A verdict on every goal
For each conversion action: real outcome, soft signal or junk, and whether it is set as Primary. That is the difference between a tracking report and knowing what your bidding is chasing.
Paid performance marketing · Free audit
Find out how many of your Google Ads conversions are real.
Every conversion action in your account classified as a real outcome, a soft signal or junk, with the ones feeding Smart Bidding flagged. You grant read-only access, we run the check and send it back. No cost, no card.
The problem
Your Conversions column is counting things that were never customers.
A page view. A click to call that nobody answered. Directions to a shop. A lead form filled in by a bot. They all land in the same Conversions column, and the number at the top of your dashboard treats every one of them as a win.
That is the trap, and it gets worse when those actions are set as Primary. Smart Bidding optimises toward whatever you tell it counts, so if it is trained on form fills it gets very good at finding you more form fills, including the bots and the tyre-kickers. Your reported cost per lead looks healthy while the cost per real customer quietly climbs. That is not a small tracking problem. It is an optimisation engine pointed at the wrong target.
This is not the commodity wasted-spend audit you have seen a hundred times. Those check whether your tracking fires. We check whether you are counting the right thing.
See an example
Example
What Smart Bidding is training on
| Conversion action | Share | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase / bookingPrimary | 22% | Real |
| Map directionsPrimary | 31% | Junk |
| Phone click | 18% | Soft |
| Form (thank-you page)Primary | 15% | Soft |
| Newsletter signup | 14% | Junk |
Google reports
142 conversions
You booked
38 customers
An illustrative example, not your data. Your audit classifies the conversion actions that actually exist in your own account.
How it works
How the Conversion Reality Check works
You request the audit and grant read-only access
Read-only access to your Google Ads account through the official Google Ads API. We cannot change a campaign, a bid or a budget, and we never spend a penny of your money. You can revoke access at any time, and we do not need your logins.
We classify every conversion action in the account
Each action is bucketed into a genuine outcome, a lead-form action, a micro-action (calls, directions, page views) or other, and cross-brand actions are flagged. The classification reads how your actions are named and configured, so we confirm the edge cases with you rather than treating it as the final word.
We show what Smart Bidding is actually training on
Which of those actions are set as Primary and therefore feeding the algorithm, which campaigns are spending real money with no real outcomes at all, and whether mixed-brand goals are pulling bidding in the wrong direction.
You get the numbers, then a tiered set of actions
Every figure is computed in code and the written review is narration over those numbers, so nothing is invented. Recommendations arrive tiered: do today, watch closely, investigate further, do not change yet.
What you get
What the Conversion Reality Check gives you
Your Conversions column, broken down into what is a customer and what is applause.
You get the headline number, the classification table with every conversion action in your account tagged real, soft or junk alongside its share of reported conversions and whether it feeds bidding, the wasted-spend flags, a verdict on which goals are safe to bid on, and the tiered actions that follow.
Deterministic, not narrated guesswork
Every share, flag and figure is computed in code before a word is written, and the language model is guarded so it cannot invent a number. On low-volume accounts the anomaly checks are deliberately conservative, so a quiet week is not reported as a crisis.
Honest about its own ceiling
An ad-account scan diagnoses the risk with confidence. It cannot tell you true closed revenue, because that lives in your CRM or booking system, and we say so rather than dressing an estimate up as a fact.
Full capability list
Everything the Google Ads Audit does
The audit reads your live account through the official API and classifies what it actually finds there. This is the complete list of what it does today, with nothing on it that is roadmap or managed-service only.
Data collection
- Read-only Google Ads API accessthe official API, so no logins change hands and you can revoke access whenever you like
- Live pull of your own accountit classifies the conversion actions that genuinely exist in your account, not a generic checklist
- Search Partners status checkreported back as one of the account-level risk signals
- Offline conversion import checkconfirms whether offline conversions are being imported at all
Analysis
- Conversion action classificationevery conversion action in the account is bucketed as genuine, lead form, micro or other
- Primary-goal flaggingnames which actions are set as Primary and are therefore training Smart Bidding
- Zero-outcome spend detectionfinds campaigns spending real money against no real outcome
- Cross-brand action flaggingon shared accounts, actions that span more than one brand are called out
Guardrails on the analysis
- Facts computed before proseevery share, flag and figure is calculated in code before a word of the report is written
- Numeric-invention guardthe language model narrates the numbers it is given and cannot make new ones up
- Low-volume conservatismanomaly checks are deliberately damped so a quiet week is not reported to you as a crisis
- Fail-safe brand attributionanything not positively resolved to you is withheld rather than credited to you
Output and delivery
- Headline number and classification tableeach action tagged real, soft or junk, with its share of reported conversions and whether it feeds bidding
- Biddable-goal verdicta stated call on which goals are safe to bid on
- Four-tier recommendationsdo today, watch closely, investigate further, and do not change yet
- Account score against benchmarksyour account scored so you can see where it sits
Why it is different
Graders check whether your tracking fires. We check whether you are counting the right thing.
Every other free Google Ads grader scores your conversions and your CPA using whatever happens to sit in the Conversions column. None of them stops to ask whether those conversions are real business outcomes. That question is the entire category we are in.
It is not a new idea, it is a well-argued one. Menachem Ani has spent years arguing that soft signals should not carry the same weight as real sales. Frederick Vallaeys, ex-Google and now at Optmyzr, makes the same point from the bidding side: Smart Bidding is only as good as the conversion data you feed it, so feed it junk and it optimises for junk. Claude Hopkins got there first, a century ago: measure the sale, not the applause.
And we say what it does not do. It reads your ad account only, so it cannot tell you which clicks became paying customers. It classifies by how your actions are named and configured, which is reliable enough to act on but not infallible, so we confirm the edge cases with you. On accounts running more than one brand, anything we cannot positively resolve to you is withheld: we would rather show you less than credit you with another advertiser's conversions.
Compare
Not another wasted-spend grader.
Same starting point, a completely different question. Most graders score the Conversions column. We interrogate it.
| MxD Conversion Reality Check | WordStream (LOCALiQ) Google Ads Grader | Optmyzr | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall account score against benchmarks | Yes | Yes, ten graded metrics | Yes |
| Flags wasted spend | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Classifies each conversion action real, soft or junk | Yes | No | Not published |
| Shows which actions are Primary and training Smart Bidding | Yes | No | Not published |
| Reconciles ad data against CRM or booking outcomes | On managed engagements | No | Not published |
| Ongoing automated bid and campaign management | Managed service, on request | No | Yes |
| Every figure computed in code, no invented numbers | Yes | Not published | Not published |
Swipe the table to see every column.
Competitor capabilities and pricing verified against vendor pages on 22 July 2026. Where a vendor does not publish a behaviour or a price we say so rather than mark it down. Pricing changes often; reverify before relying on it.
Common
Questions
Is it really free? What is the catch?
The audit is free, and there is no card and no obligation. The honest catch is that we are an agency: if the method is useful and you would rather we ran your PPC and fixed what it finds, that managed service is what we sell. The audit stands on its own either way.
What access do you need?
Read-only access to your Google Ads account through the official Google Ads API. Read-only means exactly that: we cannot edit campaigns, change bids, adjust budgets or spend your money, and nothing we touch is write-enabled. You can revoke the access whenever you like, and we never ask for your logins.
Can you really tell how many of my conversions are real?
From your ad account alone we can diagnose the risk with confidence: which actions are micro-conversions, which are set as Primary and feeding bidding, whether Search Partners is on, whether offline conversions are being imported, and where spend is producing no real outcomes. What no ad-account scan can do by itself is tell you true closed revenue. That means reconciling clicks to real bookings in your CRM, which is the managed step.
How do you classify a conversion action?
We read how each action is named and configured and bucket it into genuine, lead-form, micro or other. Because that is based on your naming and setup rather than on reading your database, we confirm the edge cases with you instead of presenting the classification as infallible.
Do you store my data or share it?
We read only what the check needs. On accounts running more than one brand, anything we cannot positively resolve to you is withheld, so your report never mixes in another advertiser's data and never credits you with their conversions.
Will it tell me exactly how much money to cut?
It will show you where budget is being wasted and which goals are misleading Smart Bidding, tiered into what to do today and what to watch. Turning that into a precise reallocation, and proving it moved real revenue, is what a managed engagement does once your own outcome data is wired in.
Prefer we fix it and prove it moved?
The free audit diagnoses the risk from your ad account. Our managed paid performance service closes the loop: we wire your booking, CRM or call data in as the source of truth the Conversions column can never be, import offline conversions tied to gclid so Smart Bidding finally optimises toward signed customers, and report on spend pace, real-outcome KPIs and wasted spend every week.