Google Ads Management
Account audit and restructure
One part of Google Ads Management, described on its own: find out where the money is actually going, which is rarely where the reporting suggests.
Account audit and restructure, defined
Find out where the money is actually going, which is rarely where the reporting suggests. In practice that means full spend analysis by campaign, ad group, query and device, and then the harder half: identifying wasted spend: irrelevant queries, duplicate coverage, dead ad groups.
Why this work exists
It is the sort of work that never makes a slide, and shows up in every result that does.
This is one part of Google Ads Management, described separately because it is usually the first thing anybody needs.
The nearest piece of work to it is finding the landing page that is holding back an otherwise fine campaign. Where that is already handled, this moves faster than the estimate; where it is not, the two get done together or neither of them holds.
What good looks like
The sign it is working is that nothing surprising happens. Changes are noticed on the day they are made rather than in the next quarterly review.
The gap between that and where most accounts start is why this is scoped as account audit and restructure rather than as a line inside something larger. Deciding when broad match is an opportunity and when it is a leak is the usual second step once it is in place.
When this is the right work
Three observations mean this work is due:
- Spend has grown and results have not
- The account was built by someone who left and nobody has mapped it
- Reporting looks fine and the sales team says leads got worse
If none of those is true, something else is probably the constraint, and the Google Ads Management overview maps the alternatives. The usual neighbours are getting offline conversions back into the account so bidding sees reality and working out what Performance Max is actually spending on.
What the work covers
Set out as tasks:
- Full spend analysis by campaign, ad group, query and device, done before anything downstream is committed to.
- Identifying wasted spend: irrelevant queries, duplicate coverage, dead ad groups. Usually scoped at half the size it turns out to be.
- Conversion tracking verification before any conclusion is drawn from the data. Straightforward in principle; the detail is where it stops being quick.
- A restructure plan with the sequence and expected impact stated. Boring, necessary, and the first casualty when a deadline moves.
How it runs
Stage by stage, with what each one is protecting against.
Writing it down for the next person
The reasoning gets recorded alongside the result, so a decision taken in March can still be defended in September by somebody who was not there.
Deciding what not to do
A list of things deliberately left alone, with the reason for each. It saves the same conversation happening four times over the following year.
The second look
A fortnight after the first pass, the same ground gets covered again with fresh eyes. The second pass finds a different class of problem from the first.
What each part runs into
Taken one at a time, against real markets:
- Full spend analysis by campaign, ad group, query and device, which in Manchester runs into a procurement step nobody accounted for
- Identifying wasted spend: irrelevant queries, duplicate coverage, dead ad groups: the Chicago version of this has to deal with a measurement baseline that was never taken
- Conversion tracking verification before any conclusion is drawn from the data, where a Vancouver engagement contends with a language mix the content has to match rather than assume
- A restructure plan with the sequence and expected impact stated – working in Udaipur this means accounting for an enquiry path that runs through a messaging app rather than a form
The version that does not work
Restructuring before verifying tracking. If the conversion data is wrong, every decision drawn from it is wrong too.
It is worth stating because it is the version of this work that gets sold most often, and it fails in a way that looks like the discipline not working rather than the execution being wrong.
How it is measured
Identified waste eliminated, and cost per acquisition after restructure. Agreed up front and reported every period, with the raw data available rather than only a summary.
Where this number and the revenue number disagree, the revenue number wins and the measure gets revisited.
What you end up with
The thing that outlives the engagement is a documented audit with quantified waste, verified tracking, and a prioritised restructure plan.
Handed over with the working, not only the conclusion.
How it differs by sector
Where it is done matters as much as what is done:
- Finance and fintech, where regulated claims, compliance review in the publishing path, and trust signals that have to be real. which moves this work earlier in the plan.
- In Travel and hospitality the binding constraint is that aggregators hold the demand, so direct booking depends on being the specific named property.
- Marketplaces and platforms: the thing that changes the scope here is that two sides to acquire, and a programmatic page set that can sink the whole domain.
The industry pages carry the rest of that detail. Finance and fintech and Travel and hospitality are the two where this piece of work most often decides the outcome.
Common questions
What does an account audit usually find?
Broad match terms attracting unrelated queries, negative lists that stopped being maintained, conversion actions counting things that are not conversions, smart bidding running on insufficient data, and brand and non-brand mixed into one campaign so neither can be judged. The same handful, in most accounts.
How much waste is typical in an unmanaged account?
Enough to matter, though a specific percentage would be invented. The reliable statement is that the first search term review on a neglected account almost always finds spend on queries the business cannot serve, and that verifying conversion tracking usually changes what the account looks like before anything is optimised.
How long does this take?
The diagnostic part is usually two to three weeks. What follows depends on what the diagnosis finds, and we scope the second phase after the first rather than quoting both upfront.
How much of our time does this take?
A few hours in the first fortnight, mostly answering questions about history that cannot be reconstructed from the data. After that, a monthly review. Pillar page handles the common case; Preload handles the one that catches people out.
What do we actually get at the end?
A documented audit with quantified waste, verified tracking, and a prioritised restructure plan. Documented, so it survives whoever was in the room, and specific enough to act on without a follow-up conversation. Two of these come up often enough to be worth reading first: Lifecycle and Email for Ecommerce and retail and Local SEO for Ecommerce and retail.
Ask about account audit and restructure
A sentence about the problem beats a filled-in form. We read every one of these ourselves.
Find out what is actually holding this back
Thirty minutes, the data you already hold, and a straight answer about where the constraint actually is.