Google Ads spending without returning? An audit checklist, in the order to look

An account that spends without returning usually has one of a small number of problems, and most of them are not the ads themselves. The order you look in matters, because some problems hide others: there is no point rewriting ads when the tracking is counting the wrong thing, or when a setting you never chose is sending your budget somewhere else.

This is the order we would work through a small business account, using Google's own help pages as they read on 28 September 2026. For diagnosis by symptom (no impressions, no clicks, clicks but nothing else) our piece on why Google Ads aren't converting goes deeper. There is a printable checklist to work through alongside.

1. Whose account is it?

Before anything else, check that the business has full control of the account it is paying for. Google Ads has five access levels, and only the top one, Admin, "can give account access, change access levels and cancel invitations from other users" (Google Ads, about access levels).

• Someone inside the business has Admin access, using a business email address.
• You know who else has access, and why. Remove anyone who has left.
• The billing is in the business's name.

If an agency or freelancer set the account up under their own login, sort this out first; we explain why in who owns your marketing accounts.

2. Is conversion tracking counting the right thing?

Every automated decision Google makes in your account, and every judgement you make about it, rests on what counts as a conversion. Check it before you trust any number in the account.

• A real test enquiry shows up. Send one through your own form and check it appears in Google Ads.
• The right actions are counted. A page view of the contact page, or a click on a button, is not an enquiry. If a conversion action counts something that happens before the enquiry is sent, the account will look better than it is.
• Leads are counted once. For each conversion action Google offers a choice. "One conversion: With this setting, Google Ads counts only one conversion per ad click. This is a good choice if you're not interested in the number of sales, but in whether or not a certain kind of lead was generated" (Google Ads, about conversion counting options). For a business that takes enquiries, one per click is usually the honest count.
• If you import conversions from Analytics, the key event underneath is sound; our guide to GA4 key events covers setting one up.

3. What changed, and who changed it?

Accounts drift. Google keeps a record: change history "lists the changes made to your account, campaigns and ad groups during the past two years" (Google Ads, about change history). Read it back to the point where results were last acceptable.

Some changes may not have been made by a person at all. Google Ads can apply its own recommendations: "When you turn on 'Automatically apply recommendations', the recommendations will apply regularly" (Google Ads, about applying recommendations automatically). Google says the feature will not raise your budget, but it can change other things, such as keywords.

• Read change history back to when results were last good.
• Check which recommendations, if any, are set to apply automatically, and decide whether you want each one.

4. Where are the ads actually showing?

Three settings decide where your money goes before a single keyword is involved.

• Search partners. "When you create a campaign for the Search Network, search partners are included by default" (Google Ads, about the Google Search Network). That means placements beyond Google's own results page, which Google says can include site directory pages and YouTube search results, and it adds its own caution: "clicks from these sites may not always reflect highly-targeted traffic." Look at how they perform in your account, separately, before deciding whether to keep them.
• Display. Search campaigns can also show on the Display Network if the Display Network box is ticked in the campaign's network settings (Google Ads, Display Expansion on Search campaigns). Check whether it is ticked, and whether you meant it to be.
• Location. Google's recommended location option also reaches people who have shown interest in your area, not only people in it. Google itself says to consider targeting by presence when "You only want to target users in specific locations and not users who may be in other locations but are still interested in your product or service" (Google Ads, target ads to geographic locations). For a business that only serves people nearby, that is usually the case.

5. What searches are you paying for?

• Open the search terms report for the last 30 or 90 days, sorted by cost.
• Mark every search that could never become a customer, and add it as a negative keyword.
• Check which match types your keywords use; broad matching finds more searches, including more irrelevant ones.

This is where most wasted money in small accounts turns up. We go through reading the report in why Google Ads aren't converting.

6. Does the click land somewhere that sells?

• Each ad sends people to the page that answers what they searched for, not the homepage.
• The page says, near the top, what the ad promised.
• The page works on a phone, loads quickly, and the form or phone number is easy to reach; our landing page structure piece covers what it needs.

7. Could the sums ever work?

• Work out what an enquiry is worth to you: how many become customers, and what a customer is worth.
• Compare it with what you are paying per enquiry now.
• If even a well-run account could not close the gap, stop, and put the money somewhere else.

We show the arithmetic, with your own numbers, in is Google Ads worth it for a small business? and what things typically cost in how much do Google Ads cost in the UK?

Where the evidence is thin

• Google's advice serves Google too. Google's help pages recommend options, such as including search partners or broader location targeting, that tend to increase how much you can spend. That does not make them wrong, but test them in your own account rather than taking them on trust.
• No benchmark for small accounts. We found no reliable public data on what a healthy UK small business account looks like, so the checks above are about whether the account is set up to do what you intend, not about hitting an industry average.
• The interface changes. Google renames settings and moves them regularly; the settings above are as Google describes them on 28 September 2026.

If you would rather hand the account over, our Google Ads launch is a fixed £2,500, taking about two weeks, followed by 30 days of changes as the first data comes in.