Google Ads Keyword Audit Checklist 2026

A keyword audit is a systematic review of every keyword in your Google Ads account to find waste, fix structural problems, and realign spend with performance. In 2026, with Smart Bidding consuming more control and broad match expanding aggressively, regular audits aren't optional — they're the primary lever practitioners still have.

Match Types

• Pull a report of all keywords by match type. Flag any campaign where broad match exceeds 30% of spend without a strong conversion history to justify it.
• Check for duplicate keywords across match types in the same ad group. If you're running exact, phrase, and broad for the same term in one ad group, you're bidding against yourself.
• Review any remaining BMM (+keyword) syntax. Broad match modified was deprecated — Google now treats it as phrase match with looser expansion. Either upgrade to phrase or convert to exact where volume allows.
• For accounts using Performance Max, pull the search term insights report and check for overlap with your standard campaigns. PMax will cannibalize exact match traffic if there's no campaign priority structure in place.

Search Terms Report

• Pull the search terms report for the last 90 days (minimum). Filter to queries with spend but zero conversions. These are your bleed candidates.
• Cross-reference high-spend/zero-conversion queries against your negative keyword list. If the query isn't already excluded, add it.
• Look for queries triggering on competitor brand terms. If you don't have a dedicated competitor campaign, these are wasting budget in branded or generic campaigns.
• Identify queries with strong conversion rates that aren't currently exact match keywords. Harvest them — add as exact match and monitor for volume.
• Check for queries that are variations of your brand. If your own brand terms are appearing in generic campaigns, you're likely overpaying. Pull brand into a separate campaign with a lower CPC cap.
• Filter for queries containing "free," "DIY," "how to," "reddit," or other intent signals that don't match your offer. Add as negatives if they're burning spend.

Quality Score

• Export keyword-level Quality Score data (1–10). Flag every keyword at 5 or below with spend in the last 30 days.
• For low-QS keywords, check the three sub-components: Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. The lowest sub-component tells you where to fix first.
• Low Expected CTR on a historically high-performing keyword can signal increased competition or ad fatigue. Pull impression share data alongside it.
• Ad Relevance below "Above Average" usually means the keyword doesn't appear in the ad copy or headline. Tighten ad copy to include the keyword — or move the keyword to its own tightly-themed ad group.
• Landing Page Experience below "Average" means Google's crawl sees a disconnect between the keyword, the ad, and what's on the page. Pull the destination URLs for flagged keywords and verify the keyword (or close variant) appears in the H1 and body copy.
• Delete keywords with QS 1–3 that have zero conversions in 90 days. They're dragging account-level QS and you're not going to fix them fast enough to matter.

Negative Keywords

• Pull your negative keyword lists and check the last date each list was updated. If it's been more than 60 days, it needs a refresh.
• Review negatives at the campaign level for conflicts with your positive keyword list. A negative that's too broad can be blocking valid traffic — this is the most common cause of inexplicably low impression share.
• Check for negative keywords at the ad group level that were added reactively and never reviewed. Single-session panic-negatives often block legitimate traffic patterns.
• Build or refresh a master negative keyword list for informational intent: "what is," "definition of," "examples of," "how does," "wikipedia," "salary," "jobs." Apply across all non-brand campaigns.
• If you're running Shopping alongside Search, make sure your Search negative list is applied to Shopping — they don't inherit each other's negatives.
• Look for negatives that were added for one campaign but should be account-wide. Consolidate where appropriate.

Bid Strategy

• Identify which campaigns are running Smart Bidding vs. manual CPC. For Smart Bidding campaigns, check the minimum conversion volume threshold — Target CPA and Target ROAS need at least 30–50 conversions per month to function reliably. Below that, you're guessing with an algorithm.
• For tCPA campaigns, pull the actual CPA vs. the target CPA over the last 30 days. If actual is consistently 30%+ above target, the target is unrealistic or the conversion volume is too low.
• Check for campaigns running Enhanced CPC (ECPC) that have enough conversion data to upgrade to a full Smart Bidding strategy. ECPC is a transitional strategy, not a destination.
• Review any campaign with a Target Impression Share bid strategy. These are typically brand campaigns — verify the impression share target is set to a specific position (top of page), not 100% (which drives up CPCs with no corresponding conversion benefit).
• Check bid adjustments for device, location, and ad schedule. If you're running Target CPA or Target ROAS, Google ignores most bid adjustments — flag any account where bid adjustments are set but Smart Bidding is active. That's dead configuration.

Account Structure

• Verify campaign objectives match conversion actions. A campaign set to "website traffic" optimization won't optimize for your actual conversion events even if they're tracking correctly.
• Flag any ad groups with more than 20 keywords. Bloated ad groups produce poor ad relevance and complicate negative keyword management.
• Check each ad group for at least one responsive search ad with pinned headlines for brand-critical messaging. Google retired expanded text ads — if any ETAs are still live, they're not eligible for impressions.
• Review campaigns with no ad group negatives and only account-level negatives. Any broad match or phrase match campaign should have ad-group-level negatives sculpting which ad groups absorb which queries.
• Pull the recommendations tab and audit what Google has auto-applied in the last 90 days. Turn off auto-apply for any recommendation type you haven't explicitly reviewed and approved.

Conversion Tracking

• Verify all conversion actions are firing. Pull the "Conversions" column for the last 7 days — any conversion action that shows zero across a 7-day period on a live campaign warrants a tag audit.
• Check for duplicate conversion tracking. GA4 + Google Ads tag both tracking the same action inflates conversion counts and misleads Smart Bidding.
• Confirm your primary conversion action (the one Smart Bidding optimizes toward) is set to "Primary" and everything else is "Secondary" or "Observation."
• Audit conversion window settings. The default 30-day click conversion window is appropriate for most lead gen, but check it against your actual sales cycle. B2B accounts with 60–90 day cycles often miss conversions.