"Audit" is a word agencies use to mean a sales call with a spreadsheet attached. So it is fair to ask what is actually being checked before paying for one.
Here is the entire checklist. If you have the time and the access, you can work through most of it yourself, and this post is written so that you can. The reason people pay for it is that it takes a day or two of focused work, and knowing which of thirty findings to fix first is most of the value.
1. Conversion action inventory
Every conversion action in the account, listed with its source, category, counting setting, conversion window, attribution model, and whether it is primary or secondary.
Most accounts have accumulated actions over years and nobody has read the full list recently. The inventory alone usually surfaces something, most often a micro-conversion like a PDF download or a scroll event sitting in the primary column and steering the bidding.
2. Duplicate detection
Whether the same real event is being counted more than once: a native tag plus an imported GA4 key event, one tag on two triggers, a thank-you page that counts on every view, or a second tag manager container left over from a redesign.
This is the finding that changes numbers most dramatically, and it is the one worth fixing first when it turns up.
3. Tag firing verification
Not whether the tags exist. Whether they fire, once, on a real submission.
This means submitting a test lead and watching what happens: which tags fire, how many times, with what values, and whether anything fires that should not.
4. Auto-tagging and click ID integrity
Whether auto-tagging is on, whether the GCLID survives every redirect between the ad and the form, and whether it is still present on third-party booking tools, payment pages, and any subdomain in the path.
Redirects that strip query parameters are common and invisible until someone looks.
5. Enhanced conversions status
Whether enhanced conversions are configured, whether the customer data terms were accepted, whether user-provided data is actually being collected at the moment the tag fires, and what the diagnostics tab reports about match quality.
Configured and working are different states, and the interface does not make the difference obvious.
6. GA4 configuration
Key events, which ones are imported into Google Ads, internal traffic and developer filters, data retention settings, and whether the property's time zone matches the Google Ads account.
7. Consent mode
Whether consent mode is implemented, which version, whether it is wired to your actual banner, and what happens to measurement when a visitor declines. A consent banner that blocks tags without consent mode in place produces silent, uneven data loss.
8. Call tracking
Which platform, what fires as a conversion, whether a qualification or duration threshold exists, what data the integrations send to ad platforms, and whether conversion action names describe anything sensitive.
9. Form and booking path
Every route a lead can take to reach you, tested end to end. Main contact form, embedded booking tools, chat widgets, phone links, and any secondary forms buried on service pages.
Embedded tools are where tracking most often breaks, because the conversion happens inside an iframe on somebody else's domain.
10. CRM handoff
Whether submissions reliably land in the CRM, whether the click identifier is captured and stored on the contact, and whether it carries through to the deal.
This is the prerequisite for offline conversion import, and it is usually the thing that is missing.
11. Offline import readiness
Whether closed deals can be sent back to Google Ads, whether your sales cycle fits inside the conversion window, and which pipeline stage is the right one to import.
12. Attribution and window settings
Conversion windows against actual days-to-conversion data, attribution model, and whether the account's reporting can be reconciled month to month.
13. Reconciliation
The three numbers compared directly: Google Ads, GA4, and the CRM, over a window long enough to be meaningful. The output is either an explanation for the gap or a finding.
What you get
A written document. Every finding, what it means in plain language, what the fix is, and the order to do them in, with the ones that affect bidding at the top.
Not a call, unless you want one. Not a deck. Not a pitch for a retainer at the end.
What it is not
It is not a campaign audit. Keywords, ad copy, bidding strategy, budget allocation and landing page quality are a different review. That is the Google Ads Audit at $399.
It is not implementation. The audit tells you what is broken and how to fix it. Your team or your developer does the fixing, or you hire us separately for it. Keeping those separate is deliberate, because an audit that exists to sell you the fix is not an audit.
Should you just do it yourself?
If you have a technically confident person with GTM access and two clear days, yes, genuinely. Work down this list in order. Everything here is checkable with access you already have.
Pay for it when nobody on the team has the time or the tag manager fluency, when you have inherited an account nobody understands, or when the numbers have been disputed long enough that an outside answer is worth more than an internal one.
Get the audit
$599, fixed fee. Written findings, ranked, usually within a few business days. No retainer, no call required first, and the findings are yours whether or not you ever work with us again.
