Start outside the account. Write down what the business needs, then check five things in order: what the account is told to chase, whether any sale is counted twice, what the search terms report says you paid for, which settings Google switched on for you, and what you must not touch. Ten minutes tells you whether the account was built to find buyers or built to find clicks.
This is the order Elaine works through when a founder hands over a login. For the detail on each leak, read where Google Ads budget leaks.
1. Before you log in: the business
The first ten minutes in an ad account are not spent in the ad account. We look at the business first.
Answer three questions on paper:
What is the business trying to do this quarter?
What is a customer worth over their lifetime?
Which action actually makes money: a purchase, a booked call, a qualified lead?
Every check below is measured against those answers.
2. What is the account told to chase?
The algorithm only does what it is told. Open the conversion actions and look at what counts.
Red flag: page views, time on site or other top-of-funnel vanity metrics set as conversions.
What you want: purchases and qualified leads.
If the account is optimising for the wrong thing, nothing else you fix will hold.
3. Is any sale counted twice?
Check whether GA4 transactions and Google's own conversion tag are both counting the same purchase. If they are, the reported return on ad spend can be artificially doubled, and the bidding has been learning from a number that is not real.
4. The search terms report
Your keyword list is what you asked for. The search terms report is what you paid for.
Sort by cost.
Mark every search no customer would type.
Note which broad match keywords triggered them.
This one page immediately exposes how much budget unmanaged broad match is burning.
5. Settings Google switched on for you
Search partners and the Display Network. Search campaigns can run into them by default. They almost always deliver low-intent, low-converting traffic.
Auto-apply recommendations. Designed to increase Google's revenue, which rarely lines up with yours. Turn auto-apply off.
Auto-applied broad match expansion. Off.
6. What to leave alone
Write this list before you change anything.
The ugly winner. A high-spending, high-converting ad stays on, however unpolished it looks.
The core engine. No budget change over 15 to 20%, and no targeting edits on the best-performing campaigns, in a first audit.
Then go step by step.
The same ten minutes on Meta
If the founder hands over Meta too, the order is similar, with different red flags.
Signal. Is the Meta Pixel receiving server-side data through the Conversions API? Without it, an account can be losing 30% of its signal to iOS privacy restrictions.
Structure. Thirty campaigns and fifty micro-targeted ad sets is a structure stuck in 2018. Spread across a $30 a day budget, the account is probably suffocating. Meta's machine learning needs consolidated data to exit the learning phase, and a fragmented structure stops it ever optimising.
Placements. Read the placement breakdown. For direct response, we turn the Audience Network off. It is notorious for accidental clicks and bot traffic.
Creative. Which ad drives the lowest cost per acquisition, and are there different types of creative in rotation? Keep the ugly winner here too.
Where ten minutes ends
Ten minutes tells you what is wrong. It does not fix it. In our retainers, the first 15 days are for access, audits, tracking and baselines, so every change after that is measured against where you started. We also give feedback on the creative itself, and nothing goes live without sign-off.
FAQ
What should a Google Ads audit include?
What the account counts as a conversion, whether any sale is counted twice, the search terms report, network and auto-apply settings, and a list of what not to touch. Start with the business goal before any of it.
How long does a Google Ads audit take?
A first read takes about ten minutes if you know where to look. A proper audit, including tracking and baselines, sits inside the first 15 days of our retainer.
What should I switch off first in Google Ads?
Auto-apply recommendations, auto-applied broad match expansion, and search partners and display on search campaigns that are not earning their spend.
What should I never change in an audit?
Your best-performing ad, even if it looks rough, and the budgets and targeting of your best campaigns. Change them in steps, not all at once.
Next step
Want a senior pair of eyes on your account? Get in touch, or see how we run search on our Google Ads page.
Book a free Growth Plan. Thirty minutes with the person who would do the work. No deck, no pitch.