How do I know if my Google Ads agency is doing a good job?

You can tell whether your Google Ads agency is doing a good job by checking five things in your own account, which takes about 20 minutes: you own the account and have admin access, conversion tracking counts real calls and enquiries, change history shows steady work, the search terms report shows searches you’d happily pay for, and you know what each booked job is costing you. If those check out, the agency is probably earning its fee. If any of them fail, the monthly report’s charts don’t tell you much.

Below is how to run each check, with the menu paths in the current Google Ads interface, what a well-run account looks like, and what to ask your agency when something looks off. It’s written for owners of trade and service businesses (plumbers, electricians, HVAC, roofers, cleaners, clinics, law firms and accountants) who pay someone to run their ads and aren’t sure what they’re getting. Roofers checking their numbers can start with what a good roofing Google Ads cost per lead looks like.

How do I check if my Google Ads agency is doing a good job?

Start with ownership and access, because every other check depends on being able to log in and look for yourself. Here’s the full list in the order we’d run it on a new account:

1. Admin > Access and security: your own email is listed with Admin access.
2. Goals > Conversions > Summary: every primary conversion action is a call, form or booking, and its status is Active.
3. Call conversion settings: there’s a minimum call length to filter out wrong numbers and hang-ups.
4. Campaigns > Change history: someone at the agency has made changes in each of the last few months.
5. Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms: sorted by cost, the top 20 terms are jobs you do, in places you serve.
6. Your own records: last month’s ad spend plus the agency fee, divided by jobs you booked from ads, gives cost per booked job.
7. The agency’s monthly report: it shows enquiries or jobs and explains what changed and why.

Do I own my Google Ads account, or does my agency?

You should be able to log in to your Google Ads account with your own email and Admin access, and if you can’t, fix that before anything else. Go to Admin > Access and security and look at the Access level column. Google lists five levels: Email only, Billing, Read only, Standard and Admin, and only Admin can manage users and their access levels. The steps to add or remove users are on Google’s manage access page.

Agencies usually manage your account through their own manager account, and Google lets that manager account become your account’s “owner”. Even then, Google says the client account still owns its data and can remove the owner’s access by unlinking. So if you have Admin access, your campaign history and data stay with you when you change agencies.

Also check who pays Google. A payments profile holds the name and address of the person or company legally responsible for it. When that’s your business, you can see exactly what Google charged, separate from what the agency invoices you.

Is my agency tracking real leads or just clicks?

Open Goals > Conversions > Summary and read the list of conversion actions: each primary action should be something a customer does that can turn into paid work, like a call of a decent length, a form submission or a booking. Primary actions are the ones that count in the Conversions column and that automated bidding works toward; secondary actions only appear in All conversions (Google’s explanation). If page views, “time on site” or button clicks are set as primary, your reported conversion numbers are inflated and the bidding is chasing the wrong thing.

Check the status next to each action too. Google uses Active, Needs attention, Misconfigured, Awaiting conversions and Removed. Misconfigured means recording has stopped because of a setup error or a broken tag, so any report built on that action is missing data.

Calls need a closer look, since many trade and service enquiries come in by phone. Google’s call tracking lets you set a minimum call length, and shorter calls don’t count. The same page notes that “clicks on a number on your mobile website” track only the click, so that action can count people who tapped the number and never called. You can see each tracked call’s length in the Call details report.

Then compare with what actually reached you. If Google Ads says 60 conversions last month, pull your call log, inbox and booking system for the same dates and count real enquiries from ads. A gap is normal (duplicates, spam forms, existing customers calling about a job). A gap your agency can’t explain is a problem.

How can I see if my agency is actually working on my account?

Change history shows you, because it records every edit made to your campaigns and who made it. Go to Campaigns > Change history. Google keeps the last two years of changes, shows the email address of whoever made each edit in the interface, and labels automated changes with names like “Google Ads system”.

What good work looks like in there: negative keywords added after a search terms review, ads tested and paused, bids or budgets adjusted with a reason the agency can explain, and location or schedule changes that match how your business runs. What poor work looks like: weeks with no entries from the agency, or nothing except automated changes.

Automated changes deserve their own question. Google Ads can apply some recommendations automatically on a schedule, and you can see which are switched on and what was applied under the Manage and History tabs on the Recommendations page. Some are fine. Ask your agency which ones are on and why, because a recommendation that broadens your keywords or targeting can spend money on searches you’d never have picked.

Are my ads showing for the right searches?

The search terms report answers this directly: it lists the actual searches that triggered your ads and got clicks. Go to Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms, set the date range to the last 30 days and sort by cost.

Read the top 20 or so. For a plumbing business, terms like “emergency plumber near me” or “blocked drain [suburb]” are what you want to pay for. Terms like “plumber salary”, “plumbing course” or “how to fix a leaking tap” are job seekers and DIYers, and they should be blocked with negative keywords. A few stray terms are normal. Expensive irrelevant terms that show up month after month mean nobody is reviewing this report.

While you’re checking where your ads show, ask about location targeting. Google offers two options, “Presence” and “Presence or Interest”, and recommends the broader one as a best practice on Search, but it also suggests Presence when you only want to reach people in your chosen locations. A business that can only send a van within its service area usually fits that description. Your agency should be able to tell you which option each campaign uses and why.

What should my agency’s monthly report show?

It should show what each enquiry and each booked job cost you, and what the agency changed that month and why. Clicks, impressions and click-through rate are fine as supporting detail. On their own they don’t tell you whether the ads made money.

The agency can’t see which leads turned into jobs unless you tell them, so this number usually needs your records. Here’s how to work it out, with example figures. Swap in your own.

Then compare cost per booked job with what a job is worth to you. If your average job brings in $650 and your gross margin is 50%, each job leaves $325 before marketing, so in this example the ads pay for themselves with a little left over, before counting repeat work. If cost per booked job is above the profit on a typical job, the account needs a plan, and a good agency will bring you one without being asked.

For the “what changed” part, the report should match change history. If it says “refined keywords” and change history shows no keyword edits that month, ask about it.

What are the red flags with a Google Ads agency?

The biggest red flag is an agency that keeps you out of your own account. These are the others we see most often, with what to ask for in each case.

Should I switch agencies or give it more time?

Give it more time if tracking is set up properly, change history shows real work and cost per booked job is heading the right way, even slowly. Consider switching if you can’t get Admin access, the agency can’t explain what’s in the account, or tracking problems you raised are still there a month later.

Before you switch, make sure your own email has Admin access and that the payments profile is in your business’s name. Write down which conversion actions are primary and what each one counts. Because the client account keeps its data when a manager account is unlinked, the next person can pick up from your history instead of starting cold.

If you want a second opinion on your account, we’ll go through these checks with you. PPC Fitter runs Google Ads management for local service businesses. The first two months of management are free, and your ad budget is always paid directly to Google. If your checks point to campaign setup, our posts on Search versus Performance Max and choosing a bid strategy for a low-volume account go further, and if clicks arrive but don’t turn into calls, start with the landing page diagnostic. If the phone stays quiet even though clicks are coming in, our checklist for Google Ads getting clicks but no calls covers the settings to check first.

Common questions

Is a Google Partner badge a sign of a good agency?

It tells you the agency meets Google’s program requirements, which include an optimization score of at least 70% on its manager account, $10,000 in ad spend across managed accounts over 90 days, and certified staff. Those are measures of the agency’s size and setup habits. They don’t show how your account is performing, so check your own numbers either way.

Is a high optimization score a good sign?

Google describes optimization score as an estimate of how well your account is set to perform. It’s useful as a prompt to review recommendations. It doesn’t count your enquiries or jobs, so a high score next to a rising cost per booked job still needs explaining.

What if my agency won’t give me admin access?

Ask in writing for Admin access for your own email and a reason if they refuse. Without it you can’t run any of the checks above, and since Google says the client account owns its data, there’s no technical reason you can’t have it.

How often should my agency make changes?

There’s no fixed number. A small account with a handful of conversions a month doesn’t need daily edits, and constant changes can make results harder to read. What you should see is work in change history every month, each change with a reason the agency can explain to you.

Sources: 1. About access levels in your Google Ads account (Google Ads Help). 2. Manage access to your Google Ads account (Google Ads Help). 3. About ownership of client accounts (Google Ads Help). 4. About payments profiles (Google Ads Help). 5. Manage conversion goals from the conversions summary (Google Ads Help). 6. Troubleshooting conversion tracking status (Google Ads Help). 7. About phone call conversion tracking (Google Ads Help). 8. About change history (Google Ads Help). 9. About applying recommendations automatically (Google Ads Help). 10. About the search terms report (Google Ads Help). 11. About negative keywords (Google Ads Help). 12. Target ads to geographic locations (Google Ads Help). 13. How to become a Google Partner or Premier Partner (Google Ads Help). 14. About optimization score (Google Ads Help).