PPC
PPC Audit Checklist: Find Wasted Spend Before You Scale
A PPC audit checklist for finding wasted spend, fixing tracking, tightening search terms, and turning account issues into a ranked action plan.
•PPC AUDIT
PPC Audit Services
Find out where the money is going before you spend another month guessing.
We pull ninety days of raw search terms, total wasted queries in money, and reconcile platform conversions against your own order or CRM records. Our PPC audit services give you a ranked fix list, with the evidence behind each recommendation.
PPC Audit Services
Get your PPC Audit strategy today
•Why Suff Digital
Why teams choose Suff Digital for a paid-media audit
We tie every PPC audit finding to something countable: the spend it is costing, the revenue it puts at risk, or the measurement it makes unreliable. Nothing goes in the report unless we can show the row behind it.
Speak with a specialist •
Matt Suffoletto
Founder & CEO
Kriszta
Chief Operating Officer
Tony
Partnership Director
•What we examine
What Our PPC Audit Services Include
To perform a digital marketing audit, start with raw search terms, spend and conversion records before recommendations. We use that evidence standard for every PPC audit.
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•What the account structure is doing
We map campaigns, ad groups and settings against the goal the account is meant to serve, then flag the network, geography and schedule settings that were inherited rather than chosen.
•Every wasted query totaled in money
Ninety days of queries pulled and every non-converting one totaled in dollars, so the size of the leak is a number you can check rather than a description.
•Your conversion count checked against your own
We fire and inspect the tags, identify duplicate events, then reconcile the platform's conversion count against your CRM or order record so you know which number to trust.
•Targets tested against what is achievable now
We test every cost and return target against what the account could reach today rather than what was set years ago, and check pacing for campaigns capped before the day ends.
•Where it breaks
Where ad accounts hide waste and bad data
These four turn up in almost every account we open, at every budget level, and none of them announces itself.
Diagnose my site •01
Spend going to searches that never convert
Broad match and a thin negative list give the platform permission to explore, and nothing downstream reviews where it went. The exploration widens every week, because any conversion it stumbles into teaches it the query was worth buying. Totaling those queries in money ends the argument about whether it is happening.
02
Conversion numbers you cannot trust
Reported conversions do not match what your own systems recorded, so the account is bidding from a number your team cannot defend. Duplicate events, page loads counted as form submissions and missing offline imports each take a share of the gap. Until that is resolved, every bid the platform makes rests on the wrong number.
03
The account bidding against itself
Three keywords in three ad groups can all serve the same query, which means the account is competing with itself to buy it. That happens wherever broad, phrase and exact coverage grew without a routing rule. The cost shows up as higher click prices on your best terms.
04
Old targets are still steering bids
A cost or return target got set at some point and every team since has inherited it. The auction has moved and the conversion data underneath has changed, so the target has become a ceiling the account pays to sit under. Because the campaign still hits it, nothing looks wrong.
Our PPC Audit Process
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Phase 01
Day 1
Read-only access and the ninety-day export
You grant read-only access to the ad accounts and, where possible, to analytics and the CRM. We export ninety days of search terms, conversions and spend rather than working from dashboard summaries, because the summaries are where the disagreements start.
Phase 02
Days 1-2
Mapping the structure and the inherited settings
This runs before any spend analysis, because a settings problem changes what the numbers underneath it mean. Match-type overlap is traced by checking which keyword actually served each query rather than by reading the keyword list.
Phase 03
Days 3-4
Totaling the wasted spend in money
Search, display and shopping are totaled separately, because one blended figure lets the worst of the three hide inside it. Anything we cannot evidence with a row stays out. You see this number before the recommendations, not after them.
Phase 04
Day 5
The recorded walkthrough and ranked fix list
On a recorded call we walk through each finding and answer questions, then hand over the ranked fix list. If you want us to implement the fixes, we scope the rollout first. If your team or another agency is taking it on, the report is written clearly enough to use without the call.
•Why the audit starts where it does
The audit starts with raw data, not opinions.
Before anybody can argue about strategy, everybody has to agree on what the account spent and what came back. Platform reporting is generous to itself, so putting it next to your own order or CRM record usually changes the conversation more than any recommendation that follows.
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Ninety days of raw search-term, conversion and spend data, exported not summarized
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Platform conversion counts reconciled against your CRM or order record
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The gap between the two stated as a figure, with a view on which one to trust
•The commercial argument
The first five fixes matter more than the rest of the list.
Most audits fail by being complete. A long list in no particular order is a document, not a plan, and it ends in a folder. We rank each fix by what it is worth against what it takes, mark which must happen before anything else can be measured, and name the first five. The rest is still there, but the first move is clear.
•What stays yours
The report and its evidence are yours to use anywhere
The audit runs inside accounts you already own, using read-only access we hand back the day it ends. The written findings, the exported data behind them and the recorded walkthrough all stay with you.
•What you get
PPC Audit Deliverables
You receive the findings, the evidence and the implementation order, written clearly enough for us or your team to act on.
Month One
The audit
✓The wasted spend report — Every non-converting query and placement, totaled in dollars across all three platforms.
✓What the tracking is actually recording — Tag test results, duplicate events found, and every point where reported conversions diverge from real ones.
✓Eight areas, scored red, amber or green — Structure and settings, search terms, match-type overlap, bidding and pacing, quality score, conversion tracking, negative keywords and landing page match.
✓The fix list, ranked by money and effort — Findings ranked by dollar impact against effort, sequenced so the first five moves are unambiguous.
Months 2-3
The handoff
✓A recorded walkthrough call — A recorded session where we explain each finding and answer your team's questions.
✓A 90-day plan for working through it — The fix list mapped to a rough timeline, so you know what to tackle first.
✓How the fixes get done, if you want us to — If you want us to run them, we show how the audit rolls into management.
•Comparison
Compare PPC Audit Services
Compare PPC audit services by whether every finding carries account evidence, a money value and a clear implementation order across Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
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Fixed fee, no retainer
Us
Retainer onlyAgencies
VariesFreelance
In-house
Google, Microsoft, and Amazon
Us
Google onlyAgencies
Google onlyFreelance
In-house
Conversion tracking verified
Us
SometimesAgencies
Freelance
In-house
Dollar-sized fix list
Us
VagueAgencies
Freelance
In-house
Recommendations yours to keep
Us
Sales pitchAgencies
Freelance
In-house
Suff Digital
Other agencies
Freelancers
In-house / DIY
Fixed fee, no retainer
Retainer only
Varies
Google, Microsoft, and Amazon
Google only
Google only
Conversion tracking verified
Sometimes
Dollar-sized fix list
Vague
Recommendations yours to keep
Sales pitch
See the biggest problems in your account before you spend another month.
We review the live account by hand and send back the issues visible from outside, with what we would check first.
•Frequently asked questions
Common Questions
It is the opening stage, before any judgment gets made. We establish what the business counts as a conversion, which accounts and date range are in scope, and what the account is supposed to achieve. Skip it and an audit becomes a list of settings someone dislikes rather than a measure of what is costing money.
•Learn more
PPC guides
Longer reads on the same subject, written by our senior team.
•Ready for real growth?
Find out what the account is costing you before you spend more.
Tell us which accounts to review and roughly what they spend. We come back with the scope and a fixed fee, agreed in writing before work starts.
✓A fixed fee agreed in writing before we start
✓Read-only access, handed back when the report is delivered
✓Recommendations yours to keep
2,500+ businesses served
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•Related services
Services that support PPC.
PPC management services
Implementation and ongoing optimization when you want us to run the fixes after the audit.
Google Ads management services
Rebuild paid search structure, tracking and budget decisions after wasted spend is found.
Conversion rate optimization services
Improve the landing pages and forms that paid traffic reaches after the click.
SEO audit services
Run the same evidence-first review across organic visibility and technical search issues.
PPC Audit Reviews