Google Ads Audit for Online Stores: What to Check, in Order

Audit an online store’s Google Ads in four layers, always in the same order. First, check that you can trust the conversions and their values, because every later check reads them. Then the products: which spend without selling and which never get shown. Then the campaign structure, then the history of changes. Google’s recommendations and settings come last. A finding costs the store money when you can put an amount on it: spend on products that don’t sell, or sales lost on products that dropped out of ads.

How is a store audit different from a general PPC audit?

A Google Ads account audit answers one question for a store owner: where does the budget go, and what does it buy? We often hear the same complaint in calls with store owners: the money gets spent, and nobody can say where.

General audit guides focus on search advertising. Optmyzr’s PPC audit playbook, for example, runs through 15 steps, and five of them deal with keywords, ad copy, negative keywords and Quality Score. In an online store, most of the money doesn’t go through keywords at all.

In GetProfit data, Performance Max runs in 141 of 146 stores and takes a median 95.7% of their ad budget (June 2025 – June 2026). There, Google spreads the budget across channels such as Search, YouTube and Display, and decides what to show where. You still control the data the campaigns learn on, the products you give them and how the campaigns split those products.

So for a store, the audit is mostly about products and Performance Max. This guide gives the order and the logic. The Performance Max audit goes deeper into that one campaign type. The Google Ads audit checklist gives each check a pass-or-fail line.

In what order should you audit a store’s Google Ads account?

Audit in four layers. The order matters more than the list: each layer reads the numbers of the one before it.

The portal’s account score uses the same four layers and weighs them: products 40 points, structure 30, changes 13 and analytics 17. Analytics, the portal’s name for the tracking layer, plays a double role: it’s a layer and a gate. When tracking is broken, the parts that depend on conversions score zero: structure, changes and product performance. They stay in the total, so the score drops on its own. The feed and the assortment keep their points, because they don’t depend on conversions.

Use the same rule in a manual audit. If tracking fails, mark every finding based on conversions as unreliable until you fix tracking.

Before you start: access, window and a snapshot

1. Access. You don’t need edit rights to audit. According to About access levels in your Google Ads account, the Read-only access level lets a user view campaigns but not edit them. Our help page shows how to grant read-only access.
2. Window. Google recommends judging Smart Bidding results over periods with at least 30 conversions, such as a month or longer. For Target ROAS, it recommends at least 50 conversions (About Smart Bidding). This guide uses a window of 90 days or more. The portal’s account score always uses a fixed 90-day window, whatever period you pick on screen.
3. Recent days. Leave out the last few days: their conversions are still coming in. Google’s guide Evaluate Performance Max Results recommends accounting for conversion lag for the same reason.
4. Learning. Note every bid strategy with a “Learning” status. Its numbers move while Google adjusts bids, and Google suggests you may not want to measure performance until learning is over (About bid strategy statuses).
5. Snapshot. Export targets, budgets, product groups and change history before you change anything. Change history covers the last 2 years, and you can undo most types of changes only if they were made in the last 30 days (Review your account history). If you’ve just taken over the account, the guide to an inherited Google Ads account lists what to save and what to leave alone.

Step 1: Can you trust the conversions?

ROAS, spend without sales and every campaign verdict in the audit all come from conversions. Check them first, and stop if they fail.

Google Ads uses a conversion action for bidding only when two conditions hold. The action is a primary conversion action, and the campaign uses the goal that contains it. Secondary actions show up only in the All conversions column, according to About conversion goals.

The exception is a custom goal: if you add a secondary action to one, Google uses it for bidding. The same page recommends a single account-default goal when several goals track stages of one funnel. For a store, that goal is Purchase.

Four checks, in this order:

1. The event. The primary action is a purchase, not an add to cart or a checkout start. Tell a campaign to find add-to-carts, and it finds people who add to cart.
2. The value. Each order sends its real conversion value. If every order carries one fixed number, revenue in the report is the order count times that number.
3. One count per order. Only one primary action counts the purchase. A second one — an import from analytics, an old tag, a plugin from your store platform — fires on the same order and doubles it.
4. No outliers. No single order is many times the size of a usual one. The portal treats a conversion value above 30× the account’s median order value as an anomaly and leaves it out of the results.

Judge Video, Display and Demand Gen campaigns separately. The portal keeps these awareness campaigns out of the performance part of the audit, so a lack of purchases doesn’t count against them. If you mix them into one ROAS, they pull the account’s number down and make awareness campaigns look pointless.

What it costs. A tracking error has no price tag of its own. It makes every other number in the audit wrong, so you can’t price any finding that depends on conversions either. The conversion tracking audit gives the full sequence of checks.

Step 2: Which products spend without selling, and which never get shown?

In our study of 1.4 million products across 130+ stores over 13 months, the catalogue split into three groups:

Those numbers hold two findings, and each costs money in a different way.

Spend with nothing back

When products take budget and don’t sell, the portal calls that money spend with nothing back. Add up the spend on products with no conversions over your window: that sum is the size of the finding. In the same study, the median store spent 40.5% of its budget on products with no sales in 13 months. In the top quarter of stores by ROAS, the median share was 39.8%; in the bottom quarter, 71.8%.

Some of those products sell later. In the study, switching off a product with no sales was the right call for 88.1% of products with $5 or more of spend. For products with $500 or more, it was right for only 66.2%. And 35.4% of products that had spent at least the cost of one conversion without selling converted in later months.

So treat this finding as a budget to move, not a list of products to delete. Judge products over a long window. The portal sorts every product into one of eight labels, from Bestsellers to To remove, by its ad performance over the last 12 months.

Products that never get shown

More than half of the products in the study got no budget at all. They have no data, good or bad, so you can’t judge them on performance. Ask three questions: is the product eligible in Merchant Center, is it included in any campaign, and if it is, why does the campaign give it no budget?

Merchant Center flags are rarely the main answer. In GetProfit data on 142 stores (data bank, August 2026), Merchant Center flagged less than 1% of the catalogue in 109 of them. The most common flags said that a product wasn’t eligible for any campaign or was out of stock. Both point to the campaigns’ product selection and to stock, not to broken feed fields.

Google’s guide to monitoring Shopping campaigns still tells you to check Merchant Center disapprovals and warnings regularly, so do both. Our guide to products with no impressions in Google Shopping explains why so many get none.

The expensive case is a product that used to sell and has dropped out of ads. Price it at the revenue it brought before it stopped getting impressions. The Google Shopping audit covers the layer-by-layer method for the whole catalogue.

A caveat for Performance Max product data

For dates before mid-June 2026, product-level data for Performance Max in the Google Ads API is incomplete. According to the Google Ads Developer Blog (Product reporting changes for Google Ads starting June 15, 2026), product reporting for Performance Max used to cover only some networks. From 15 June 2026 it starts to include all of them, and requests for earlier dates don’t contain the expanded data. Google’s Retail Campaign Performance documentation warns of a one-time increase in reported metrics.

If your window starts before that date, product totals pulled through the API can add up to less than the campaign totals. Products that sold through the missing networks can look weaker than they were. Read product verdicts for older windows with that in mind.

Step 3: Does each campaign get enough conversions to learn?

Campaign structure decides where the money goes: budgets belong to campaigns, not to products. Each campaign has its own target and budget, so noise steers a campaign that has too few conversions.

The portal treats 30 conversions a month per campaign as the minimum and 50+ as comfortable. It suggests splitting a campaign only when it has more than 100 conversions a month or a ROAS gap above 50% between its parts. Even then, both parts must keep at least 30 conversions a month.

What to check:

1. Conversions per campaign per month. List every product campaign and flag those below 30.
2. Which products sit where. Make sure some campaign includes every product you want to sell, and that you know which campaign holds each of your best sellers.
3. Shared budgets. According to Google’s About bid strategy statuses, a Maximize strategy can show a “Misconfigured” status when it shares a budget with campaigns on other bid strategies.

What it costs. A structure with too few conversions per campaign has no direct price. It shows up as unstable ROAS and targets that keep drifting. When Performance Max is the problem, follow the Performance Max troubleshooting order before you touch targets.

Step 4: What changed, and did it help?

Change history shows who changed what and when, over the last 2 years. It includes changes made through automated rules, the Google Ads API and Google Ads Editor, and you can filter it by user and by tool (Review your account history). Our guide to reading change history shows how to filter it for an audit.

Three things to check:

1. Changes nobody on your side made. With auto-applied recommendations turned on, Google regularly applies the recommendation types you selected when they’re relevant. These include bidding types such as “Adjust your ROAS targets”. Google lists the applied ones in the History tab and in change history, according to About applying recommendations automatically. Then decide which auto-apply types to switch off for your store.
2. How often things change. Google says Smart Bidding needs a standard 7–14 day learning phase. Frequent manual changes to budgets, targets or conversion goals during it reset the learning window (About conversion goals). The portal flags more than three changes a week to the same item as too frequent.
3. What each change did. The portal compares the 14 days before a change with the 14 days after it. With less than 7 days of data, or no conversions, it says it’s too early to judge.

When sales drop, changes are one of four suspects, next to tracking, stock and the season. The sales drop guide checks them in order. Google’s own Explanations feature tells you why performance changed and often suggests a fix. Our guide to Explanations covers what it can’t see in a store’s account.

Where do the Optimization score and recommendations fit?

Google’s Optimization score runs from 0 to 100% and estimates how well the account is set to perform. It’s tied to the recommendations Google shows you: you reach 100% by applying or dismissing all of them (About optimization score). So the score reflects how you’ve handled Google’s suggestions, not how much the store earns. The Recommendations page itself says it doesn’t predict whether your ads will do well (About recommendations).

Read recommendations last, against what the tracking, product, structure and change checks found. A suggested target ROAS on a campaign that counts each purchase twice makes the error bigger. A separate article explains what the Optimization score measures. Another covers which recommendations are worth applying.

The portal’s account score is a different measure. It compares the account against a benchmark built on Google Shopping practices. It’s not an official Google metric and is separate from the Optimization score.

How do you tell which findings actually cost money?

Use the store’s own data to put an amount on each finding, then sort by that amount. Some findings have a price, some only block other findings, and some cost nothing.

The account score in the portal does part of this pricing for you. It turns missing points into amounts: how much spend a year misses the goal, and how much you under-earn each month on products that dropped out of ads. It counts both from your store’s own history, not from market averages.

Two limits apply to any audit built on Google Ads data:

• Revenue isn’t profit. GetProfit’s data has no purchase prices, so the portal counts ROAS on revenue and leaves margin to you. Check it before you cut a product with a low ROAS or scale one with a high ROAS.
• Ordered isn’t kept. Returns and cancellations don’t show up, so revenue in the report is what customers ordered.

Example: sorting the findings of one audit

Example store, not client data.

A tableware store with 3,000 products runs a 90-day audit. Over the window, it spent 120,000 and got 540,000 in revenue from 900 orders, a ROAS of 4.5. Tracking passed: one primary purchase action, real order values, no duplicates.

Work in order of the amounts. The lost sellers come first: people have already bought them. The spend with nothing back comes second. Fix the structure before you change any target: with 25 orders a campaign, each target moves on noise.

What to do: the audit in one pass

1. Set up. Get Read-only access, pick a window of 90 days or more, leave out the last few days and note every bid strategy that’s still learning. Check after: the window holds at least 30 conversions per campaign you plan to judge.
2. Save a snapshot. Export targets, budgets, product groups and change history. Check after: you can restore any setting you’re about to touch.
3. Check conversions. One primary purchase action, real order values, one count per order, no outliers. Check after: if any check failed, stop and fix tracking first.
4. Split products into three groups. Sold, spent without a sale, got no spend. Check after: the spend of the three groups adds up to the total product spend.
5. Find the lost sellers. Compare two windows and list products that sold before and get no impressions now. Check after: each one has a reason — stock, Merchant Center status or campaign selection.
6. Count conversions per campaign. Flag every product campaign below 30 a month. Check after: you know which campaigns to merge before you touch targets.
7. Read change history. Who changed what, how often, what was auto-applied, and how each change ended after 14 days. Check after: every big move in the trend has a dated change or a named outside cause.
8. Price and sort. Put an amount on each finding, sort, and only then read Google’s recommendations. Check after: the first item on your list is the biggest amount, not the easiest fix.

What state your ad account is in. One score instead of a dozen tabs of figures — plus a breakdown of exactly where the money leaks. The portal changes nothing without your consent.

Get your account score →

Frequently asked questions

How often should a store’s account be audited?

Run the full audit, tracking first, whenever the account changes hands or results fall two months in a row. The portal raises a trend alarm when ROAS falls by 15% or more, or revenue by 10% or more, two months in a row. Between audits, check often and change rarely. The Google Ads optimisation checklist splits the checks into daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly passes.

Can you audit a store’s Google Ads without access to the account?

Only partly. From outside, you can see the ads and the product data, but not spend, conversions or the products that spend without selling. Our guide to auditing from outside the account shows where an outside audit stops.

Are free audit tools and graders enough?

They read the same Google data and differ in what they check and what they miss. The comparison of Google Ads audit tools shows what each one covers.

What if the account is suspended?

Then the audit waits: first find out what kind of suspension it is and whether it’s linked to Merchant Center. Our guide to a suspended Google Ads account gives the steps.

Sources

• Evaluate Performance Max Results — recommends accounting for conversion lag; Explanations describe why performance changed and suggest fixes. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Review your account history — change history covers the last 2 years, includes automated rules, the API and Editor, filters by user and tool; most types of changes made in the last 30 days can be undone. Checked 2 October 2026.
• About conversion goals — two conditions for a conversion action to be used in bidding; secondary actions only in All conversions; secondary actions in a custom goal are used for bidding; one account-default goal per funnel; 7–14 day learning phase reset by frequent changes. Checked 2 October 2026.
• About Smart Bidding — evaluate results over periods with at least 30 conversions, 50 for Target ROAS. Checked 2 October 2026.
• About bid strategy statuses — the Learning status and when to measure; Misconfigured status for Maximize strategies with a shared budget. Checked 2 October 2026.
• About access levels in your Google Ads account — the Read-only access level views campaigns without editing them. Checked 2 October 2026.
• About optimization score — the 0–100% scale; 100% is reached by applying or dismissing all recommendations. Checked 2 October 2026.
• About recommendations — the Recommendations page doesn’t predict whether ads will do well. Checked 2 October 2026.
• About applying recommendations automatically — auto-applied types include bidding recommendations; applied ones appear in History and change history. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Monitor and optimize your Shopping campaigns — check Merchant Center disapprovals and warnings regularly. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Product reporting changes for Google Ads starting June 15, 2026 — Performance Max product reporting covered only some networks before 15 June 2026; earlier dates don’t get the expanded data. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Performance Max Overview — Performance Max allocates budget across channels such as Search, YouTube and Display. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Retail Campaign Performance — from 15 June 2026 the product report includes all Performance Max networks, with a one-time increase in metrics. Checked 2 October 2026.
• The Ultimate PPC Audit Playbook: When, Why, and How to Conduct Them — a general 15-step PPC audit; five steps deal with keywords, ad copy, negative keywords and Quality Score. Checked 2 October 2026.
• GetProfit data: 146 stores, June 2025 – June 2026 — Performance Max share of budget.
• GetProfit data: 142 stores, data bank collected in August 2026 — Merchant Center flags.
• GetProfit study: 1,404,808 products, 130+ stores, 13 months — products that sold, spent without selling or got no budget; share of budget on products with no sales; accuracy of switching off.
• GetProfit portal methodology — account score weights and the analytics gate, conversion anomaly rule, awareness campaigns, structure rules, change frequency and the 14-day verdict.