Audit the decision path, not the optimization score
A paid search audit should begin with the decision the account is expected to support. That might be profitable lead growth, efficient acquisition in a constrained market, protection of branded demand, or controlled testing of a new offer. The campaign structure, conversion actions, bidding strategy, attribution settings, and reporting should all be judged against that decision.
Platform recommendations can identify configuration opportunities. They cannot determine whether a conversion is economically meaningful, whether the CRM preserved the source, or whether reported growth would have happened without the ad.
Start with conversion definitions
Inventory every conversion action before evaluating performance. Record its trigger, owner, value rule, attribution setting, counting method, inclusion in bidding, consent dependency, and downstream business meaning.
Then reconcile the same period across the advertising platform, analytics, CRM, and finance. The totals do not need to match perfectly. The differences need explanations that survive a second check.
Follow the query through the system
The useful trail connects:
- the search query and keyword or targeting rule that admitted it;
- the ad and landing experience shown to the searcher;
- the conversion event used by bidding;
- the source fields preserved in analytics and CRM;
- the qualified outcome and revenue definition;
- the cost model used to judge the result.
This makes account structure a measurement decision, not a naming preference.
What this hub will cover
The next guides will document conversion-tracking audits, search-term diagnosis, brand and nonbrand structure, attribution differences, budget pacing, Performance Max evidence limits, and the checks to run when CPA changes suddenly.
Use the related calculators to challenge acquisition-cost and funnel assumptions while the paid search audit worksheet is being built.
The first query-level operating guide explains how to run a negative keyword sweep without blocking good demand. It separates measurable candidate rules from business judgment, checks positive-keyword and protected-term conflicts, and preserves platform-specific negative match behavior instead of flattening Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, and Apple Ads into one unsafe list.