How to Read a Google Ads Report Your Agency Won’t Explain

Close the PDF. Open the account.

That’s the whole method. Every agency report is a design decision. Somebody chose which numbers go on page one, which column they came out of, and what got left off. Google’s interface wasn’t built to flatter anyone. So when the dashboard and the platform disagree about the same date range, the platform is right and the dashboard is marketing.

You don’t need to know Google Ads to do this. You need read-only access and thirty minutes.

Google Ads report red flags: the nine checks, listed

Run them in this order. The first two catch most of it, and they take about four minutes between them.

1. Conversion actions: how many things get counted as a “conversion”
2. “Conversions” vs “All conversions”: which column the report used
3. The search terms report: what you actually paid for
4. Negative keywords: when anything was last added
5. Branded vs non-branded spend
6. Impression share, the metric that always improves
7. Quality Score distribution
8. Auto-applied recommendations
9. Change history: who touched the account last month

1. Conversion actions: how many things are counted, and is any of it the same event twice

Left menu: Goals, then Conversions, then Summary. Older account layouts put it under Tools and settings, then Measurement, then Conversions.

Two columns matter. “Include in ‘Conversions'” is a yes or no per row, and every yes gets added into the number printed on your report. “Count” is set to either Every or One.

Now read the names. A normal service account has a form submit, a call from ads, a call from the website, a click-to-call tap, sometimes a chat open, sometimes a thank-you page view. One homeowner in Apex who fills out your form, hits the thank-you page and then taps your number lands in that column three times.

Then check Count. “Every” means the property manager who calls four times in March counts as four conversions. “One” counts her once. For lead gen, most actions belong on One.

Brad Geddes, co-founder of Adalysis: “If your tracking is inconsistent, your entire account data becomes skewed.”

2. “Conversions” vs “All conversions”: which column the report used

Go to Campaigns, then Columns, then Modify columns, then Conversions. You’ll see both “Conversions” and “All conv.” available.

They are not the same number. “All conversions” includes actions somebody deliberately excluded from the primary column, usually the softer stuff nobody would call a lead. If your report says 62 and the account says 41, go look for a 62 under “All conv.” That isn’t a bug. Somebody picked that column.

3. The search terms report: what you actually paid for

Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. Set the date range to the last 90 days and sort by Cost, highest first.

Read the top thirty out loud. Not the keywords your agency bought, the phrases people typed. This is where you find out you’re paying $8.33 a click in home services for “hvac technician salary” and “how to fix my own furnace.”

4. Negative keywords: when was anything last added

Campaigns, then Audiences, keywords and content, then Search keywords, then the Negative keywords tab. Also check Tools, then Shared library, then Exclusion lists.

An empty or ancient list is the clearest sign nobody opens this account. A quarter of accounts have never added a single negative keyword, and accounts with at least one average a 13% monthly conversion rate against 4.6% for accounts with none. Geddes again, from the same piece: “In almost every audit I conduct, I see negative keyword conflicts… Some negative keyword lists are over a decade old.”

5. Branded vs non-branded spend: how much of your “performance” is your own name

Back in the search terms report, filter to Search term contains your company name. Note the clicks, cost and conversions, then compare that block to everything else.

Branded clicks are cheap and they convert beautifully, because the person typing your name already decided to call you. They saw your truck in Wake Forest, or a neighbor passed your number along. Those conversions belong on the report. They don’t belong in a sentence about how well the ads work. If half your leads came from people searching your own name, you paid a toll on a call you’d already earned.

6. Impression share: the metric reports love because it always improves

Columns, then Modify columns, then Competitive metrics. Turn on Search impression share, Search lost IS (budget) and Search lost IS (rank).

Impression share is real and close to useless by itself. You can hold 90% impression share on phrases nobody who needs a plumber ever types. And “Search lost IS (budget)” always shows a gap, which is why it lands right before the paragraph asking for more money.

Read it beside conversions and cost per lead or don’t read it. If impression share climbed while leads sat flat, you bought more of something that wasn’t working.

7. Quality Score distribution

Search keywords, then Columns, then Modify columns, then Quality Score. Add Quality Score, Exp. CTR, Ad relevance and Landing page exp.

Sort low to high. Quality Score runs 1 to 10 and drives what you pay per click, so a pile of 3s means you’re funding a discount for whoever ranks above you. It’s common: 36% of accounts average below 4, and only 3% reach the top band. Common doesn’t mean acceptable when you’re the one paying.

If Ad relevance and Landing page exp. read “Below average” down the whole column, nobody has rewritten an ad or touched a landing page in a long time.

8. Auto-applied recommendations: who switched those on

Campaigns, then Recommendations, then the Auto apply tab (top right, sometimes under the three-dot menu).

This screen tells you who is actually running the account. If a stack of these is on, Google’s automation is adding keywords and raising budgets with nobody reviewing it first.

9. Change history: how many times anyone touched the account last month

Tools, then Troubleshooting, then Change history. Set the date range to last month and filter by user.

Ignore the automated rows. Count human edits: new negatives, new ad copy, paused keywords, bid changes. A small account under real management shows meaningful edits most weeks. Two logins in thirty days, both budget adjustments, is a retainer paying for nothing.

The two structural tricks

Both are legal, ordinary and almost never explained to the person paying. They sit on the r/PPC list of agency red flags as “double counting conversions” and “inflating or focusing on vanity metrics.”

Counting the same person twice. Check 1 catches it. When a form fill, a thank-you page view and a phone call all count, your 40 conversions might be half that many humans. Nobody typed a false number. The report just never mentions the overlap, and an owner reading “40 leads” reasonably assumes forty people.

Taking credit for your own name. Check 5. Branded search is the cheapest, highest-converting traffic in any account, and folding it into one blended cost per lead makes the program look sharper than it is. An owner on r/PPC described where that ends up:

for months we thought we were hitting 3.0 ROAs when in fact it was closer to 1

— Owner, r/PPC, September 2024

One more to check if you run Performance Max next to Search. Optmyzr studied 503 accounts and found exact keyword overlap in 91.45% of them. You can pay twice for one auction and see it reported as two wins.

Then there’s the version that isn’t subtle. A small business owner on a national vendor’s dashboard: “the numbers in Hibu’s visually appealing dashboard did not align with actual Google data”. His next two words were “nowhere close.” His site drew 32 visitors in four-plus months under that vendor, against 1,427 sessions in the three months before, and over 120 pages carried identical metadata. When he brought a 40-page evidence packet to the meeting, the vendor blamed heavier-than-usual snowfall.

When the numbers genuinely don’t match

Be fair here. There are real reasons a platform number and your booking software will never agree, and an agency that explains them isn’t dodging you.

Conversion lag is the big one. Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Product Liaison, names two causes: “1) from the time it takes for a user to perform the action after seeing the ad and 2) the data processing and attribution lag.” Somebody clicks your roofing ad Tuesday and calls the following Monday. Google credits Tuesday. Your CRM logs Monday.

Tracking breaks too. Frederick Vallaeys, co-founder of Optmyzr, on why: “Click IDs sometimes never reach the site, or they disappear before a conversion occurs.”

So the tell isn’t a gap. The tell is what happens when you point at it. A good partner names the cause and shows you the screen where you can see it. The pattern we hit most on audits is the other one, a confident explanation with nothing behind it. The extreme version is on public record in a client review of a national vendor, who wrote that they were “charged me over $10,000 and told me they could not tell me what the charges were for.”

What a report should show instead

Five lines, every one of them tied to money you can count in the bank:

Caption: The five lines that make a Google Ads report readable in ninety seconds.

The median cost per lead across all industries is $66.69, running to $90.92 in home improvement and $131.63 for legal. Those are medians, not targets. What matters is whether your cost per booked job leaves room for profit at your average ticket, which is why we walk through cost per lead by industry and the seven numbers a report should contain with every owner we take on.

Everything past those five lines is context, not performance. Impressions and Quality Score belong in the account, where you can go look at them.

The email to send your agency

You don’t need to accuse anybody. Send this and read the reply.

1. Which conversion actions are included in the “Conversions” column on our report, and do any of them fire for the same person on the same visit?
2. Of last month’s leads and spend, how much came from searches containing our business name?
3. Can you send me a screenshot of change history for last month, filtered by user?

An agency doing the work can pull all three in ten minutes, and a straight answer, even an unflattering one, is a decent sign. A meeting invitation instead of an answer is also a sign.

If the reply is a refusal on access, read what your marketing company should hand over if you fire them tomorrow first. Owners across Raleigh, Cary and Fuquay-Varina find out too late that the account, the conversion tags and the history were never in their name.

Frequently asked questions

My agency won’t give me access to the account. What now?

That’s the finding, not an obstacle. Read-only access costs them nothing and takes ninety seconds to grant. Refusal answers the question you were asking.

Google says 40 conversions and I booked 6 jobs. Who’s lying?

Probably nobody. Conversions usually count form fills, calls over 30 seconds, chats and clicks-to-call as separate events, and some of those are the same person twice. Ask which actions are included and whether any of them overlap.

Is impression share a real metric?

It’s real and nearly useless on its own. You can hold 90% impression share on terms that never convert. Read it next to conversions and cost per lead, never alone.

How often should someone be working on my account?

Check change history. A well-run small account gets meaningful human edits most weeks. Once or twice a month, both times a budget nudge, is a very different service than the one in your proposal.

Can I run all nine checks with view-only access?

Yes. Every screen here is readable at the “Read only” level, and you can’t change anything, which is the point.