Find the 30% of your Google Ads spend that's being wasted

Most Google Ads accounts are leaking 25-50% of their monthly spend to queries that will never convert. The waste compounds because Google's algorithm rewards accounts that perform well, penalising the bad ones with higher CPCs over time. So a leaking account leaks more month after month.

This is the 12-step checklist we run on every paid-account audit. It takes about 45 minutes the first time and reliably surfaces the biggest waste sources.

Open the Search Terms report. Sort by clicks descending. Read the first 200 search terms aloud (or just visually scan).

What you're looking for: terms that have nothing to do with what you sell. A Pattaya hotel showing for `cheap hostel pattaya backpacker dorm` is wasting money — that searcher will not book a hotel.

Action: every irrelevant search term goes into your Negative Keywords list. Most accounts we audit have zero negative keywords. Building a 50-200 entry list typically cuts spend 15-25%.

Filter your campaigns by match type. Count what percentage of spend goes to broad match keywords.

What you're looking for: broad match keywords with high spend but low conversion rate. Broad match in 2026 is much wider than the old broad match — it triggers on semantically related queries that often have no commercial intent.

Action: convert high-spend, low-conversion broad match keywords to phrase match or exact match. You'll lose volume but the volume you keep converts dramatically better.

In the Keywords tab, add the Quality Score column. Sort ascending.

What you're looking for: any keyword with Quality Score under 5. Google charges you a CPC premium proportional to how low your QS is — a QS 3 keyword costs roughly 2-3x more per click than a QS 7 keyword for the same position.

Action: pause QS 1-3 keywords entirely unless they're business-critical. For QS 4-5 keywords, improve the landing page relevance or move them to a tighter ad group with more aligned copy.

Before looking at any conversion data, verify the tracking actually works.

What to check: - Open the Conversions section. Is there a green "Eligible" status next to your primary conversion action? - Is the conversion being counted from the right page (the thank-you page, not the form-submit page)? - Is Google Analytics 4 connected and importing conversions correctly? - Are phone call conversions tracked separately if calls matter? - Are WhatsApp / LINE click events tracked (most accounts miss this entirely)?

If any of those is broken, the rest of the audit data is unreliable. Fix tracking first.

Open the Ad Schedule report. Look for hour-of-day and day-of-week performance.

What you're looking for: hours or days where you spend money but get no conversions. Common pattern: ads running 24/7 but converting only between 9am-9pm Thailand time. The 9pm-9am spend is mostly wasted.

Action: schedule ads only during converting hours, or set a 50% bid modifier reduction for low-performing periods.

In the Locations report, check where your impressions and clicks are coming from.

What you're looking for: clicks from locations you don't serve. A Pattaya restaurant getting clicks from Khon Kaen is wasting money — the searcher will not drive 7 hours for dinner.

Action: tighten your location targeting to the actual service radius. For physical businesses, a 10-25 km radius around your address typically captures the relevant market without bleeding budget.

Open the Devices report.

What you're looking for: a major mismatch between spend and conversion rate by device. Common pattern: 60% of spend on mobile, but conversion rate 3x higher on desktop.

Action: bid modifiers per device — increase the bid 20-50% on the converting device, decrease on the underperforming one. Or, if mobile pages are the actual problem, fix those (see our Core Web Vitals post).

For each ad group, count active ads.

What you're looking for: ad groups with only one or two active ads. Google's algorithm needs at least three running ads to optimise the rotation properly.

Action: every ad group should have 3-5 active ads at all times. Disable underperformers, add new variants, keep rotation active.

Check whether you have account-level (not just campaign-level) negative keyword lists.

What you're looking for: missing standard exclusions like `jobs`, `salary`, `career`, `internship`, `free`, `cheap`, `pirate`, `crack`, `torrent`, etc.

Action: build a foundational negative keyword list of 200-500 entries and apply it at account level. We share a Thai-market-specific starter list with every client.

In the Audiences section, check what audiences your ads exclude — for B2B campaigns this is the highest-impact lever.

What you're looking for: are you serving ads to your existing customers (already converted)? That's usually waste unless you're explicitly doing repeat-purchase remarketing.

Action: add your customer list as an excluded audience on top-of-funnel campaigns. Remarketing campaigns are different — those WANT to reach past converters.

Click through to each of your major landing pages from the ad. Don't read it — score it.

Score against: - Does the page load in under 3 seconds on mobile? - Does the page headline match the ad headline? - Is the primary CTA above the fold on mobile? - Are there fewer than 3 form fields if it's a lead-gen page? - Is the phone number / LINE / WhatsApp prominently visible?

Landing pages scoring under 4/5 here are pulling down your Quality Scores and burning click money.

Open the Auction Insights report.

What you're looking for: competitors who consistently outrank you with lower position bids. They have better Quality Scores and are paying less per click than you are. That's a signal to invest in your QS rather than raise bids.

We've run this checklist on 30+ accounts. Average impact:

• 25-40% reduction in monthly spend within the first 30 days
• Same or higher conversion volume because the cut spend was on non-converting traffic
• 15-30% improvement in Quality Score average across the account over 60 days
• Compounding effect: better QS = lower CPC = more conversions per dollar = even better QS

If you run this audit yourself and want a second opinion on what to do with the findings, the audit findings format you'd hand to us looks like: a Search Terms export (CSV), screenshot of Quality Score distribution, and the geographic + device reports. We can review and quote a remediation in under 4 hours.