The essentials
- Eight chapters: conversion tracking, structure, keywords and search terms, ads and assets, bidding and budget, audiences, landing pages, quantified waste.
- Minimum deliverable: a 15 to 30-page document with quantified findings, an action plan prioritised by impact and an estimate of the savings.
- Term: 1 to 3 days of work for an SME account; 5 to 10 days above €20,000 of monthly spend.
- 2026 pricing: €600 to €2,500 excl. VAT for an SME, often deducted from the fees if management is then entrusted to the same provider.
An SEA audit has a single objective: to say, with figures to back it up, where the budget is being wasted and what should be changed, in which order. Many audits sold in 2026 are automatic exports dressed up with general comments. Here are the chapters a serious audit must contain, what they must prove and how to recognise a rushed job. To then choose the provider, the guide entrusting your SEA to a provider complements this article.
The prerequisite: access to the account and to the tracking
An audit built from screenshots or a PDF report is not an audit. The auditor must have read access to the Google Ads account, to GA4, to Google Tag Manager if the site uses it, and ideally to the Merchant Center for an e-commerce site. They must also know your margin, your average order value or the value of a signed quote: without those figures, they cannot say whether a cost per conversion of €45 is good or catastrophic.
The eight mandatory chapters
| Chapter | What it must establish | Proof expected |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Conversion tracking | Do the conversions counted correspond to real sales or enquiries? | List of conversion actions, duplicates, enhanced conversions on or off, trigger test |
| 2. Account structure | Do campaigns and ad groups reflect the offers and the intents? | Map of the campaigns, networks turned on by mistake, location and language settings |
| 3. Keywords and search terms | What share of the budget goes to off-target queries? | Search terms analysis over 90 days, amount spent without conversion, negative keyword lists |
| 4. Ads and assets | Are the ads complete, relevant, tested? | Ad strength of the responsive search ads, missing assets, disapproved ads |
| 5. Bidding and budget | Does the bidding strategy match the conversion volume? | Strategy by campaign, campaigns limited by budget, lost impression share |
| 6. Audiences | Are remarketing, customer lists and exclusions in place? | Active lists, sizes, consent, segments in observation |
| 7. Landing pages | Do the pages convert? | Conversion rate by page in GA4, mobile speed, ad-to-page consistency |
| 8. Quantified waste | How many euros a month can be recovered? | Sum of the spend without conversion and of the identified overspend, in euros and as a percentage of the budget |
Chapter 1 conditions all the others: if conversions are counted badly, the analysis of keywords or bidding rests on false figures. An audit that starts with the structure without checking the tracking should be sent back. The checkpoints on GA4 are detailed in turning on conversion tracking in GA4.
What the audit must quantify
Qualitative findings (“the structure could be improved”) are worth nothing. Each chapter must end with a figure in euros or as a percentage. Benchmarks observed on French SME accounts in 2026:
- Off-target search terms: 15 to 35% of Search spend on an account without weekly management of negative keywords.
- Display Network turned on by default on Search campaigns: 5 to 20% of the budget served on sites with a near-zero conversion rate.
- Campaigns limited by budget: lost impression share above 40% on the most profitable campaigns, while less profitable campaigns spend everything.
- Incomplete ads: responsive search ads with fewer than 8 headlines, “poor” or “average” ad strength, CTR 20 to 40% below what a well-built ad group achieves.
- Fictitious conversions: button clicks counted as a conversion, duplicate forms, calls of less than 30 seconds; the real cost per conversion is often 1.5 to 3 times the figure displayed.
The action plan: the part that has value
The action plan must rank each recommendation on two axes: the impact estimated in euros and the effort of implementation. A presentation in four blocks is enough: to do this week (tracking, negative keywords, networks, locations), this month (structure, ads, bidding), this quarter (landing pages, audiences, new campaigns), to set aside (what is not worth the effort). Each action states who carries it out: the advertiser, the agency or the site developer. An audit without a prioritised action plan is a status report, not an audit.
Duration, price and format in 2026
| Account size | Audit time | Usual price excl. VAT | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Less than €3,000/month of spend | 1 to 2 days | €600 to €1,200 | 15-page document + one-hour presentation |
| €3,000 to €20,000/month | 2 to 4 days | €1,200 to €2,500 | 20 to 30-page document + prioritisation workshop |
| More than €20,000/month, multi-account or e-commerce with a large catalogue | 5 to 10 days | €3,000 to €8,000 | Detailed document by campaign + quarterly roadmap |
| Free audit from an agency | 1 to 3 hours | 0 € | Automatic export and sales pitch: to be read as such |
A free audit is not useless, but it primarily serves to sell a management service. It rarely points out the problems the agency cannot solve itself. The day rate of independent SEA consultants in France sits between €450 and €800 excl. VAT in 2026; that of agencies between €700 and €1,200.
The signs of an audit to send back
- No figure in euros on the waste: only scores or traffic lights.
- Identical recommendations for every client: “turn on Smart Bidding”, “move to Performance Max”, with no link to the conversion volume of the account.
- No check of the tracking: chapter 1 is missing or fits in one line.
- No reading of the search terms over at least 90 days.
- No mention of the landing pages, even though they weigh as much as the account itself on the cost per conversion.
- No comparison with what SEO already covers: an audit that does not look at organic traffic on the same queries misses a source of savings; see Google Ads or SEO.
After the audit, implementation is followed with stable metrics: cost per conversion, impression share, share of budget on off-target terms. The list of metrics to put in the contract is in the KPIs for judging your SEA provider.
How GreenRed helps
Rather than juggling several tools, GreenRed's SEA tracking and optimisation module brings these metrics together in a single dashboard, compares them over time and tells you which actions come first. You can try it free, with no card, from the Pricing.
Frequently asked questions
How often should a Google Ads account be audited?
One full audit a year is enough for an account managed every week. It is also justified at each change of provider, before a sharp budget increase, or when the cost per conversion drifts by more than 30% over a quarter with no explanation. Between two audits, a monthly review of the search terms and conversions prevents drift.
Can you audit your own Google Ads account?
Yes for the mechanical points: networks turned on, locations, search terms, incomplete ads, campaigns limited by budget. Google Ads shows most of this information directly. Checking the tracking and analysing the bidding require more experience; that is where an outside view brings the most, especially on an account you have managed for a long time.
Should an SEA audit also cover Performance Max?
Yes, with adapted criteria: quality and completeness of the asset groups, audience signals, brand exclusions, share of conversions that are genuinely incremental compared with brand traffic, and a reading of the channel reports available since 2025. An audit that treats Performance Max as an unanalysable black box misses a large share of the budget.
How long between the audit and the first results?
The quick actions (negative keywords, networks, locations, tracking) have an effect within one to two weeks on off-target spend. Structure and bidding changes take four to six weeks, the time for the algorithms to relearn. The gains on landing pages depend on the development lead time of the site.