How to Tell If Your Google Ads Agency Is Actually Doing a Good Job

If you’re paying someone to manage your Google Ads, you’ve probably had this quiet worry: is this actually any good, or am I just paying for someone to keep the lights on? It’s a hard thing to judge from the outside, and most people don’t want to seem clueless by asking too many questions.

So here’s a checklist you can run yourself. None of it requires you to be a Google Ads expert — it’s about whether the fundamentals are in place and whether the work is genuinely ongoing. A good agency will be glad you asked; an agency that bristles at these questions is telling you something.

1. Is conversion tracking set up — and believable?

This is the single most important thing, so start here. Your account should be tracking conversions — the calls, form submissions or purchases that ads produce — and the numbers should look believable.

Ask your agency to show you the conversions in the account. Warning signs:

• They can’t show you conversion data at all (it’s probably not set up — which means they’re flying blind).
• Everything is counted as a “conversion”, including people just clicking a phone number and not calling, or every page view. Inflated, meaningless numbers.
• The conversion count looks wildly higher than the real enquiries you actually received.

Without trustworthy conversion tracking, no one can know what’s working — including them. It’s the foundation everything else stands on.

2. Do they report on cost per lead — not just impressions and clicks?

Look at your last report. Is the headline “we got 40,000 impressions and improved click-through rate” — or is it “we generated X enquiries at $Y each, and here’s the trend”?

Impressions and clicks are activity, not results. A good agency reports on what each enquiry costs you and whether that’s improving over time. If your reports are full of big numbers that never connect to actual leads or cost-per-lead, that’s a flag.

3. Is someone actually working in the account — regularly?

Google Ads is not “set and forget”. A well-managed account shows signs of ongoing work: new negative keywords added, underperforming keywords paused, ad copy tested, bids and budgets adjusted, landing pages tweaked.

You can ask directly: “What changes have you made in the account in the last month?” A good manager will rattle off specifics. A vague answer — or “everything’s ticking along nicely” month after month — often means the account is being left on autopilot while the fee keeps coming.

4. Is the search-terms report full of junk?

This is the most revealing check, and you can ask to see it. The search-terms report shows the actual searches people typed before clicking your ad (different from your keywords). In a well-managed account, those searches are relevant to what you sell.

If it’s full of irrelevant rubbish — people searching for free options, jobs, completely different products, other cities — that’s money being wasted, and it means negative keywords aren’t being maintained. A tidy search-terms report is a sign of an agency doing the unglamorous work that actually saves you money.

5. Do you own your account?

Crucial, and often overlooked until it’s too late. Your Google Ads account should be yours — set up under your own account, with the agency given access to manage it, not the other way around.

Why it matters: if the agency owns the account and you part ways, you can lose everything — your campaign history, your conversion data, all the learning built up over months or years. Ask the simple question: “If we stopped working together tomorrow, do I keep the account and its full history?” The answer should be an unhesitating yes.

6. Is the landing page part of the conversation?

Great ads sending people to a poor page is wasted money — and a good agency knows the ad is only half the job. If yours has never once mentioned your website or landing pages, they may be optimising the ads while ignoring the thing that actually turns a click into a customer.

Run the checklist

You don’t need to confront anyone. Just work through it:

1. Can they show you believable conversion tracking?
2. Do reports lead with cost-per-lead, not impressions?
3. Can they list specific changes made last month?
4. Is the search-terms report relevant, not full of junk?
5. Do you fully own your account and its history?
6. Have they ever talked about your landing page?

A few “no”s don’t necessarily mean your agency is bad — but they’re worth a frank conversation. And if asking these questions makes them defensive rather than helpful, that itself is the most useful answer you’ll get.

If you’d like an independent second opinion on your account — an honest read on whether it’s in good hands — send it our way and we’ll tell you what we see, no strings.