The 10-Point Google Ads Audit Checklist for Ecommerce Brands

Every Ecommerce account we review has the same set of problems. Not the same products, not the same markets — but the same structural mistakes repeated across brands at every stage of growth.

This checklist covers the ten areas where we find the most wasted spend and the most missed revenue. Run through these before your next strategy meeting.

1. Conversion Tracking Accuracy

Before anything else, check that conversions are firing correctly. A broken conversion setup poisons every bid strategy in the account.

Check for duplicate conversions, verify that transaction values are passing correctly, and confirm that your primary conversion action is set to Purchases, not All Conversions.

2. Campaign Budget Allocation vs Revenue Contribution

Pull a report showing spend and revenue by campaign over the last 90 days. Sort by revenue descending.

The top three campaigns by revenue should not be constrained by budget. If they are, you are leaving revenue on the table every single day. Shift budget from lower-performing campaigns first.

3. Search Term Waste

For Search campaigns, export search terms and filter for any term that has spent more than half your target CPA without converting.

These terms are rarely the fault of your products — they are usually the result of broad match keywords or missing negative keywords. Add negatives at the campaign or account level to stop the bleed.

4. Product Feed Quality

For Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, pull a feed quality report from Google Merchant Centre.

Disapproved products, missing GTINs, and poor product titles are among the most common revenue blockers. Fix feed issues before adjusting bids — a clean feed will outperform an optimised campaign with a broken feed every time.

5. Bidding Strategy Alignment

Check that every campaign’s bid strategy matches its data volume. Smart bidding requires sufficient conversion data to function correctly.

A campaign with fewer than 30 conversions per month on Target ROAS is a campaign operating blind. Consider dropping to Maximise Conversions until data volume improves.

6. Asset Coverage in Performance Max

For each Performance Max campaign, check asset group strength. “Poor” and “Good” ratings signal missing assets that limit auction eligibility.

Add a minimum of five headlines, five descriptions, five images, and one video asset per asset group. Accounts with “Excellent” asset coverage consistently outperform those with gaps.

7. Audience Signal Quality

Review the audience signals attached to your Performance Max campaigns. Weak signals — such as broad in-market audiences with no purchase data — slow learning and reduce early-stage performance.

Use your customer lists, remarketing lists, and similar audiences as signals wherever possible. The more specific the signal, the faster the campaign finds your best customers.

8. Landing Page to Keyword Alignment

For Search campaigns, check that the destination URL of each ad group matches the user’s likely intent at the keyword level.

Sending “Performance Max Google Ads” searchers to your homepage instead of your Google Ads service page is a conversion-rate problem disguised as a bidding problem.

9. Dayparting and Device Performance

Pull a performance breakdown by device and by hour of day. If mobile drives a significantly lower ROAS than desktop, you may have a landing page experience issue or a bid adjustment gap.

Adjusting bids down on mobile without improving the mobile experience only papers over a bigger problem. Both need attention.

10. Impression Share vs Budget vs Bid Constraints

For your top-performing campaigns, check impression share data. Lost impression share due to rank (not budget) indicates a bidding problem. Lost impression share due to budget means you are constraining campaigns that could generate more revenue.

Prioritise budget increases for campaigns with high impression share lost due to budget. Prioritise bid reviews for campaigns with high impression share lost due to rank.

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If you find issues in five or more of these areas, your account has structural problems that bid optimisation will not fix. The fastest path to better performance is fixing the foundations first.

If you would like a senior Google Ads specialist to run through this checklist on your specific account, we offer a Free Growth Roadmap — no commitment required.