Bookd — Expert Audit
Google Ads Audit Checklist
Not the generic version. This is how a senior Google Ads strategist actually reviews a home service account — the questions that expose where your budget is bleeding and why your leads aren't booking.
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Conversion Architecture
You know your actual cost per booked job not cost per leadCost per lead is a vanity metric. A $30 lead that never books is more expensive than a $90 lead that becomes a $1,200 job. If you can't answer "what does a booked job cost me" your tracking is incomplete.
Primary conversion action is a real business event not a page view or sessionIf your primary conversion is "visited contact page" Google is optimising for browsers, not buyers. It needs to be a form submission, phone call, or quote request at minimum.
No duplicate conversion actions inflating your reported numbersImporting from both GA4 and a Google Ads tag for the same event doubles reported conversions. Google thinks it's doing twice as well — your Target CPA gets set wrong as a result.
Phone call conversions have a minimum duration threshold at least 60 secondsA 5-second call is a misdial. Counting it as a conversion teaches Google that misdialled calls are good leads. Set 60 seconds minimum, ideally 90, to filter out noise from the signal.
Conversion window matches your actual sales cycle not left at the 30-day defaultIf a plumber calls Monday and books Thursday, a 7-day window misses that attribution entirely. Match the window to how your customers actually behave.
Campaign Strategy
High-value services have their own campaigns with their own budgetsIf emergency drain calls and routine maintenance share a campaign, Google splits budget based on click volume — not job value. Your highest-margin service gets starved. Separate them.
Broad and phrase match are used to discover high-intent search terms for exact targeting, then locked downBroad is a research tool, not a long-term strategy. Use it to find what people actually search, then migrate winners to exact match and add the junk as negatives.
Bid strategy matches your current conversion volumeTarget ROAS with 8 conversions a month will crash. The algorithm needs 30 to 50 conversions in a 30-day window to learn properly. More data first, smarter bidding after.
Display expansion is disabled on all Search campaignsGoogle turns this on by default and buries it in settings. It pushes search budget into Display inventory — completely different intent, dramatically lower conversion rate. Check every campaign right now.
A brand protection campaign is running to own your own nameCompetitors and aggregators regularly bid on your business name. Without a brand campaign you're losing easy conversions to someone else — at cheap CPCs that don't cost you much to own.
Search Terms & Negatives
Search Terms report is reviewed every week not monthlyKeywords show what you're bidding on. Search Terms show what you're actually paying for. These are rarely the same. A week of unchecked broad match can burn hundreds in irrelevant clicks with no way to recoup it.
A shared negative keyword list covers obvious exclusions across all campaignsDIY, "how to", "YouTube", parts suppliers, job postings — build this once and apply it everywhere. Rebuilding negatives per campaign wastes time and guarantees gaps.
Out-of-service-area searches are excluded not just relying on geo-targetingGeo targeting tells Google where to show ads. It does not stop someone in a city you don't serve from searching your target city. You need location-qualified negatives alongside geographic targeting.
Keywords with 60+ days of spend and zero conversions are pausedIf a keyword has eaten $300 and produced nothing, pausing it is not giving up — it's redirecting that budget to what works. Sentiment and attachment is how agencies waste your money quietly month after month.
Ad Quality & Messaging
Headlines speak to the specific job or problem, not just your tradeThe search query tells you what the customer's problem is. The headline should speak to that problem directly. Test multiple angles and let the data show what resonates in your market.
Landing page and ad headline say the same thing message match is tightSomeone clicks "Emergency Plumber — Same Day" and lands on a generic homepage. That's a conversion killer. The first thing they read on the landing page must mirror what got them to click.
Call extensions and call ads are active for mobile trafficA customer with a burst pipe does not want to navigate a website. Call extensions add your number directly to the ad. For emergency searches, removing every friction layer wins jobs.
Pinned headlines are used selectively not locking every positionPinning every headline defeats the purpose of RSAs. Pin position 1 to your strongest value prop, leave the rest free to test. Over-pinned ads have the same limitations as the old Expanded Text Ads Google retired.
Ad scheduling reflects when you actually answer the phoneShowing ads at 11pm when nobody picks up is paying for calls you'll return tomorrow — by which time the customer has already booked someone else. Match scheduling to your actual response capacity.
Landing Page & CVR
Traffic goes to a dedicated landing page not your homepageYour homepage serves everyone. A landing page serves one searcher with one intent. Sending "emergency drain cleaning" traffic to a page that also covers water heater installs and your company history is a distraction machine.
Page loads in under 3 seconds on a 4G mobile connectionTest at pagespeed.web.dev. A 5-second load on mobile loses 50%+ of visitors before they read a word. For emergency searches speed is your conversion rate.
One clear call to action above the fold not three competing optionsCall, fill the form, get a quote, chat, see our services — too many options produces no action. Pick the one that converts best and remove every distraction around it.
You know your landing page conversion rate and track it week over weekIf you don't know this number your CPC is almost meaningless. A 4% CVR vs a 12% CVR on the same campaign produces completely different cost-per-lead. Fix conversion rate before touching bids.
Audience & Remarketing
Website visitor audiences are built and applied in observation mode at minimumObservation mode shows how audiences perform without restricting who sees your ads. Run it 30 days and you'll have real data to justify bid adjustments. Skipping this means flying blind on audience signals.
Converted customers are excluded from prospecting campaignsYou don't need to pay to acquire someone you already have. Exclude converters from Search campaigns and redirect that spend toward finding new customers.
Remarketing targets non-converters with a different, stronger messageSomeone who spent 2 minutes on your drain cleaning page and left is not cold. A remarketing ad for that specific service with a stronger offer converts at 3–5x your cold search rate. Same budget, warmer audience.
Account Hygiene
Google's automated recommendations are reviewed critically never applied blindlyThe "Apply recommendations" button is designed to increase spend, not profit. Broad match suggestions, budget increases, new keywords — review every one. Auto-apply is on by default in some accounts. Turn it off immediately.
You know whether impression share loss is from budget or ad rankLosing to budget and losing to rank are opposite problems that need different fixes. Losing to rank means work on Quality Score — ad relevance, landing page experience, expected CTR. Treating them the same makes both worse.
Core campaigns aren't exhausting budget before end of dayRunning out of budget at 2pm means you're invisible all afternoon — the highest-intent window for home service calls. Tighten targeting so the same budget lasts the full day before increasing spend.
Every significant change is logged with a date and reasonWhen performance drops 30% you need to know if it was a bid change, a keyword pause, a landing page edit, or seasonality. Without a change log you're guessing at causes — and making changes on top of changes you don't understand.
Bookd Bonus — Lead System Audit
Standard Google Ads ends at the lead. This is where it starts.
Every item above covers what most agencies manage. What they don't build is the system that connects ad spend to actual booked revenue. These are the checks that separate a campaign that generates clicks from one that generates jobs.
Call tracking with dynamic number insertion attributes every call to its exact keywordWithout it you know how many calls came from ads. With it, you know which keyword, which ad, which search term drove each call. That's the difference between "ads are working" and "this keyword generates booked jobs at $42 each."
Every lead is scored only qualified leads are sent back to Google as positive signalsSending every lead back teaches Google to find more leads — including junk ones. Score first. Only bookable leads go back as signals. This is the single biggest lever in the entire system.
Booked jobs are imported back as offline conversions with real revenue values attachedWhen Google knows a $1,800 water heater job came from this keyword and a $0 no-show came from that one, it naturally shifts spend toward revenue. Most accounts never send this data. Most accounts never improve past a certain ceiling.
Enhanced conversions are enabled for higher match rates as cookie tracking degradesAs third-party cookies disappear, GCLID-based attribution becomes less reliable. Enhanced conversions use hashed first-party data to match offline events back to clicks — 20–30% more attributed conversions in most accounts.
Value-based bidding is running campaigns optimise for revenue, not just conversion volumeOnce you're passing job values back to Google you can switch from Target CPA to Target ROAS. The algorithm starts chasing high-value jobs, not just any jobs. This is the compound growth layer that makes performance improve automatically over time.
A live dashboard shows every lead, its source, its score, and its outcome in real timeA monthly PDF report is not accountability — it's a highlight reel. A live dashboard showing every inbound lead, where it came from, whether it qualified, and whether it booked gives you the information to make decisions now, not 30 days later.
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