Inherited an "Okay" Google Ads Account? Here's How to Tell If It's Actually Broken

You Didn't Build This. But Now You Own It.

The previous agency said results were "solid." Your predecessor signed off on the reports. The numbers in the dashboard look... okay.

But something does not sit right.

Maybe conversions are steady but profit is flat. Maybe you cannot get a straight answer about what is actually working. Maybe you have inherited an account that everyone says is fine, but nobody can explain.

This is your checklist.

The Feed: Where Problems Hide

Your product feed is the foundation. If it is broken, nothing else matters.

Check these immediately:

• Title structure: Are your product titles optimised for search, or just pulled from your CMS? "Blue Widget" versus "Men's Blue Running Trainers Size 10 | Brand Name" is the difference between visibility and obscurity.

• Custom labels: Are they being used? Are they strategic? Custom labels should map to commercial intent (margin tiers, priority products, seasonal items), not just category taxonomy.

• GTINs and identifiers: Missing or incorrect product identifiers tank your eligibility for Shopping placements. Run a feed diagnostics check.

• Supplemental feeds: Is anyone using them? Supplemental feeds let you layer in commercial data without touching your primary feed. If they are not in use, you are leaving control on the table.

Campaign Structure: Clarity or Chaos?

Pull up the campaign view. What do you see?

Red flags:

• A single Performance Max campaign running everything
• Legacy campaigns with "DO NOT TOUCH" in the name
• Multiple campaigns targeting the same products or audiences
• Search campaigns with broad match keywords and no negative lists
• Brand and non-brand traffic blended together

What good looks like:

• Clear separation between brand defence and prospecting
• Performance Max asset groups aligned to commercial priorities, not product categories
• Standard Shopping campaigns for products requiring granular control
• Search campaigns with tight theme-based ad groups and active query sculpting

If you cannot explain the structure in two sentences, it is probably too complex—or not complex enough in the right places.

Search Query Control: The Hidden Disaster

This is where "okay" accounts reveal themselves as broken.

For Search campaigns:

• Export the last 90 days of search terms
• Calculate the percentage of spend on exact match versus close variants versus completely unrelated queries
• Check when negative keywords were last added
• Look for competitor terms, misspellings, and intent mismatches

For Performance Max:

• You won't see everything (by design), but you can see some search themes
• Compare these to your actual product range
• Look for alarming gaps between what people searched and what you sell

If nobody has touched the search query report in months, the account is bleeding money somewhere.

SKU Visibility: Who Is Actually Getting Traffic?

Run a product-level performance report.

What to look for:

• Spend concentration (is 80% of budget going to 10% of products?)
• Margin correlation (are high-spend products also high-margin?)
• Zero-impression products (what is not showing at all?)
• Low-CTR products (are these poorly optimised or just wrong for Shopping?)

The most common finding: the algorithm is optimising for easy conversions, not profitable ones. Products that convert quickly at any margin get rewarded. Products with higher margins but longer consideration cycles get starved.

Conversion Tracking: The Foundation Nobody Checks

Before you trust any performance data, verify the tracking.

Critical checks:

• Is the Google Ads conversion tag firing correctly?
• Are duplicate conversions being counted?
• Is revenue data accurate (compare to backend sales data)
• Are micro-conversions inflating the numbers?
• Is cross-domain tracking working?

Many "okay" accounts are reporting numbers that have no relationship to actual business outcomes. If revenue in Google Ads does not match revenue in your system, you have a tracking problem—and every decision made from that data is wrong.

Attribution: Reality Check

Check the attribution model in use.

• Data-driven attribution can obscure which channels actually drive value
• Last-click is outdated but at least honest
• First-click massively overcredits prospecting

Then compare:

• Reported conversions in Google Ads
• Actual orders in your system
• The delta between them

If the gap is more than 10-15%, something is misconfigured.

The Honest Assessment

After running through this checklist, you will be in one of three positions:

1. Actually fine: The account is well-structured, tracking is accurate, and results reflect reality. This is rare.

2. Salvageable: Core structure is sound but execution is sloppy. Needs cleanup, not reconstruction.

3. Rebuild required: Fundamental problems with structure, tracking, or strategy that cannot be patched. Better to start fresh.

What Comes Next

If this checklist confirmed your suspicions, you have a decision to make.

You can ask your current agency to fix it (and hope they will be honest about their own work). You can try to fix it internally (if you have the resource and expertise). Or you can get an independent audit from someone with no vested interest in the current setup.

Whatever you choose, do not accept "okay" when your instincts say otherwise.

Book a strategy call if you want to discuss what you found.

For a complete breakdown of what we look for in an ecommerce Google Ads audit, see our audit methodology. For Performance Max-specific issues, see our PMax audit service.