Audit a Google Ads account with AI
A prompt-by-prompt walkthrough that finds wasted spend, budget-limited campaigns, and weak ads in about ten minutes.
This is a complete account audit you can run in Claude in about ten minutes, one prompt at a time. It assumes your Google Ads accounts are connected through Adplane, so every answer comes from your live data, not general advice. Each step says what to look for and what to do about it, and every fix is reversible: anything you change can be paused or changed back.
Step 1: the shape of the account
You can reach three accounts: Fernwood Outdoor, Fernwood Outdoor UK and Harbor Coffee Roasters. Here is Fernwood Outdoor (123-456-7890), the last 30 days, September 10 to October 9:
| Campaign | Spend (USD) | Conversions | Cost per conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generic tents | 3,180 | 41 | 77.56 |
| Hiking boots | 2,050 | 38 | 53.95 |
| Brand search | 1,190 | 96 | 12.40 |
| Spring sale | 410 | 3 | 136.67 |
Generic tents and Hiking boots take 77% of the spend. The account average is 38.37 per conversion: Spring sale costs more than 3.5 times that, and Generic tents about twice.
You are looking for concentration. If two campaigns eat most of the budget, the rest of the audit focuses there first. Ask Claude to flag anything whose cost per conversion is far above the account average.
Step 2: wasted search terms
14 search terms cost more than 20 dollars without a conversion, 486 dollars in all:
| Theme | Example term | Terms | Spend (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free and DIY | free tent patterns | 5 | 198 |
| Jobs | outdoor retail jobs | 3 | 121 |
| Rentals | tent rental near me | 4 | 112 |
| Other | ultralight tarp | 2 | 55 |
Free and DIY, Jobs and Rentals do not fit a store that sells gear. The two in Other are close to what you sell, so I would leave them for now.
The fastest money in any audit. Irrelevant themes become negative keywords; ask for them grouped so you can act on whole themes instead of one term at a time.
Added 5 phrase match negatives, free, diy, pattern, jobs and rental, to Generic tents and Hiking boots, the two campaigns those terms came from. Read back from Google: all 5 are on both campaigns.
Negative keywords cannot spend, so this step is safe by construction.
Step 3: budget and impression share
| Campaign | Lost to budget | Lost to rank |
|---|---|---|
| Brand search | 31% | 4% |
| Hiking boots | 6% | 22% |
| Generic tents | 2% | 48% |
Brand search is your cheapest source of conversions and misses almost a third of its auctions because its 40 dollar daily budget runs out. Generic tents loses on rank: more budget would not help, its ads and bids need work.
Raise Brand search from 40 to 60 dollars a day? Say yes and I will make the change.
Budget-limited winners deserve more budget; rank-limited campaigns have an ad or bid problem, not a budget problem. If a strong campaign is capped:
Done. Read back from Google: Brand search now has a daily budget of 60 dollars, up from 40.
Step 4: keywords and quality
Last month, September 1 to 30:
| Keyword | Campaign | Quality score | Spend (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| camping gear | Generic tents | 4 | 612 |
| waterproof boots | Hiking boots | 5 | 388 |
| 4 person tent | Generic tents | 3 | 274 |
camping gear sits in an ad group whose ads only talk about tents, which is likely why its score is low. Should I pause it, or draft an ad group of its own?
Low quality score with real spend means you pay more per click than you need to. Common fixes: tighten the ad group so ads match the keyword, or pause the keyword if it never earned its cost.
Step 5: ads and disapprovals
One ad is disapproved, in Spring sale, for destination mismatch: its final URL redirects to a different domain. Two ad groups run a single ad: 2 person tents in Generic tents, and Women's boots in Hiking boots.
Want me to draft a second responsive search ad for each?
Created a responsive search ad in 2 person tents and one in Women's boots.
Created pausedNeither can serve until you turn it on. Want to read the headlines first?
Disapprovals silently stop serving; ad groups with a single ad have nothing to test against. Ask Claude to draft a second responsive search ad where one is missing.
Step 6: the write-up
Found. 486 dollars a month on irrelevant search terms, Brand search capped by its budget, three keywords with quality score 5 or below, one disapproved ad, and two ad groups with a single ad.
Changed. 5 negative keywords on Generic tents and Hiking boots, Brand search raised from 40 to 60 dollars a day, and two new ads, still paused for your review.
Check on October 24. New wasted search terms, Brand search's impression share lost to budget, and the Spring sale ad once its URL is fixed.
The summary is worth keeping in the conversation: next time, start with it and ask what changed since.
Why this is safe to run
The reporting steps cannot change anything. The fixes go through Adplane's write tools, where anything that could spend starts paused, a single update tool is the one path to enabling or spending, and every change is read back from Google before it is reported as done. The full safety model is in the docs.
Run it on your account
Adplane connects your Google Ads accounts to Claude in one click from the connector directory, or to ChatGPT from the plugin directory. The free trial is 14 days and does not require a card. Connect your account and run step 1.
Try it in your own chat
Sign in with Google, connect your ad accounts, and ask your first question.