Lonko Digital

Is Your Google Ads Agency Doing a Good Job? How to Check Fairly

Pillar: How to Think About a Decision7 min read

You pay someone to run your Google Ads. It might be an agency, a freelancer or someone on your own team. Results feel flat, or you simply can't tell whether the money is well spent, and you want a way to judge the work that doesn't depend on a gut feeling or a sales pitch.

The hard part is that a disappointing month can come from many places. Some are the manager's responsibility. Some aren't. A fair check separates the two.

The short version

Is the account being managed well?

  1. You own the account, or at least can see it with your own login.
  2. Conversion tracking measures real leads and sales.
  3. There is visible evidence of ongoing work.
  4. Search terms and exclusions are reviewed.
  5. Communication is clear, timely and honest.

Is it producing business results?

  1. Reporting connects spend to leads, lead quality and sales.
  2. The leads are useful, and your business follows them up well.

You can do every check with read-only access. No tools or purchases are needed.

Two questions, not one

It helps to separate two things. One is process: is the work being done, and done carefully? The other is outcome: is the account producing leads and sales at a cost that makes sense for your business?

They can disagree. A careful manager can have a weak quarter because of a seasonal dip or a broken form on your website. A careless one can have a good quarter because demand happened to rise. If you only look at results, you can end up blaming good work or rewarding luck. Looking at both gives you a much clearer picture.

If you only look at results, you can end up blaming good work or rewarding luck.

Part 1. Is the account being managed well?

These checks are about the work itself. They are mostly within the manager's control.

1. Do you own the account, and can you see it?

Start here, because every other check depends on it. If you can't log in and look, you are relying entirely on reports someone else prepares.

If you don't have access yet, ask whoever manages the account to invite your own Google account as a user. In Google Ads, someone with admin access does this from the Admin menu, under Access and security. Google offers several access levels. Read-only lets you view campaigns and run performance reports without being able to change anything, which is enough for everything in this article.

A few points worth knowing:

2. Is conversion tracking set up to measure real leads and sales?

Ask what counts as a conversion in the account, then check that it matches what you care about. A form submission, a booked call or a purchase is a real business result. A page view or a click on a button usually isn't.

Then test it. Submit a form or make a call yourself and see whether it appears. Tracking can stop working quietly after a website change, so a manager should be checking it rather than assuming it still works. For more on why this matters, see The Real Cost of Not Tracking Conversions.

3. Is there visible evidence of ongoing management?

Google Ads keeps a change history. It lists changes to campaigns, ad groups, keywords, budgets and ads, with the date and who made each one, going back up to two years. Some changes made by Google's automated systems appear there too, listed under names such as "Google Ads system".

Open it and look at the last few months. You are not counting edits. More changes are not automatically better, and some accounts run well with few adjustments. You are looking for signs that someone is paying attention: regular reviews, changes that match what you were told in reports, and a reason behind them that the manager can explain.

4. Are search terms and exclusions being reviewed?

For Search campaigns, the search terms report shows the actual searches that triggered your ads. It is under Insights and reports in Google Ads. Google leaves out terms with too little activity for privacy reasons, so the report is a sample rather than a complete list.

Read the top terms by spend. Are they from people who could become customers? If a lot of money is going to searches for jobs, free options, or services you don't offer, ask how those are being handled. Unwanted searches can usually be excluded with negative keywords.

Performance Max campaigns have their own version of this report in the same section, and their controls work differently. If your account uses them, ask the manager to walk you through what they review and how they exclude irrelevant traffic.

5. Is communication clear, timely and honest?

This one is harder to measure but easy to recognize. A good manager explains what they changed and why, tells you when something isn't working, and answers questions in plain language. Reports should help you understand the account, not just fill a page with charts.

Pay attention to how bad news is handled. A manager who flags a problem early, with a plan, is doing the job. One who only reports good weeks makes it hard for you to judge anything.

Part 2. Is the account producing business results?

These checks are about outcomes. They depend on the manager, and also on factors outside their control.

6. Does reporting connect spend to business outcomes?

Clicks, impressions and click-through rate show activity. They don't show whether the business is better off. Useful reporting gets to cost per lead, the quality of those leads, and, where you can connect them, sales.

If your reports stop at clicks, ask for the next step. If results are weak and you want to work out where the break is, work through the full clicks-but-no-leads diagnosis.

7. Are the leads good, and what happens after they arrive?

This is a shared responsibility. The manager influences who clicks. Your business decides what happens next.

Look at a sample of recent leads. Are they the kind of people you can help? Then look at your own side: how quickly enquiries get a reply, whether calls are answered at busy times, and whether anyone tracks which leads become customers. A campaign can bring in good leads that are lost to slow follow-up, and that shows up as weak results even though the ads did their part.

Reading the two together

Once you have both answers, the picture usually falls into one of four patterns:

What a bad month does and does not prove

A single weak month is not proof of poor management, and a single strong month is not proof of good management. When lead volume is small, results swing from month to month for reasons nobody controls. Before you draw a conclusion, look at a few periods together. Why One Good Week Doesn't Mean It's Working explains how to tell a real change from ordinary variation.

Reasonable warning signs versus normal friction

Some things are worth raising. Others are part of normal work.

Worth a conversation (process):

Worth a conversation (results):

Usually normal:

How to raise a concern without starting a fight

Go in with questions, not a verdict. Share what you saw, ask what the manager sees, and ask what they plan to do. A specific question is much easier to answer well than a general complaint.

If they bring you a recommendation, judge it on its merits. Five questions to ask about any recommendation give you a simple way to tell advice worth acting on from advice that just sounds confident.

What to do this week

Curious how Lonko Digital thinks about evidence before decisions? Learn more about our approach →

Note: This article reflects general marketing knowledge and Lonko's own approach to evaluating evidence. It does not describe results from any specific account or campaign.

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