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Free Google Ads Audit: Find Wasted Spend in Your Search Terms Report

Updated September 2026 · Written and maintained by the Progression Agency strategy team

A free Google Ads audit that needs no account access. Paste your Search Terms report and see non-converting spend, negative keyword candidates ranked by cost, and your brand versus non-brand split — calculated in your browser.

On this page · 9 sections
  1. What a Google Ads audit should actually find
  2. Why this does not ask for access to your account
  3. Non-converting spend is the number to start with
  4. Brand and non-brand must be judged separately
  5. What the search terms report cannot tell you
  6. Match types, and why waste is usually a structural problem
  7. Budget: how much should you actually be spending?
  8. A sensible order of work after the audit
  9. What your conversion action is actually counting

The short answerMost free Google Ads audits are a lead form attached to a surface scan. The money in a search account leaks mainly in one place: queries you paid for that were never going to buy, and that is visible in a single export. Paste the Search Terms report and this tool reports how much went to terms that never converted, ranks the negative keyword candidates by cost, and separates brand from non-brand so the headline figure is not flattered by people searching your own name. What it cannot see is anything after the click, which is where the biggest misjudgements happen.

A search terms report ends at the click. It cannot show landing page relevance, lead quality or close rate, and those decide profitability. Treat the output as where to look, not as a verdict. Search volumes and cost-per-click figures quoted are Ubersuggest, United States, September 2026.

What a Google Ads audit should actually find

Most free Google Ads audits are a lead form. You enter your details, something scans the surface of the account, and a PDF arrives listing structural observations you could have made yourself.

The money in a search account leaks in one place above all others: queries you paid for that were never going to buy. That is visible in one export, and the arithmetic is simple. This tool does that part, from data you already have, without touching your account.

Google Ads search terms auditor

Paste the Search Terms report and see where the money actually went: non-converting spend, negative keyword candidates ranked by cost, and your brand versus non-brand split.

Results appear here.

Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you paste is uploaded, logged or stored — which is also why it takes pasted text rather than a URL: a browser cannot read another site’s files without that site’s permission.

What a real audit looks at, in orderWhat a real audit looks at, in order
Steps three to five are what this tool does from one export. Step six needs your own sales data and is where the biggest misjudgements happen.

Why this does not ask for access to your account

Every audit tool that connects by OAuth is asking for standing read access to your advertising data, usually indefinitely.

It is not necessary for this. The Search Terms report is one export and it contains what matters. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and there is no connection to revoke afterwards.

How to get the export

  1. Open your Google Ads account and choose a date range of at least 90 days.
  2. Go to Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms.
  3. Add the Conversions column if it is not showing; without it the waste figure is guesswork.
  4. Select all rows, copy, and paste straight into the box above.
  5. Or download as CSV and paste the file contents.

Use ninety days, not thirty

A thirty-day window on a low-volume account produces a table where almost everything has one click and no conversions, which tells you nothing. Ninety days gives the tail enough time to show which terms genuinely never convert.

Non-converting spend is the number to start with

The first figure the tool reports is how much you spent on search terms that produced no conversion at all, excluding single-click noise.

In most accounts that is between a quarter and a half of total spend. It is not all recoverable, because some of those terms are relevant and simply have not converted yet, but it is where the recoverable money lives.

Why the click threshold matters

A term with one click and no conversion tells you nothing; at a 5% conversion rate you would expect twenty clicks before one converts. Setting the threshold at three or more clicks filters the noise. On a high-volume account, raise it.

Read every term before you exclude it

  • A relevant term that has not converted yet is not waste; it is insufficient data.
  • A term that is clearly the wrong intent is waste regardless of how few clicks it has.
  • Research queries and job seekers are almost always safe to exclude.
  • Competitor names are a deliberate strategy decision, not an automatic exclusion.
  • Anything mentioning free, cheap or grants is usually a budget mismatch rather than a bad keyword.

Adding negatives is not the only fix

If a broad-matched keyword is producing dozens of irrelevant queries, adding forty negatives treats the symptom. Tightening the match type treats the cause and takes one change instead of forty.

Patterns in non-converting terms, and what each one means
Pattern in the queryWhat the searcher wantsUsual action
how, what, why, guide, ideasInformation, not a supplierExclude, or serve with content instead of ads
jobs, salary, hiring, careersEmploymentExclude
diy, yourself, how to buildTo do it themselvesExclude
free, cheap, grants, discountA budget you cannot serveUsually exclude
a competitor’s nameA specific rivalDeliberate decision, not automatic
a city you do not serveA supplier elsewhereFix location targeting, not just negatives
your own brand nameYou, specificallySeparate campaign; never blend with non-brand

Brand and non-brand must be judged separately

If someone searches your business name and clicks your ad, you paid for a visit you would very often have received anyway.

Brand terms convert at high rates and cost little, so blending them into the account average makes the whole thing look healthier than it is. The number that tells you whether advertising is working is the non-brand cost per conversion.

What a large brand share usually means

  • Above roughly forty per cent of spend on brand, the blended figure is mostly measuring your existing reputation.
  • It is not automatically wrong to bid on your own name, particularly if competitors do.
  • It is wrong to report the blended number as the performance of the advertising.
  • Separating them into different campaigns makes the distinction structural rather than something you have to remember.

The question to ask

If you paused brand entirely for two weeks, how much of that volume would arrive organically instead? Nobody knows precisely, but the honest answer is rarely zero, and that is the portion of brand spend that is buying something you already had.

What this page's keywords cost to buyWhat this page's keywords cost to buy
Forty-seven dollars a click at difficulty 24 is the best ratio found across every keyword sweep in this project. Agencies bid hard on this because the people searching it have a live account and a budget.

What the search terms report cannot tell you

It shows what people typed and what it cost. It stops at the click.

Everything that decides whether the account made money happens after that: whether the landing page matched the query, whether the enquiry was qualified, and whether it closed. A term with a low cost per conversion and a five per cent close rate is worse than an expensive term that closes at forty.

The data you need alongside it

  • Close rate by source, which almost nobody measures and which changes every conclusion.
  • Average job value, because a cheap conversion on a small job is not a win.
  • Gross margin, because that is what sets your break-even.
  • Sales lag, because a service enquiry may close two months after the click.

Where to take those numbers next

Once you know your close rate and margin, the separate break-even calculator on this site converts them into the highest cost per click your account can actually sustain. That figure is what should set bids, rather than a blanket target.

Search terms — What was typed. Where waste shows.
Negatives — What you excluded. Usually too few.
Match types — How loose. Sets the ceiling.
Brand split — Who searched you. Flatters blended.
Cost per conv — The headline. Not the answer.
Close rate — After the click. Invisible here.

Match types, and why waste is usually a structural problem

The Search Terms report is the symptom. Match type is normally the cause.

Broad match with smart bidding will find demand you did not think to target, which is genuinely useful, and it will also spend on queries no reasonable person would call relevant. Both are true at once, and the fence is negatives plus structure.

A workable structure for a small account

  1. A brand campaign, separated so it never contaminates the non-brand numbers.
  2. An exact match campaign on the terms you know convert.
  3. A phrase or broad campaign for discovery, with a smaller budget and a tight negative list.
  4. A shared negative keyword list applied across all of them.
  5. Location targeting set to presence, not presence-or-interest, unless you deliberately want the latter.

Why presence-or-interest catches people out

The default location setting includes people merely showing interest in your area, which for a local service business means paying for clicks from other cities. It is one of the most common single causes of geographic waste and it is one setting.

Exact — Tightest. Least waste.
Phrase — Middle. Manageable.
Broad — Loosest. Needs negatives.
Smart bidding — Learns. Still needs fences.
Close variants — Automatic. Not optional.
Audience — Layered. Different lever.
Where each kind of waste actually comes from
Symptom in the reportLikely causeFix
Many irrelevant queriesMatch type too looseTighten match type, then add negatives
Queries from other citiesLocation set to presence-or-interestChange to presence
Long tail of one-click termsBroad match discovery running uncheckedCap the discovery budget
High brand shareBrand and non-brand in one campaignSeparate them
Good cost per conversion, poor business resultConversion action is too shallowCount qualified leads, not form fills
Everything looks fine but revenue does not moveClose rate or margin, not the accountMeasure close rate by source

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Budget: how much should you actually be spending?

The honest answer runs backwards from what a customer is worth, not forwards from a percentage of revenue.

Percentage-of-revenue rules of thumb are common and close to useless for a service business, because they ignore margin, close rate and capacity. The arithmetic that works starts with how many customers you need and what one is worth in gross profit.

The sequence

  1. Decide how many customers a month you need and can actually deliver.
  2. Divide by your close rate to get the leads required.
  3. Divide by conversion rate to get the clicks required.
  4. Multiply by cost per click to get the budget.
  5. Multiply customers by gross profit per customer.
  6. If step five is smaller than step four, the target is not fundable at these rates.

Capacity is the real ceiling

A campaign that produces more work than you can deliver destroys margin through rushed jobs and subcontracting. For most service businesses the ceiling on spend is operational rather than financial, and it is worth knowing before you scale.

Research — Wrong intent. how, what, why.
Jobs — Career seekers. salary, jobs, hiring.
DIY — Doing it themselves. diy, yourself.
Free — No budget. free, grants, cheap.
Competitor — Named rivals. Sometimes deliberate.
Wrong place — Outside your area. Other cities.
What the search terms report can and cannot showWhat the search terms report can and cannot show
The three it cannot see are the three that decide profitability. An audit that ignores them is arithmetic, not judgement.

A sensible order of work after the audit

The output usually produces a long list. Doing it in the wrong order wastes the effort.

Structural fixes first, because they stop the leak. Exclusions second, because they clean up what already leaked. Bid and budget changes last, because they are meaningless until the first two are done.

In order

  1. Fix location targeting if queries from outside your area appear at all.
  2. Separate brand from non-brand if they share a campaign.
  3. Tighten match types on any keyword generating obviously irrelevant queries.
  4. Add the negative keywords the report surfaced, reading each one first.
  5. Check the conversion action counts something that matters, not every form fill.
  6. Only then adjust bids and budgets, using break-even rather than a blanket target.

Re-run it after a month

Negative keyword work is not a one-off. New queries appear constantly, particularly with broad match and smart bidding. Monthly is a reasonable cadence for most accounts and it takes minutes once the export is familiar.

What your conversion action is actually counting

Every figure in an audit rests on the conversion action, and in most small accounts that action counts something far shallower than a customer.

If a conversion is any form submission, any phone click, any chat opened, then cost per conversion is really cost per event. Two accounts with identical cost per conversion can be worlds apart in profit because one counts qualified enquiries and the other counts someone tapping a phone number and hanging up.

Common conversion actions, ranked by how much they mislead

  • Page view of a thank-you page: counts bots and back-button traffic; the weakest.
  • Phone number click: counts the tap, not the call, and not whether anyone answered.
  • Any form submission: counts spam and job applications alongside real enquiries.
  • Form submission filtered for spam: usable.
  • Qualified enquiry marked in your own system: the first one that means anything.
  • Closed sale imported back into the account: what everything should be judged against.

Counting several things at once is the quiet killer

If page views, phone clicks and form fills are all counted as conversions, a single visitor can register three. The account then optimises toward whatever is easiest to produce, which is almost never the thing that makes money.

The fix is boring and it works

Pick one primary conversion action that is as close to revenue as you can get, mark everything else as secondary so it is observed but not optimised toward, and re-judge the account on that. Expect the numbers to get worse and the business to get better.

Conversion actions, and what each one is really measuring
What you countWhat it actually measuresSafe to optimise toward?
Thank-you page viewTraffic reaching a URL, bots includedNo
Phone number clickA tap on a linkNo
All form submissionsEnquiries plus spam plus job applicationsOnly with spam filtering
Filtered form submissionsGenuine enquiriesYes, as a proxy
Qualified enquirySomeone you would actually quoteYes
Closed sale imported backRevenueYes, and best
Two accounts with identical cost per conversion
Account AAccount B
Cost per conversion$60$60
What counts as a conversionAny form fillQualified enquiry only
Proportion that are real enquiries40%100%
Real cost per enquiry$150$60
Close rate on those enquiries25%35%
Actual cost per customer$600$171

Want the audit done properly, with your sales data in it?

We run this against close rate, margin and capacity rather than stopping at the click, so the recommendations are about profit rather than cost per conversion.

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Frequently asked questions

What is a Google Ads audit?
A review of an advertising account to find where spend is being wasted and what structural problems are causing it. A useful audit looks at search terms, match types, negative keywords and the brand versus non-brand split, rather than only at account structure.
Is this Google Ads audit really free?
Yes, with no limit and no account access. You paste your Search Terms report and the analysis runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded or stored.
Why does it not connect to my Google Ads account?
Because it does not need to. Connecting by OAuth would mean granting standing read access to your advertising data. One export contains what matters, and there is nothing to revoke afterwards.
How do I get the Search Terms report?
In Google Ads, go to Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. Set a date range of at least 90 days, make sure the Conversions column is showing, then select all, copy, and paste. A downloaded CSV works too.
What date range should I use?
At least 90 days. A 30-day window on a low-volume account produces a table where almost everything has one click and no conversions, which tells you nothing.
What counts as wasted spend?
Money spent on search terms that produced no conversion, excluding terms below a click threshold. The default is three clicks, because a single click with no conversion is not evidence of anything at a normal conversion rate.
How much wasted spend is normal?
In most accounts between a quarter and a half of spend sits on non-converting terms. Not all of it is recoverable — some terms are relevant and simply have not converted yet.
Should I add every non-converting term as a negative keyword?
No. Read each one. A relevant term that has not converted yet is insufficient data, not waste. Research queries, job seekers and DIY searches are almost always safe to exclude; competitor names are a strategy decision.
Why separate brand from non-brand?
Because someone searching your business name was often going to find you anyway. Brand terms convert cheaply and at high rates, so blending them into the average makes the account look healthier than it is. Judge performance on the non-brand cost per conversion.
What brand share is too high?
Above roughly forty per cent of spend, the blended figure is mostly measuring your existing reputation rather than the advertising. That is not automatically wrong, but reporting it as advertising performance is.
Is adding negative keywords the right fix?
Often it treats the symptom. If a broad-matched keyword is generating dozens of irrelevant queries, tightening the match type is one change instead of forty negatives.
Why am I getting clicks from other cities?
Almost always the location setting. The default includes people showing interest in your area as well as those present in it, which for a local business means paying for clicks from elsewhere. Change it to presence.
What is a negative keyword tool?
Anything that helps identify queries to exclude. This one derives them from your own search terms report ranked by cost, which is more useful than a generic list because it reflects what your account actually paid for.
What can a search terms report not tell me?
Everything after the click. It cannot see whether the landing page was relevant, whether the enquiry was qualified, or whether it closed. A cheap conversion that closes at five per cent is worse than an expensive one that closes at forty.
How much should I spend on Google Ads?
Work backwards from customers rather than forwards from a percentage of revenue. Customers divided by close rate gives leads; leads divided by conversion rate gives clicks; clicks times cost per click gives the budget. Then check that against gross profit per customer.
Is a percentage-of-revenue budget rule useful?
Rarely, for a service business. It ignores margin, close rate and delivery capacity, all three of which change the answer more than revenue does.
What should I fix first?
Structure before exclusions before bids. Location targeting, then brand separation, then match types, then negatives, then the conversion action, and only then bids and budgets.
How often should I run this?
Monthly. New search terms appear constantly, especially with broad match and smart bidding, so negative keyword work is ongoing rather than a one-off.
Does this work for Microsoft Advertising too?
Yes. The export has the same shape, so a Bing search terms report pastes in and parses the same way.
Is anything I paste into this tool uploaded?
No. The parsing and arithmetic run entirely in your browser and nothing you paste is stored. The only thing sent to us is the contact detail you enter to unlock the tools.

Want this done for your site?We build and maintain the search, content and paid programmes described on this page.

Get a free proposal

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