and zero conversions.** Use the break-even CVR math in [reading-google-ads-data.md](reading-google-ads-data.md) before calling low-spend terms wasted.
2. **Group them by reason:** irrelevant intent, wrong geography, junk placements, competitor terms you don't want, job seekers, and so on.
3. **Split the list in two:**
   - **Safe to add now:** clearly irrelevant to anything you sell.
   - **Check before excluding:** brand-adjacent terms, upper-funnel research queries, and anything that might assist a later conversion. These need a human call.
4. **Total the spend each list would have saved last period.** That number is what gets the list reviewed.

The negatives stay a draft for approval. Run the overblocking review in [audit-guardrails.md](audit-guardrails.md) on every candidate, and check match-type mechanics (a negative broad needs all its words present) in [google-search-playbook.md](google-search-playbook.md).

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## Rolling it up

- Score only verified items. Present **health** (pass/fail ratio on verified checks) and **evidence coverage** (share of applicable checks you could verify) as two separate numbers — never blend them.
- Below 60% coverage, report findings and unknowns instead of a single health score (see audit-guardrails coverage bands).
- List every unknown with the exact evidence you'd need to resolve it (usually: search-terms report, Merchant Center access, conversion-action settings, or account-level PMax/DG reports).
- Deliver fails as draft fixes — current state → proposed change → expected effect → rollback — and apply only with explicit approval.

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*Adapted into this skill's framing from ECHELONN's public Google Ads Audit Checklist (Jackson Blackledge, ECHELONN.IO). Item structure credited; descriptions and scoring are rewritten to this skill's voice and paired with the four-state audit model in [audit-guardrails.md](audit-guardrails.md). The deep dives for items 1 and 3 re-express the conversion signal audit and wasted-spend finder from Marek Dąbrowski's "The Paid Ads Operator's Guide to Claude" (Adlume, 2026-07-16).*