In brief: Good Google Ads management is a monthly routine you can check yourself. Read the search terms, add negative keywords, match conversions to real enquiries, check budget pace, and explain every change. Google Ads has 5 access levels, and the business should hold Admin. Change history keeps 2 years of edits, so the work leaves a trail.
You pay someone every month to run your Google Ads, and the invoice arrives on time. What is harder to see is the work behind it. Good Google Ads management is a steady monthly routine. It covers the searches your ads showed for, the leads they produced, the budget, and the changes made to the account.
The useful part is that almost all of it leaves a trail inside your own account. You do not need to understand bidding to check it. You need the right access and a list of places to look, and this guide gives you both.
Key Takeaways
- Google Ads has 5 access levels. The business should always hold Admin.
- The search terms report shows what people typed before your ad appeared.
- Negative keywords stop your budget going on searches you never wanted.
- Change history keeps 2 years of edits, so real work is easy to see.
- A good report explains what changed and why, in plain words.
What Does Google Ads Management Actually Involve?
Mostly checking and pruning. Setting up a campaign takes a few days. Keeping it healthy takes a little time every week, for as long as it runs. That ongoing work is what a monthly fee pays for, and it is the part that quietly stops when nobody is watching.
In a normal month, the work falls into five jobs. Each one leaves something you can see:
None of these jobs is clever. They are the housekeeping that keeps your cost per lead from creeping up month after month. For the wider picture on what the ads themselves cost, see our guide to Google Ads cost in India. It covers budgets, GST and click prices.
Who Should Own the Google Ads Account?
You should, always. The account holds your spending history, your conversion data and your billing, and it should stay with the business if the agency ever changes. Google Ads gives each user one of five access levels, and the business owner should hold the highest one under a company email address.
Google’s page on access levels lists them as Email-only, Billing, Read-only, Standard and Admin. Here is what each is for in practice:
Only an Admin can unlink a manager account, which is how agencies often connect to yours. Keep a second Admin as a backup too. Google warns that “if your account has only one administrator, you may lose access to your tags if that user becomes unavailable.” Tags are the small pieces of tracking code that record your leads. Google’s guide to granting access also says monthly invoicing needs “Admin” access. For a business in Navrangpura paying by invoice, that is one more reason to keep the top login in-house.
What Should Your Manager Check in the Search Terms Report?
Every search that cost you money in the past month. Google’s search terms report lists terms “that a significant number of people have used, and that resulted in your ad being shown.” In simple terms, it shows what people actually typed.
Keywords and search terms are two different things. You choose a keyword like “interior designer Ahmedabad”. The search that triggers your ad might be “interior designer salary Ahmedabad”, which will never become a customer. The report is where that gap shows up, and reading it is one of the most useful hours of the month.
Some rows will be missing. Google says some terms “are omitted from the search terms report in order to keep with our standards on data privacy.” So the report is a strong sample of your traffic, with some gaps. If you run Performance Max, Google now offers a search terms report for it, with data “available starting from March 2023.”
Each bad search your manager finds should become a negative keyword. Google explains that negative keywords “let you exclude search terms from your campaigns”. A clinic in Prahlad Nagar, for example, might block “free”, “course” and “job” in the first month. A growing negative list is one of the clearest signs that someone is actually reading the data. A list that has not changed since the campaign launched tells you the opposite.
How Do You Know Conversions Are Being Counted Properly?
Compare Google’s number with your own. Once a month, count the enquiries that really came in from ads, by phone, form or WhatsApp. Then look at the conversions column in Google Ads for the same dates. The two will rarely match exactly, but they should sit in the same range.
A big gap in either direction is a problem worth raising. Say Google shows 40 conversions while your team took 9 calls. In that case something is being counted twice, or a page visit is being treated as a lead. If Google shows almost nothing while the phone keeps ringing, the tracking has probably broken, for example after a change to the website.
This matters because, if you use Google’s automated bidding, it learns from whatever it is told counts as success. Wrong conversion data teaches it to chase the wrong people. Our guide on how to measure digital marketing ROI explains which numbers to trust first.
How Should the Budget and the Competition Be Reviewed?
By checking pace, then position. Pace means the month’s spend is on track against the plan, with no nasty surprise on the last day. Position means knowing how often your ads appear when they could, and who you keep meeting in the auction. Both take a few minutes once the manager knows where to look.
Together, pace and position explain many of the swings you will see in the monthly numbers. For position, the tool is auction insights. One figure it shows is impression share. Google defines it as “the number of impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive.” In plain words, it is the share of possible appearances your ad actually got. The report also shows overlap rate, how often a rival’s ad appeared alongside yours, and outranking share, how often yours ranked above theirs.
A low impression share tells your manager one of two things. Either the budget is running out early in the day, or your ads are losing on quality and bids. Those need very different fixes, and a good manager will tell you which one it is.
What Should the Monthly Report Show You?
What changed, why it changed, and what it did to your leads. Clicks and impressions belong in the report, but they are the least useful part of it. A report worth reading connects the work done to the cost per lead, in words a busy owner can follow over tea.
You can check the “changes made” line yourself. Google’s change history lists edits made “during the past 2 years”, including things like “who added a keyword” and previous budget amounts. Say the report describes a busy month while change history shows nothing for three weeks. That is worth a polite question at the next Monday morning review.
Red Flags in Google Ads Management
A few patterns deserve a direct question. None of them proves bad work on its own. Together, they usually mean the account is being maintained on paper while nobody is actually inside it. Here are the four worth watching for most closely.
You do not have Admin access. Whatever reason you are given, fix this first, because it is your account and your data. An agency that is doing good work has nothing to lose by you holding the keys.
The report celebrates optimization score. Google’s page on optimization score calls it “an estimate of how well your Google Ads account is set to perform”. The same page says an account can reach 100% “by applying or dismissing all recommendations”. So a high score shows that suggestions were handled. It says nothing on its own about leads.
Ad Strength is treated as the goal. Google says Ad Strength gives “feedback on the quality and potential effectiveness” of your ads. It is a helpful hint for writers. Our guide to ad copy that gets clicked explains how much weight it deserves.
Nobody can say what the ads promise. If the ad offers “free consultation” and the page never mentions it, leads leak away. Our guide to writing a landing page that matches the ad covers that match.
Where to Start This Month
Google Ads management is a monthly routine, and most of it is easy to check from your own account. You do not need to learn bidding. You only need the right login and twenty minutes a month, and you will know if the work is being done.
This week, log in and open Access and security. Make sure your business holds Admin, with a second Admin as backup. Then open last month’s search terms report and read the first fifty rows. You will learn a lot from that alone.
If you would rather hand the work over, our Google Ads management service in Ahmedabad can do it for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should a Google Ads account be checked?
Some part of it every week, and the whole routine once a month. Search terms and budget pace move fastest, so they need the most frequent attention. A full review each month is also the right moment to update negative keywords and plan the next tests.
What access should I give my Google Ads agency?
Standard access lets them edit campaigns without managing users, which suits most agency work. Keep Admin with the business, under a company email, and add a second Admin as a backup. Google warns that a single administrator can mean losing access to your tags if that person becomes unavailable.
Can I see what my Google Ads manager changed?
Yes. Change history lists the edits made to your account, campaigns and ad groups over the past 2 years. It shows who made each change and when, including new keywords and budget changes.
Should my manager apply every Google recommendation?
No. Google lets you apply or dismiss each recommendation, and each one should be judged on whether it will bring more good leads. Ask your manager to explain the ones they accepted, and what happened to your cost per lead afterwards.
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