Before you start
This 2026 guide covers the three core areas of a Google Ads keyword audit. Export your keyword list from Google Ads: Campaign, Ad group, Keyword, Match type. You can pull this from the Keywords report in the UI or via Google Ads Editor. The free Keyword Planner Tools keyword audit (keywordplannertools.com) accepts keywords pasted one per line with match type — it runs all three checks automatically and shows severity scores for each finding.
If you're working through the manual steps, block 30 minutes. In practitioner account reviews, most accounts surface the same three or four core issues — match type coverage, keyword cannibalization, and negative keyword gaps — and this blog checklist covers each one.
For example: a home services account with separate ad groups for installation, repair, and emergency service commonly has cannibalization between service categories, negative keyword gaps where general Broad keywords reach emergency-specific groups, and missing Phrase coverage for modifier-heavy searches like "near me" and "same-day." These issues compound — fixing one improves the data you use to evaluate the others.
1. Match type coverage
Match type coverage determines whether your keyword structure captures both high-intent traffic and the modifier variants users actually type. Quick reference: Exact match ([keyword]) = that specific query only; Phrase match ("keyword") = queries containing your phrase in order; Broad match = Google's intent-based expansion across related queries. Three failure modes to check for:
- Broad-only keywords. Reach without control. Broad match serves on semantically related queries — some useful, many not. Every broad keyword needs a negative keyword list or it leaks budget quietly.
- Exact-only keywords. Control without breadth. If a term converts, you're likely missing modifier variants — "best X," "X for freelancers," "X pricing" — that phrase match would capture without sacrificing intent precision.
- Missing phrase coverage. High-value terms where no phrase variant exists lose structured long-tail traffic that exact won't reach and broad can't target cleanly.
A healthy account runs Exact for its highest-intent, highest-converting terms, and adds Phrase coverage for the same terms in a separate ad group — with the core keyword as an Exact match negative in the Phrase group so the two don't compete.
→ Full methodology: Match Type Coverage guide (published July 2026) — how coverage gaps score and what a balanced distribution looks like by campaign type.
2. Keyword cannibalization
Cannibalization splits Quality Score signals across ad groups and creates self-competition in auctions. Two patterns to check:
- Direct overlap. The same keyword — same text, same match type — in two or more ad groups. Google picks between them each auction. Neither ad group accumulates strong historical signals, and CPCs drift up over time.
- Subset overlap. A phrase match keyword in one group that can match an exact keyword in another. The phrase group wins some of those auctions unintentionally, pulling traffic from the more targeted group and diluting its data.
The fix for both: add a cross-group negative so each ad group wins only the traffic it's designed for, or consolidate the overlapping keywords into a single canonical group.
→ Full methodology: Keyword Cannibalization guide (published July 2026) — how Quality Score fragmentation works and how to fix self-competition without restructuring the entire account.