Big AL Consulting Google Ads Waste Check

Brand searches belong in a separate campaign because they behave differently from every other keyword, so mixing them hides what the rest of the account really costs. People already searching for your company name click and convert cheaply, and those results can make a weak generic campaign look healthy. Keeping brand in its own campaign gives you a clean cost per lead for non-brand terms, lets you set a separate budget and bid strategy for each, and makes the search terms report far easier to read.

The waste check expects negative keyword lists for jobs, salaries, courses, DIY searches and competitors you do not want to pay for. These are the searches that most often slip through when nobody reads the search terms report, and each click on them is money with no chance of a lead. The checklist also asks whether someone has read the search terms report in the last 14 days, because negative lists only stay useful when they are updated from real queries. Reviewing search terms every week or two is the habit that keeps waste low.

On a phone, the check asks whether a visitor can call, message or submit a short form without scrolling. It also asks whether each ad group sends people to a page about that exact service or product rather than the homepage, since a homepage forces the visitor to search again for what the ad promised. Ads themselves should carry sitelinks, callouts and a call asset so the ad takes up more space and offers a direct way to get in touch. Landing page and ad questions sit in the same area of the score because they decide whether a paid click becomes an enquiry.

Auto-applied recommendations let Google add keywords or change bids without anyone on your side knowing, so the check asks whether they have been reviewed. The same bidding and budget section asks whether a campaign limited by budget is actually one of your best performers by cost per lead or sale, since budget caps belong on winners, not on campaigns nobody has evaluated. If Performance Max is running, the check wants to know whether brand exclusions and final URL expansion have been reviewed, because both settings decide where that campaign is allowed to spend.

Account ownership is one of the six areas in the check because a business should own its Google Ads account outright, with admin access in its own name. When an agency or a former employee holds the account, the company can lose its history, conversion data and the ability to switch partners cleanly. The ownership question sits alongside tracking, targeting, keywords, ads and pages, and bidding and budget, which are the areas reviewed first in every account taken over. Fixing ownership costs nothing in media spend and protects everything else you repair later.