Why PPC Account Due Diligence Matters More Than You Think

Taking over a Google Ads account is like buying a used car. On the surface, everything might look fine. The campaigns are running, the clicks are coming in, and there's historical data to review. But beneath the hood, you might be inheriting months or years of structural inefficiencies, wasted spend, and optimization debt that could cost you thousands of dollars before you even realize what's happening.

Whether you're an agency acquiring a new client, an in-house marketer inheriting an account from a predecessor, or a business purchasing another company's digital assets, the quality of your initial due diligence directly determines your future success. According to PPC audit research from Optmyzr, nearly 42.3% of all Google Ads accounts don't have any form of conversion tracking set up at all, meaning you could be inheriting an account that's been flying blind from day one.

The good news? A systematic acquisition checklist helps you identify red flags, quantify potential issues, and negotiate better terms based on the actual account health. More importantly, it gives you a clear roadmap for your first 30-60 days, so you can quickly demonstrate value and improve performance.

This comprehensive guide walks you through every critical checkpoint in the PPC account acquisition process, from initial assessment to post-acquisition cleanup. You'll learn exactly what to look for, which red flags indicate serious problems, and how to turn an inherited mess into a high-performing asset.

Pre-Acquisition Assessment: What to Request Before You Commit

Before you sign any agreement or inherit responsibility for a Google Ads account, you need comprehensive access to historical data and account documentation. This pre-acquisition phase is your only opportunity to conduct due diligence without the pressure of active campaigns burning budget on your watch.

Essential Access Requirements

Start by requesting read-only access to the Google Ads account for at least 30 days before takeover. This gives you time to conduct a thorough audit without the risk of accidentally changing live settings. You'll also need access to Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, and any third-party tools currently integrated with the account.

If you're an agency, confirm whether the account can be moved into your MCC (My Client Center) structure, or if you'll need to maintain it as a standalone account. Accounts with long-standing MCC relationships may have shared negative keyword lists, conversion actions, or audience segments that could break during migration.

Historical Performance Documentation

Request a minimum of 12 months of performance data, including monthly breakdowns of spend, conversions, conversion value, and ROAS. Pay special attention to trends over time rather than just point-in-time snapshots. A gradual decline in performance often indicates systematic issues that won't be immediately visible in a single month's data.

Look for unusual spikes or drops in spend that aren't explained by seasonality or known business events. These could indicate previous account problems, emergency shutdowns, or periods where the account was neglected. Also review year-over-year comparisons to understand seasonal patterns and set realistic expectations for future performance.

Existing Documentation and SOPs

Ask for any existing documentation including account setup guides, optimization playbooks, negative keyword lists maintained outside the platform, audience definitions, and historical change logs. According to best practices for account handoffs, the most valuable inherited accounts come with comprehensive documentation that preserves institutional knowledge.

The reality is that most accounts won't have formal documentation. If the previous manager kept detailed records, that's a strong positive signal about overall account health. If there's nothing documented, plan to spend your first few weeks reverse-engineering their strategy and decision-making process.

Account Structure Evaluation: The Foundation of Performance

Account structure is the foundation everything else builds on. A poorly structured account makes optimization nearly impossible, wastes budget through inefficient bidding, and creates reporting nightmares. Your structure audit should happen before you dive into performance metrics.

Campaign Organization Assessment

Review how campaigns are organized and whether the structure aligns with business objectives. Strong account structures typically organize campaigns by product line, service type, geographic market, or customer segment. Each campaign should have a clear purpose and success metrics that tie back to business goals.

Red flags include campaigns with generic names like "Campaign 1" or "Test Campaign" that have been running for months, mixing of different product lines or services within a single campaign, and no clear distinction between brand and non-brand traffic. Also watch for abandoned campaigns left in enabled status that are still spending small amounts of money.

For larger accounts, evaluate whether the structure can scale. An account structure that works for $5,000 monthly spend often breaks down at $50,000 monthly spend. You need to assess not just current performance, but whether the structure can support your growth plans.

Ad Group Architecture

According to WordStream's PPC audit guidelines, ad groups should never contain more than 15-20 keywords. When you scan through the inherited account, flag any ad groups exceeding this threshold as they likely have poor relevance and low Quality Scores.

Each ad group should have a tight thematic focus with keywords that share the same search intent. Mixed intent within ad groups leads to generic ad copy that doesn't resonate with any searcher effectively. Review a sample of ad groups to ensure keywords are properly grouped and that ad copy matches the keyword theme.

Also identify single keyword ad groups, which might indicate an SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Group) structure. While SKAGs were popular several years ago, they're now considered outdated and create management overhead without performance benefits. You'll likely want to consolidate these during your optimization phase.

Naming Conventions and Organization

Consistent naming conventions might seem like a minor detail, but they become critical when you're managing multiple accounts or trying to build automated reports. Review whether campaigns and ad groups follow a logical naming system that makes filtering and sorting easy.

Strong naming conventions typically include identifiers for campaign type, match type, geography, and product/service. For example: "Brand_Exact_US_Product-A" immediately tells you everything you need to know. Inconsistent naming suggests the account grew organically without strategic planning.

Conversion Tracking Verification: The Most Critical Checkpoint

If conversion tracking isn't set up correctly, nothing else matters. You could be inheriting an account that appears to perform well based on clicks and impressions, but actually generates zero valuable business outcomes. This is your most important due diligence checkpoint.

Conversion Action Audit

Start by reviewing all conversion actions currently tracked in the account. Document what each conversion represents, its assigned value, and whether it's included in the "Conversions" column or only in "All Conversions." Many inherited accounts have multiple conversion actions that are no longer relevant or were set up incorrectly from the start.

Validate that each conversion is actually firing by checking recent conversion data against business records. If the account shows 100 form submissions last month, do the CRM records confirm that number? Discrepancies indicate tracking problems that need immediate attention.

For accounts integrated with Google Analytics 4, verify that GA4 conversion tracking is properly configured and that the goals imported into Google Ads match your business objectives. As highlighted in comprehensive Google Ads audit frameworks, incomplete or inaccurate GA4 data means Google Ads automation optimizes based on the wrong signals, leading to wasted budgets.

Attribution Settings Review

Check the attribution model currently in use. Google Ads defaults to data-driven attribution for accounts with sufficient conversion volume, but inherited accounts might still be using last-click attribution or other models. Understanding the current attribution model is essential for accurately interpreting historical performance data.

If the attribution model was recently changed, that could explain sudden shifts in reported performance that don't reflect actual business changes. Make note of any attribution model changes in the last 12 months and how they might have affected the metrics you're reviewing.

Conversion Value Accuracy

Review whether conversion values are accurately assigned. E-commerce accounts should be passing actual transaction values, while lead-gen accounts should have realistic estimated values based on close rates and average deal sizes. Inaccurate conversion values completely undermine ROAS calculations and smart bidding effectiveness.

Cross-reference reported conversion values with actual revenue data from your CRM or e-commerce platform. A significant discrepancy indicates tracking issues or outdated value estimates that need correction before you can trust any ROAS metrics.

Keyword and Search Term Analysis: Finding Hidden Waste

Keywords are where the rubber meets the road in Google Ads. Your keyword analysis reveals not just what the previous manager was targeting, but more importantly, what they were accidentally targeting through poor match type management and inadequate negative keyword hygiene.

Active Keyword Review

Start with a high-level view of total active keywords. Accounts with thousands of keywords often suffer from over-complexity and lack of focus. Conversely, accounts with too few keywords might be missing opportunities. Industry benchmarks suggest most well-optimized accounts have between 100-500 active keywords, though this varies significantly by business type.

Review keyword performance metrics including impressions, clicks, conversions, and cost per conversion. Flag keywords with high spend but zero conversions over the past 90 days. These represent clear opportunities for immediate optimization. Also identify keywords with strong performance that might be underfunded due to budget constraints or conservative bidding.

Analyze the mix of match types currently in use. Modern Google Ads accounts typically rely heavily on broad match with strong negative keyword lists, while older accounts might have exact match heavy structures. Neither is inherently wrong, but understanding the current approach helps you plan your optimization strategy. For a systematic approach to identifying wasted spend, consider using rapid audit frameworks designed for efficiency reviews.

Search Term Report Deep Dive

The search term report is where you discover what's really happening in the account. Export search term data for the past 90 days and analyze it for relevance. You're looking for patterns of irrelevant traffic that indicate inadequate negative keyword management.

Common waste patterns include job-seeker queries for B2B services, competitor name variations, informational queries like "how to" or "what is" when you're selling products, geographic mismatches where queries from unsupported locations are triggering ads, and bottom-of-funnel queries triggering top-of-funnel campaigns.

Pay special attention to high-volume irrelevant queries. A single poorly chosen broad match keyword can generate thousands of irrelevant impressions and hundreds of wasted clicks. Identifying and eliminating these waste sources is typically your fastest path to improved performance.

Negative Keyword List Evaluation

Review all negative keywords currently applied at the account, campaign, and ad group levels. Well-managed accounts typically have hundreds or even thousands of negative keywords accumulated through continuous search term review. A lack of negative keywords is one of the strongest indicators of account neglect.

Check whether negative keywords are organized into shared lists by theme (competitors, job seekers, free-seekers, etc.) or simply added ad-hoc to individual campaigns. Shared negative keyword lists indicate sophisticated management, while scattered negatives suggest reactive rather than strategic optimization.

For accounts showing poor negative keyword hygiene, you're likely looking at immediate optimization opportunities worth 15-30% of current spend. This waste can be eliminated quickly once you implement proper search term review processes. If the inherited account shows signs of neglect, systematic recovery protocols can help you restore account health efficiently.

Ad Copy and Creative Assessment

Ad copy quality directly impacts click-through rates, Quality Scores, and conversion rates. Your creative assessment helps you understand the current messaging strategy and identify opportunities for improvement.

Ad Variation Testing

Review whether each ad group contains multiple ad variations for testing purposes. According to audit best practices, you should find two to three ad variations per ad group. If the inherited account only has one active ad in each ad group, the previous manager wasn't testing variations. Conversely, too many active ads per ad group dilutes testing and slows down learning.

Check the change history to see when ads were last updated. Ads that haven't been touched in 6-12 months suggest stagnant optimization. Strong accounts show regular ad testing with winners graduated and new challengers introduced quarterly.

Responsive Search Ad Adoption

Evaluate whether the account has adopted Responsive Search Ads (RSAs), which became the default ad format in 2022. Accounts still running primarily Expanded Text Ads are outdated and likely underperforming. Review RSA asset reports to see which headlines and descriptions are performing best.

For existing RSAs, check asset strength ratings. Low asset strength indicates poor headline and description variety, which limits Google's ability to optimize ad combinations for different queries. Strong RSAs have at least 10-15 unique headlines and 3-4 unique descriptions.

Ad Extension Utilization

Review which ad extensions are currently enabled. Accounts should be using sitelink extensions, callout extensions, structured snippets, and call extensions at minimum. Missing extensions represent missed opportunities for increased ad real estate and improved click-through rates.

Check extension performance metrics to identify which extensions are actually serving and generating engagement. Poorly configured extensions might be enabled but not showing due to relevance issues or policy violations.

Bidding and Budget Analysis

Bidding strategy and budget allocation reveal the previous manager's priorities and risk tolerance. Your analysis here determines whether you'll need to restructure bidding approaches or can optimize within the existing framework.

Bidding Strategy Assessment

Document the bidding strategy for each campaign, whether manual CPC, enhanced CPC, target CPA, target ROAS, or maximize conversions. Review how long each strategy has been in place, as smart bidding strategies need at least 2-4 weeks of learning time before they stabilize.

Evaluate whether the current bidding strategies are appropriate for the conversion volume available. Target CPA and target ROAS strategies require at least 30-50 conversions per month per campaign to work effectively. Accounts using smart bidding without sufficient conversion volume are likely underperforming.

For campaigns using target CPA or target ROAS bidding, check whether the targets are realistic based on historical performance. Overly aggressive targets force Google's algorithm to severely restrict impression share, leaving money on the table. Overly conservative targets waste budget on low-quality traffic.

Budget Allocation Review

Analyze how budgets are currently distributed across campaigns. Compare budget allocation to performance metrics to identify mismatches where high-performing campaigns are budget-constrained while low-performing campaigns have excess budget.

Check for campaigns regularly hitting their daily budget limits. Budget-limited campaigns show "Limited by budget" status and often have inconsistent delivery throughout the day. This creates performance inefficiencies and represents opportunities for better budget allocation.

Also identify campaigns with allocated budgets they never approach spending. These indicate either overly conservative bidding or structural problems preventing the campaign from spending available budget.

Historical CPA and ROAS Trends

Review how cost per acquisition and return on ad spend have trended over the past 12 months. Gradual degradation in efficiency metrics suggests systematic problems like increasing competition, declining Quality Scores, or audience fatigue. Sudden changes indicate specific events worth investigating.

Compare current performance to industry benchmarks for your vertical. If the account is significantly underperforming industry averages, you have clear justification for major restructuring. If performance is at or above benchmarks, your optimization approach should be more conservative to avoid disrupting what's working.

Targeting and Audience Configuration

Modern Google Ads success depends heavily on proper targeting and audience configuration. Your assessment here reveals whether the account is leveraging available targeting options or leaving significant opportunities untapped.

Geographic Targeting Review

Review geographic targeting settings for each campaign. Confirm that targeting matches the actual service areas for the business. A surprisingly common issue in inherited accounts is geographic targeting that includes regions the business doesn't actually serve, often left over from testing or misconfiguration.

Analyze geographic performance reports to identify regions that perform exceptionally well or poorly. This helps you understand where to focus optimization efforts and might reveal opportunities for geographic bid adjustments or separate campaigns for key markets.

Check for geographic exclusions that might be blocking valuable traffic. Some accounts exclude entire states or countries due to single bad experiences, leaving money on the table.

Audience Targeting Assessment

Review what audience segments are currently applied to campaigns, whether in targeting or observation mode. Strong accounts leverage remarketing audiences, customer match lists, in-market audiences, and demographic adjustments. Missing audience layers suggest optimization opportunities.

Analyze performance by audience segment to understand which audiences are most valuable. This helps prioritize audience expansion and identifies opportunities for audience-specific campaigns or messaging.

Check the age and size of custom audience lists. Outdated remarketing pixels or customer lists that haven't been updated in months won't drive results. Also verify that audience lists meet minimum size thresholds for targeting.

Demographic and Device Settings

Review performance by age, gender, household income, and device type. Identify any demographic segments with dramatically different performance metrics. While broad targeting is generally recommended, significant performance differences might justify bid adjustments or exclusions.

Check device performance to ensure mobile, desktop, and tablet are all contributing efficiently. In some verticals, mobile performance significantly lags desktop, suggesting opportunities for device-specific bid adjustments or landing page optimization.

Technical Implementation Audit

Technical issues can undermine even the best strategic planning. Your technical audit ensures that tracking, integrations, and automated rules are functioning correctly.

Tracking Tag Verification

Verify that Google Ads tracking tags are properly implemented across all relevant pages. Use Google Tag Assistant or similar tools to confirm tags are firing correctly on landing pages, form submission pages, and conversion pages.

Common technical issues include conversion tags firing multiple times per page load, tags not firing on certain pages due to JavaScript errors, conflicting tags from multiple tracking implementations, and outdated tag formats that should be migrated to Google Tag Manager.

Automated Rules and Scripts

Review all automated rules currently configured in the account. Document what each rule does, when it was last modified, and whether it's still actively running. According to comprehensive audit checklists, checking for outdated scripts or rules is essential, as automated rules created by previous managers can cause unexpected changes if you're not aware of them.

Evaluate whether existing automated rules are still appropriate given current account strategy. Rules that made sense with manual bidding might conflict with smart bidding strategies. Also check for rules that haven't triggered in months, suggesting they're no longer relevant.

Third-Party Integration Verification

Document all third-party tools currently integrated with the account, including bid management platforms, analytics tools, call tracking systems, and CRM integrations. Verify that each integration is still active and functioning correctly.

Review the costs associated with third-party tools. Inherited accounts sometimes have expensive tool subscriptions that are no longer being used effectively or could be replaced with more cost-effective alternatives.

Competitive and Market Context

Understanding the competitive landscape helps you set realistic expectations and identify strategic opportunities. Your market analysis contextualizes the account's performance against external factors.

Auction Insights Analysis

Review Auction Insights reports to identify your main competitors in the search auction. Document your impression share relative to competitors and whether your position has been improving or declining over time.

Look for competitors with significantly higher impression share, as they represent opportunities to expand reach. Also identify competitors who have recently entered the auction or whose impression share has grown rapidly, as these changes often impact your performance.

Quality Score Assessment

Review Quality Scores across your keyword portfolio. Low Quality Scores indicate relevance problems that increase costs and limit impression share. While Quality Score isn't everything, consistently low scores suggest fundamental issues with account structure, ad copy, or landing page experience.

Check Quality Score trends over time. Declining Quality Scores often indicate that competitors have improved their advertising while the inherited account has stagnated. This puts you at an increasing cost disadvantage that needs to be addressed.

Critical Red Flags and Potential Deal Breakers

Some issues in inherited accounts are easily fixable. Others represent fundamental problems that might justify walking away from the acquisition or renegotiating terms. Here are the most critical red flags to watch for.

Policy Violations and Account History

Check the account's policy violation history. Accounts with repeated policy violations or previous suspensions carry ongoing risk. Google has less tolerance for accounts with poor compliance history, meaning future violations could result in permanent suspension.

If you're acquiring a business and the Google Ads account has a history of suspensions, consider whether you can create a fresh account under new ownership rather than inheriting the problematic account history.

Unrealistic Performance Claims

Be skeptical of performance claims that seem too good to be true. If the seller claims 10x ROAS but you can't verify it with actual tracking data, you're likely looking at inflated or fabricated numbers. Always verify performance claims against multiple data sources.

Watch for accounts that only measure clicks or impressions as "conversions" to inflate reported success. Also be wary of accounts that count every form view or page view as a conversion rather than actual business outcomes.

Hidden Technical Debt

Massive technical debt can take months to clean up and might not be apparent in surface-level reviews. Red flags include hundreds of paused campaigns cluttering the account, thousands of duplicate keywords across ad groups, dozens of obsolete conversion actions still being tracked, and complex shared library items with no documentation.

While technical debt doesn't directly hurt performance, it makes the account difficult to manage and optimize. Factor cleanup time into your transition plan and use the extent of technical debt as a negotiating point if you're purchasing the account.

Post-Acquisition Action Plan: Your First 60 Days

Once you've completed due diligence and committed to the account, you need a systematic approach for your first 60 days. This period is critical for stabilizing performance, building stakeholder trust, and setting the foundation for long-term success.

Week 1: Stabilization and Quick Wins

Your first priority is preventing any performance deterioration during the transition. Make no major structural changes in week one. Instead, focus on understanding daily performance patterns and ensuring nothing breaks during the handoff.

Identify and implement quick wins that improve performance without risk, such as adding obviously missing negative keywords found in your search term analysis, pausing keywords with high spend and zero conversions over 90 days, fixing broken landing page URLs, and enabling missing ad extensions with approved content.

Set up monitoring and alerting to catch any unexpected changes in spend, conversions, or performance. This helps you respond quickly if the transition causes unintended issues.

Weeks 2-4: Core Optimization

With the account stabilized, begin implementing your core optimization priorities identified during due diligence. Focus on high-impact, low-risk changes that address the most significant performance drags. For accounts with serious search term waste, implementing systematic search term review workflows should be your top priority.

Key priorities include fixing conversion tracking issues, implementing comprehensive negative keyword lists, reallocating budgets from low to high performers, updating ad copy in underperforming ad groups, and adjusting bids for obvious inefficiencies.

Begin establishing testing frameworks for ongoing optimization. Set up ad variation tests, experiment with new audience segments in observation mode, and test bid strategy changes in lower-spend campaigns before rolling out broadly.

Weeks 5-8: Strategic Improvements

By weeks 5-8, you have enough performance data under your management to make more significant strategic changes. This is when you address structural issues that require more extensive changes.

Consider campaign restructures if the current organization is fundamentally flawed, migration to smart bidding strategies where appropriate, expansion into new audience segments or geographic markets, and implementation of automated tools to scale optimization efforts.

Establish regular reporting cadences that demonstrate the improvements you've made since takeover. Compare performance to the baseline period before acquisition to quantify your impact.

Leveraging Automation Tools for Inherited Account Management

Managing inherited accounts efficiently requires automation, especially if you're an agency managing multiple client accounts simultaneously. The right tools help you scale optimization efforts without proportionally scaling your time investment.

Negative Keyword Management Automation

Manual search term review is time-consuming and difficult to maintain consistently across multiple accounts. AI-powered tools like Negator.io analyze search terms using context from your business profile and active keywords to automatically identify irrelevant queries that should be excluded.

This automation is particularly valuable for inherited accounts with poor negative keyword hygiene, as it can quickly identify thousands of waste-causing search terms that would take weeks to find manually. The protected keywords feature ensures you don't accidentally block valuable traffic while cleaning up years of accumulated waste.

For agencies, the multi-account support through MCC integration means you can apply consistent negative keyword standards across all inherited client accounts without manually reviewing each one. This saves 10+ hours per week while typically improving ROAS by 20-35% within the first month.

Reporting and Monitoring Automation

Set up automated reporting that alerts you to significant changes in performance metrics. This is especially important during the first few months after acquisition when you're still learning the account's normal patterns.

Create stakeholder-friendly reports that clearly show performance improvements since you took over the account. Visualizing the before-and-after impact helps justify your management fees and builds confidence in your optimization approach.

Conclusion: Due Diligence Determines Success

Inheriting or acquiring a Google Ads account is an opportunity to drive significant performance improvements, but only if you conduct thorough due diligence upfront. The checklist outlined in this guide helps you systematically evaluate account health, identify red flags, and plan your optimization roadmap.

The time invested in comprehensive due diligence pays dividends throughout your entire relationship with the account. You'll avoid nasty surprises, set realistic expectations with stakeholders, negotiate better terms based on actual account health, and hit the ground running with clear priorities from day one.

Most importantly, a systematic acquisition process helps you determine whether the account is worth taking on at all. Not every opportunity is a good opportunity, and walking away from an account with fundamental problems is often the smartest business decision.

Whether you're an agency acquiring a new client or an in-house marketer taking over from a predecessor, use this checklist to ensure you're starting from a position of knowledge rather than making assumptions. Your first 60 days set the trajectory for years of performance, so invest the time to get them right.