PPC Audit Guide: How to Optimise Your Ad Campaigns in 2026

Why PPC Audits Matter

A PPC audit is a systematic examination of your pay-per-click advertising campaigns to identify inefficiencies, uncover wasted spend, and find opportunities for improvement. Whether you manage your own campaigns or work with an agency, regular audits are essential for maintaining campaign health and maximising return on ad spend.

PPC campaigns degrade over time without active management. Search behaviour changes, competitors adjust their strategies, platform algorithms evolve, and new features become available. An account that performed well six months ago may now have significant inefficiencies that quietly drain your budget without delivering proportional results.

For Singapore businesses, where Google Ads costs can be substantial in competitive industries, the financial impact of an unaudited account is significant. We regularly see audits uncover 20 to 40 per cent of ad spend going to irrelevant clicks, poor-performing keywords, or misconfigured settings. That wasted spend could fund entirely new campaigns or be redirected to channels delivering better returns.

A thorough PPC audit examines every layer of your campaigns: account structure, keyword targeting, bidding strategies, ad copy, landing pages, quality scores, conversion tracking, and budget allocation. Each layer can contain issues that compound to reduce your overall campaign effectiveness.

We recommend conducting a comprehensive PPC audit quarterly, with lighter monthly check-ups on key performance indicators. If you are taking over management of an existing account, or if you have not audited in more than three months, a full audit should be your first priority.

Account Structure Review

Account structure is the foundation of PPC campaign performance. A poorly structured account makes every other optimisation more difficult because issues cascade through misaligned campaigns and ad groups. Start your PPC audit here.

Evaluate your campaign structure against these criteria:

Campaign organisation — campaigns should be organised by business objective, product/service category, or match type. Avoid catch-all campaigns that combine unrelated products or services.
Ad group granularity — each ad group should contain tightly themed keywords that share the same intent. If an ad group contains more than 15 to 20 keywords, it is likely too broad and needs splitting.
Campaign naming conventions — use clear, consistent naming that makes it easy to identify campaign purpose, target audience, and match type at a glance
Network settings — check whether Search campaigns are accidentally serving on the Display Network, which often wastes search budgets on low-intent impressions
Location targeting — verify that your campaigns target the correct geographic areas. For Singapore businesses, ensure targeting is set to Singapore specifically, not broadly to the Asia-Pacific region.

Common structural problems we identify during PPC audits:

Single keyword ad groups overuse — while SKAGs were once best practice, modern responsive search ads perform better with slightly broader ad groups that give Google’s algorithm enough data to optimise
Duplicate keywords across campaigns — when the same keyword appears in multiple campaigns, your ads compete against each other, driving up costs unnecessarily
Missing campaign types — many accounts rely exclusively on search campaigns when Performance Max, shopping, or video campaigns could deliver incremental results
Outdated campaign structures — accounts built years ago may still use structures designed for exact match and manual bidding that do not align with current platform capabilities

Your Google Ads account structure should reflect how your business is organised and how your customers search. A well-structured account makes reporting clearer, optimisation easier, and budget allocation more precise.

Keyword Analysis and Optimisation

Keyword analysis is typically the highest-impact section of a PPC audit. Keywords determine who sees your ads, and inefficiencies here directly translate to wasted spend. A thorough keyword audit examines your keyword portfolio from multiple angles.

Start with a search terms report. This shows the actual queries that triggered your ads over the past 30, 60, and 90 days. Look for:

Irrelevant search terms — queries that triggered your ads but have no relevance to your business. These need to be added as negative keywords immediately.
High-spend, low-conversion terms — keywords consuming significant budget without generating conversions. Evaluate whether these terms need pausing, bid reduction, or landing page changes.
Valuable terms you are not targeting — search terms driving conversions that you have not added as dedicated keywords. Adding these gives you more control over bids and ad copy.
Match type performance — compare how broad, phrase, and exact match keywords perform. Broad match may be driving irrelevant traffic that inflates costs.

Review your negative keyword lists. This is one of the most neglected aspects of PPC management, and a thorough PPC audit almost always reveals significant gaps. Build comprehensive negative keyword lists at both the campaign and account level. Include obvious irrelevant terms as well as subtler terms that attract the wrong audience.

Evaluate keyword quality scores. Google assigns quality scores from 1 to 10 based on expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Keywords with quality scores below 5 are actively penalised with higher costs per click. Identify low-quality-score keywords and develop plans to improve them or replace them. Our Google Ads quality score guide provides detailed strategies for improvement.

Assess keyword coverage. Are there valuable search terms related to your business that you are not targeting at all? Conduct fresh keyword research to identify gaps. Compare your keyword portfolio against competitor ads to find opportunities you may have missed.

Check for keyword cannibalisation — multiple keywords within the same account competing for the same queries. This internal competition inflates your costs and confuses Google’s ad selection. Consolidate overlapping keywords and use negative keywords to direct traffic to the intended campaigns.

Bidding Strategy Audit

Your bidding strategy determines how much you pay for each click and how aggressively your ads compete in auctions. A bidding strategy that worked well when initially set may no longer be optimal as campaign data accumulates and platform bidding options evolve.

Review each campaign’s bidding strategy against its objective. Our Google Ads bidding strategies guide covers the full range of options, but the key alignment is:

Maximise conversions — appropriate for campaigns with sufficient conversion data (at least 30 conversions per month) and a primary goal of driving actions
Target CPA — suitable when you have a clear cost-per-acquisition target and enough conversion history for the algorithm to optimise effectively
Target ROAS — ideal for e-commerce campaigns where you can track revenue and want to optimise for return on ad spend
Manual CPC — appropriate for new campaigns with limited data, niche markets, or situations where you need granular control over individual keyword bids
Maximise clicks — useful for traffic-focused campaigns but risky for conversion-focused campaigns as it prioritises volume over quality

Common bidding issues uncovered in PPC audits:

Automated bidding without enough data — smart bidding strategies require sufficient conversion volume to work effectively. Campaigns with fewer than 15 conversions per month often perform poorly with automated bidding.
Misaligned bid strategies — using a traffic-focused strategy (maximise clicks) for a campaign whose goal is conversions, or vice versa
Stale CPA or ROAS targets — targets set months ago may no longer reflect current market conditions, competitive landscape, or business economics
No bid adjustments — failing to adjust bids for device, location, time of day, or audience segments leaves performance on the table
Portfolio bid strategy misuse — grouping campaigns with fundamentally different objectives or margins under a single portfolio strategy

Analyse your auction insights report to understand your competitive position. If competitors consistently outbid you, evaluate whether increasing bids or improving quality scores would be more cost-effective. Sometimes the best response to aggressive competitor bidding is improving ad relevance rather than increasing spend.

Review bid adjustments for devices, demographics, locations, and time scheduling. Mobile performance often differs significantly from desktop. Certain demographics may convert at higher rates. Specific hours or days may deliver better results. Set bid adjustments based on actual performance data, not assumptions.

Ad Copy and Creative Review

Your ad copy directly affects click-through rate, quality score, and conversion rate. During a PPC audit, evaluate every active ad against best practices and performance data to identify improvement opportunities.

For responsive search ads, review the following:

Headline variety — provide at least 10 to 15 unique headlines that cover different value propositions, features, and calls to action. Avoid repetitive headlines that limit Google’s testing options.
Description quality — write four descriptions that complement your headlines and provide additional detail. Include keywords, benefits, and clear calls to action.
Pin usage — use headline and description pinning sparingly. Over-pinning restricts Google’s ability to optimise ad combinations. Only pin when specific messaging must always appear in a specific position.
Ad strength indicator — aim for “Good” or “Excellent” ad strength. “Poor” or “Average” ads need more headline and description variety.
Asset performance — review which headlines and descriptions Google rates as “Best,” “Good,” or “Low” and replace underperformers

Evaluate ad extensions (now called assets) across all campaigns:

Sitelink assets — are you using sitelinks to direct users to relevant landing pages? Are they current and well-written?
Callout assets — do your callouts highlight unique selling points, guarantees, or differentiators?
Structured snippet assets — are you using relevant headers (services, types, brands) to provide additional information?
Call assets — if phone calls are valuable, are you using call extensions with correct phone numbers?
Image assets — are you leveraging image extensions to increase ad real estate and engagement?

A/B testing should be ongoing. If you have been running the same ads for more than 60 days without testing variants, your audit should flag this as a priority. Continuous testing of headlines, descriptions, and calls to action is how top-performing accounts maintain their edge.

Check for message match between ad copy and landing pages. If your ad promises “free consultation” but the landing page does not mention it, you create a disconnect that reduces conversion rates and damages quality scores. Every promise in your ad must be fulfilled on the landing page.

Landing Page Audit

Landing pages are where conversions happen — or fail to happen. Your PPC audit must evaluate landing pages as carefully as the campaigns themselves. A brilliant campaign driving traffic to a poor landing page is a budget furnace.

Assess each landing page against these criteria:

Message match — does the landing page headline align with the ad copy? Do visitors immediately see that they have arrived at the right place?
Load speed — test page load times on mobile and desktop. Every additional second of load time increases bounce rate significantly. Aim for under three seconds on mobile.
Mobile experience — is the landing page fully functional and easy to use on mobile devices? Mobile traffic typically accounts for 60 to 70 per cent of PPC clicks.
Clear call to action — is there a single, prominent call to action that tells visitors exactly what to do next? Multiple competing CTAs reduce conversion rates.
Form length — for lead generation, is the form asking for only the information you genuinely need? Every additional field reduces completion rates.
Trust signals — does the page include testimonials, reviews, certifications, or guarantees that build confidence?
Content relevance — does the page content directly address the search intent of the keywords driving traffic to it?

Review your conversion tracking setup. This is a critical part of any PPC audit. Verify that conversions are being tracked correctly, that duplicate conversions are not being counted, and that conversion actions align with actual business outcomes. Incorrect conversion tracking leads to flawed optimisation decisions and misleading performance reports.

Check that each campaign or ad group directs traffic to the most relevant landing page. Generic homepage traffic from specific keyword campaigns wastes the specificity of your targeting. Create dedicated landing pages for your highest-spend keyword themes to maximise relevance and conversion rates.

Your PPC marketing performance is only as strong as your weakest landing page. Prioritise landing page improvements for campaigns with high traffic but below-average conversion rates — these represent the highest-impact optimisation opportunities.

Quality Score Assessment

Quality score is Google’s assessment of how relevant and useful your ads and landing pages are to users. It directly affects your cost per click and ad position. A thorough PPC audit must evaluate quality scores at the keyword level and develop strategies for improvement.

Quality score comprises three components:

Expected click-through rate — Google’s prediction of how likely your ad is to be clicked when shown. This reflects ad copy relevance and appeal.
Ad relevance — how closely your ad matches the intent behind a user’s search query. Tightly themed ad groups with keyword-aligned copy score well here.
Landing page experience — how relevant, transparent, and easy to navigate your landing page is for users who click your ad

During your audit, export keyword-level quality scores and categorise them:

Quality scores 8-10 — excellent. These keywords are well-optimised. Monitor them but do not fix what is not broken.
Quality scores 5-7 — average. These keywords have improvement potential. Analyse which component (CTR, relevance, or landing page) is dragging the score down and address it.
Quality scores 1-4 — poor. These keywords are costing you significantly more per click. Either improve them urgently or consider pausing them and finding better alternatives.

Low quality scores inflate your costs in two ways. First, you pay a higher CPC than competitors with better quality scores bidding on the same keywords. Second, your ads appear in lower positions, reducing click-through rates and conversions. The compounding effect means that a quality score of 4 can cost you two to three times as much per conversion as a quality score of 8.

Improvement strategies differ by component. For expected CTR, improve your ad copy with stronger headlines, more compelling offers, and clearer calls to action. For ad relevance, tighten your ad groups so keywords and ads are more closely aligned. For landing page experience, improve page speed, content relevance, and user experience.

Work with your performance marketing team to establish quality score benchmarks and improvement targets. Track quality scores monthly and correlate changes with your optimisation activities to understand what moves the needle.

Budget and Waste Analysis

The budget and waste analysis brings together findings from all previous audit sections to quantify how much of your PPC spend is delivering value and how much is being wasted. This is often the most eye-opening section of a PPC audit.

Common sources of wasted PPC spend:

Irrelevant search terms — clicks from searches unrelated to your business. Quantify the spend on irrelevant terms from your search terms report.
Low-quality traffic — clicks from keywords with consistently poor conversion rates. Calculate the cost of maintaining these underperforming keywords.
Display Network leakage — Search campaigns accidentally serving on the Display Network, generating cheap but low-quality clicks
Geographic waste — clicks from locations outside your service area due to broad geographic targeting
Time-of-day waste — spend during hours when your audience is not searching or converting, such as overnight for B2B campaigns
Device waste — disproportionate spend on devices that do not convert, without appropriate bid adjustments
Duplicate keywords — internal competition between your own campaigns driving up auction prices

Calculate your wasted spend percentage. Add up all identifiable wasted spend and divide by total spend. A well-managed account typically wastes less than 10 per cent. Accounts that have not been audited recently often waste 25 to 40 per cent or more.

Budget allocation analysis examines whether your spend is distributed optimally across campaigns. Compare each campaign’s share of budget against its share of conversions and revenue. Campaigns that consume disproportionate budget relative to their output are candidates for budget reduction, while high-performing campaigns limited by budget deserve more investment.

Review your impression share data. If high-performing campaigns are losing impression share due to budget constraints, you have a clear optimisation opportunity: redirect wasted spend from underperforming campaigns to budget-constrained performers.

Create a prioritised action plan from your audit findings. Rank recommendations by estimated impact and implementation effort. Quick wins — like adding negative keywords and fixing targeting settings — should be implemented immediately. Larger structural changes should be planned and executed systematically.

Document your audit findings and recommendations in a format that allows you to track progress over time. When you conduct your next PPC audit, compare results against this baseline to measure improvement. This continuous improvement cycle is what separates consistently profitable Google Ads accounts from those that slowly bleed budget without delivering results.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should I conduct a PPC audit?

Conduct a comprehensive PPC audit quarterly, covering all aspects from account structure through to budget waste analysis. Perform lighter monthly check-ups focused on key performance indicators, search terms, and negative keywords. If you are taking over a new account, inheriting campaigns from a previous agency, or have experienced a significant performance change, conduct an immediate full audit regardless of the regular schedule.

What are the most common PPC audit findings?

The most common findings across PPC audits include insufficient negative keywords (allowing irrelevant clicks), poor ad group granularity (too many unrelated keywords grouped together), missing or outdated ad extensions, incorrect conversion tracking, and budget misallocation between high and low-performing campaigns. For Singapore accounts, we also frequently find geographic targeting set too broadly and ad scheduling not aligned with local business hours and audience behaviour patterns.

Can I audit my PPC campaigns myself or do I need an agency?

You can conduct a basic PPC audit yourself using the checklist in this guide if you have a working knowledge of Google Ads. However, experienced PPC specialists bring pattern recognition from auditing hundreds of accounts, knowledge of platform changes and best practices, and an objective perspective free from the biases that develop when you manage your own campaigns daily. For accounts spending more than a few thousand dollars monthly, a professional audit typically pays for itself through the savings and improvements it identifies.

What tools do I need for a PPC audit?

At minimum, you need access to your Google Ads account (including the search terms report, auction insights, and quality score data), Google Analytics for conversion and behaviour analysis, and a spreadsheet tool for data analysis. Optional but helpful tools include SEMrush or SpyFu for competitor analysis, Google PageSpeed Insights for landing page speed assessment, and call tracking software if phone leads are important. The Google Ads Editor desktop application is useful for making bulk changes based on your audit findings.

How do I prioritise PPC audit recommendations?

Prioritise by estimated impact multiplied by ease of implementation. Quick, high-impact actions come first: adding negative keywords, fixing conversion tracking, correcting geographic targeting, and pausing consistently underperforming keywords. Medium-priority actions include ad copy improvements, bid strategy adjustments, and landing page optimisations. Lower-priority but still valuable actions include account restructuring, new campaign types, and advanced audience targeting. Implement changes methodically, measuring the impact of each change before moving to the next.

PPC Audit Guide: How to Optimise Your Ad Campaigns in 2026