How to Audit a Performance Max Campaign: 15 Checks
Audit PMax goals, values, channels, search terms, brand traffic, URLs, products, audiences, assets, budgets, and incrementality before increasing spend.
Performance Max is automated, but it is not unaccountable.
Google now provides more visibility through channel performance, search-term, landing-page, product, and asset reporting. Use that visibility to inspect the quality of the inputs and outcomes.
Score every check:
1. Are conversion goals commercially correct?
Remove page views, low-value micro-actions, and duplicate purchases from primary bidding goals.
2. Are values accurate?
Check currency, revenue, margin proxies, refunds, repeat purchases, and new-customer value.
3. Is new-customer reporting credible?
Validate customer lists, tagging, and new-customer parameters where relevant.
4. Is the campaign incremental?
Separate branded demand, existing customers, remarketing, and net-new acquisition. A high reported ROAS may harvest demand another campaign would capture.
5. What does the channel report show?
Review channel distribution, goals, formats, costs, conversions, and diagnostics. Judge the campaign overall while using channel data to find operational issues.
Google explains the report in its Performance Max evaluation guidance.
6. Which search terms triggered ads?
Classify:
Use negatives for clear irrelevance and brand exclusions for brand control.
7. Where did Final URL expansion send traffic?
Exclude:
8. Are search themes strategic?
Use themes to describe valuable demand—not a dump of every keyword.
9. Are brand exclusions intentional?
Decide whether PMax should serve branded Search, branded Shopping, competitor brands, or sub-brands. Document the policy.
10. Are product feeds healthy?
Review:
11. Are asset groups coherent?
Each asset group should represent a meaningful product, service, audience need, or landing-page set.
12. Are assets complete and accurate?
Check:
13. Do audience signals contain useful information?
Use customer data, search themes, and relevant custom segments as guidance. Signals are not hard targeting.
14. Is the budget sufficient and sensible?
Compare budget with conversion volume, target, conversion delay, and marginal profitability.
15. Is there a test plan?
Use experiments where appropriate for:
Score
| Score | Diagnosis |
|---|---|
| 26–30 | Strong foundation |
| 20–25 | Repair specific controls |
| 12–19 | Material measurement or targeting gaps |
| 0–11 | Do not scale yet |
Weekly report
| Area | Question |
|---|---|
| Goals | Did the campaign create valuable outcomes? |
| Search | Which new terms helped or hurt? |
| URLs | Did traffic reach commercial pages? |
| Products | Which products created profitable value? |
| Assets | Are messages accurate and diverse? |
| Capacity | Can the business fulfill more demand? |
Audit checklist
Performance Max should earn budget through profitable incremental outcomes—not through the absence of reporting.
Need an independent PMax diagnosis? See my Google Ads service or request a Revenue Leak Audit.
Related:
Written by
Vince Servidad
PPC Strategist · Google Ads, Meta Ads & conversion systems
Filipino PPC strategist. A seven-figure Shopify brand and 10+ years across Google Ads, Meta Ads, stores, tracking, and content.
Need help with Google Ads?
Get strategic and hands-on support from a PPC strategist based in the Philippines.