How to audit a Google Ads account in five metrics
Enter five numbers from your account and this grades it out of a hundred: click-through rate, conversion rate, Quality Score, impression share, and actual CPA against the target you set. Each is worth twenty points, and only the ones you fill in are scored, so a partial picture still returns an honest grade.
Five metrics will not replace a real audit, and this one does not pretend to. What it does is put a number on where an account sits, and show which of the five is dragging hardest — which is usually where the next hour of work returns most.
What each metric tells you
CTR measures relevance: whether the ad matches the query it appeared for. Conversion rate measures what happens after the click, and is mostly a property of the landing page and the offer. Between them they cover both halves of a click’s job.
Quality Score is Google’s own view of relevance and it sets your price. Impression share shows how much of the available demand you are actually capturing, and why you are missing the rest — budget or ad rank. CPA against target is the only one that connects the account to the business.
An account at 2.5% CTR, 3% conversion rate, Quality Score 6, 55% impression share, ₹2,100 CPA against a ₹1,800 target:
14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 14 = 70 out of 100, a grade C. Nothing is broken and nothing stands out: five metrics all sitting just above average is the most common shape a leaking account takes.
What the grades mean
The bands are deliberately broad. An account is rarely uniformly good or bad, and the useful signal is which metric sits lowest rather than the letter on the front.
- A (90+) — performing well. The work is scaling without losing efficiency.
- B (75–89) — solid, with one or two clear opportunities.
- C (60–74) — functioning but leaking. Usually the most profitable band to work on.
- D or F (under 60) — structural problems. Expect the fix to be account structure, not bids.
The benchmarks used here
These are general Search benchmarks. Your own history is a better comparison, and a niche with unusual economics may sit well outside them for good reasons.
| Metric | Benchmark | What a low score usually means |
|---|---|---|
| Click-through rate | ~3.17% | Appearing for queries you do not match |
| Conversion rate | ~3.75% | Landing page or offer, not traffic |
| Quality Score | 7 or above | Ad group themes too broad |
What a full audit covers that this cannot
Five self-reported averages hide a great deal. A real audit reads the search terms report to see what you actually paid for, checks conversion tracking for double counting, looks at whether Performance Max is absorbing brand traffic and taking credit for it, and reviews budget split by intent tier.
Those are the findings that move a number, and none of them can be inferred from an average. If the grade above is a C or below, that gap is where the answer is — and a free account audit covers it properly, with the findings yours to keep whether or not you hire us.