What does a free Google Ads audit actually get you? Someone looks at your account or your website and tells you what they see. It is free because it starts a conversation, which is fine. The useful questions are what they can actually see, whether you get the findings in writing, and whether you keep them if you never hire anyone.
Why they are free
An audit costs the person doing it an hour or two. They do it for nothing because some of the people who get one will hire them, and an audit shows competence better than a brochure does. That is the whole economics, and there is nothing wrong with it. I do the same thing.
It goes wrong when the audit is written to win the job rather than to describe the account. Small problems get described as urgent, and the "what to do next" section is a phone call instead of an answer. Plenty of buyers have learned to read free audits with some suspicion. That is fair, and it helps to know what an honest one looks like.
What an audit can see without account access
More than you might think. It is worth knowing where the line sits, because a lot of audit offers ask for access before they have earned it. From outside your website, in a real browser, someone who knows what to look for can see:
- Which tracking tags actually load. Google Analytics, Google Ads conversion tags, the Meta pixel, a tag manager. Not by reading the page source, which misses tags loaded by other tags, but by loading the page and watching what it requests.
- Whether the pages your ads land on work. How fast they load, whether the form or booking flow is there and works, and whether the page matches what an ad would promise.
- What ads you are running. Google and Meta both publish advertisers' live ads in public ad libraries, so anyone can see your current ads.
- What your website says you do, which is what your ads will be judged against.
- Your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and how you show up when someone searches your name.
That covers the parts a customer touches. It can tell you that an ad lands on a page with no working form, or that no conversion tag fires when someone sends an enquiry. Those findings are worth having.
What it cannot see, and why that matters
Without account access, nobody can see your spend, your search terms, your cost per enquiry, your bidding settings or the account's change history. Nobody can tell whether the conversions the account counts are real enquiries or button clicks, or whether one campaign is quietly spending the whole budget.
So an outside-in audit cannot honestly tell you what share of your budget is wasted. It has not seen the budget. If an audit done without access puts a number on your waste, that number did not come from your account. That is the single most useful tell.
An honest one says: here is what I can see from outside, here is what I cannot, and here is what I would look at first with read-only access.
Four questions to ask before you hand anything over
- Do I have to get on a call? If the findings only exist inside a call, the audit is a meeting invitation. Ask for them in writing.
- What do you need from me? An outside-in look needs a website address. A look inside needs read-only access, which you grant and remove yourself. Nobody needs your password.
- Do I keep the findings if I do not hire you? The answer should be yes, before you agree to anything.
- Do you only audit, or do you also fix what you find? Neither is wrong, but know which you are talking to. Someone who also fixes has a reason to find problems, so their claims should come with sources.
How mine works
Hold mine to the same four questions. The form at send me your website asks for two things: your website address and an email to reply to. There is one optional question, whether you run ads now. It does not ask for a phone number or account access.
I load your site in a real browser the way described above, then write back with what your ads and tracking can and cannot see from where I stood, and the first thing I would fix. It is in writing, in plain language, and you keep it whether or not we ever talk again. If the first fix needs a look inside the account, I say so and say what read-only access I would need. I do not ask for it up front.
I fix things for a living, so I have an incentive, and you should read my reply with that in mind. I also do not promise what I will find. Some sites are fine, and when that is the answer, that is what the reply says.
If you would rather look yourself first
There are five checks you can run inside your own account in fifteen minutes, and they cover the things an outside look cannot see. How the tracking underneath is supposed to work is in what conversion tracking is and why most accounts get it wrong, and how I run an account once it is measured properly is on the paid advertising page.
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