Is Your Google Ads Agency Doing a Good Job? (How to Tell)
You’re paying an agency a monthly retainer and you genuinely can’t tell if they’re good or just collecting a check. The campaigns are “running.” The reports show numbers. And you have a creeping sense that you have no idea what’s actually going on.
Here’s the honest version of that feeling: if you’re even Googling this, they’re probably not doing well. That’s not a cynical take — it’s just that if things were clearly working, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be on the phone talking to salespeople or signing new clients, and the monthly bill would feel like a cost of doing business.
That said — the honest caveat — sometimes the agency is fine and the owner is just annoyed they have to pay for it. Writing a check every month is uncomfortable, even when the math works. So before you fire anyone, let’s make sure you’re diagnosing the right problem.
The Real Green Flag: Do You Feel It?
The clearest signal that an agency is doing a good job isn’t hiding in a spreadsheet. It’s obvious.
Pay $10,000 a month, they make you $100,000 a month — that’s good, even if writing the check still stings. The ROI is obvious enough that you don’t need to dig for it. You feel it in the business: the phone rings more, the sales team is busy, your pipeline has real people in it.
If they have to pull up a deck full of CPMs and impression share to convince you it’s working — and you don’t feel it — that’s a signal worth taking seriously. Feelings are a little sketchy, so look at actual activity instead:
- Are leads up? Not the agency’s version of “leads” — your version. Are real people contacting your business who found you through search?
- Is lead quality up? Are the people coming in someone your sales team can actually do something with?
- Are sales up? Is the sales team always on the phone?
- Is the CPL sane? If your cost per lead is $500 and your average job is worth $400, the math is broken whether or not the agency sends you a nice report.
If the business has the right activity and the numbers point the right direction, the account is probably in good hands. It should feel good. If it doesn’t feel good and you can’t point to the activity, the reporting theater isn’t a substitute.
The Green Flags and Red Flags
Here’s what to look for when you actually sit down and try to figure it out.
Green Flags
Early on, the agency is actively working the account. In the first few months, a well-run account should have regular updates to the negative keyword list — the search terms where your ads are showing up and wasting money. If there’s nothing in the change history for the first month, that’s a problem. A good manager is pulling bad terms early and often, especially during the learning phase. That weekly search-terms work is the core of any real Google Ads SOP — if your agency can’t describe theirs, that tells you something.
By month 6–8, light touch is normal — but communication isn’t. A dialed-in account at month six legitimately needs less hands-on work. The structure is solid, the negatives are deep, the bid strategy is trained. Less activity in the account at that stage isn’t laziness — it’s a sign the account is actually well-built. What you should still be getting is reporting and communication: “here’s what the account is doing, here’s what we think, it looks good and we don’t see a reason to mess with it right now.” That context matters. An account that just runs quietly with no word from the agency for three months isn’t fine — you don’t know if they’re watching it.
The reporting makes sense to you. Good agencies send reports that you can read without a decoder ring. The key numbers — leads, cost per lead, what changed, what they think about it — should be legible to a non-expert. Not because you need to micromanage, but because you’re the one who owns the business and the account.
You are an admin on your own account. This one is non-negotiable: you have access to the account at the admin level. Not “view only.” Admin.
When you ask a question, they have an answer. Not hedges. Not “it depends on a lot of factors.” A real point of view: “We think CPL is elevated because we’re testing a new campaign; here’s what we’re watching.”
Red Flags
The change history is empty. This is the single easiest thing to check, and it’s the one most business owners never look at. Go into the account, pull up the change history, and see if anything has been done in the last 30 days. No edits, no negatives added, no bid adjustments, no ad tests — just nothing. Unhappy with your results and the change history is empty? That’s a serious problem. You can check this yourself in about five minutes — see how to audit the account in 30 minutes if you want to do a more thorough pass.
You don’t have access to your own account. You are not an admin. You either have view-only access, or you have to ask the agency to log in and show you things. This is a major red flag. The account was built with your money, for your business, and if you can’t log in with admin rights, you don’t actually own it. Some agencies do this deliberately — it makes switching painful. Good agencies give you full access from day one.
The CPL is absurd. If you’re in home services and your cost per lead is $500, something is wrong — either with the account structure, the targeting, or the tracking. Some industries have expensive leads by nature, but if your CPL is multiples of what others in your space pay and there’s no good explanation for it, ask for one. If the answer is vague, that’s your answer.
They send data with no explanation. A report that’s just a screenshot of the Google Ads dashboard isn’t a report. It’s data without interpretation. You don’t need an agency to tell you there were 243 clicks — you need them to tell you what those clicks mean, whether it’s good or bad, and what they’re doing about it.
You don’t know if leads are coming in. This one is on both sides. But if you can’t tell whether the ads are actually producing contacts — because tracking is broken, or the agency reports on impressions and clicks but not actual leads — then you’re flying blind and so are they. Checking whether your Google Ads are actually working starts with knowing your real lead count, not just what Google Ads says.
They hem and haw when you ask direct questions. The agency is slow to respond. They take a week to answer a simple question. When they do answer, it’s full of qualifications and no actual position. No real answers, no point of view, no “here’s what we think.” That’s not diligence — that’s an agency that doesn’t want to be accountable to a clear answer.
A Quick Summary
| Green Flag | Red Flag | |
|---|---|---|
| Account activity | Regular changes early; light touch later is fine | Empty change history at any stage you’re unhappy |
| Your access | Admin access from day one | View-only or no access at all |
| Reporting | Simple, legible, with interpretation | Raw data dumps, no context, no point of view |
| CPL | Sane for your industry; trending right | $500 leads when the market is $80–150 |
| Communication | Clear answers, real opinions, quick responses | Slow, vague, full of hedges |
| Business feeling | Leads up, sales team busy, ROI is obvious | You can’t feel it and the data requires explaining |
How to Actually Check
You don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. Here’s what to do:
Request admin access. Email or Slack your agency today: “Can you add me as an admin on the Google Ads account?” If they push back or stall, that’s your answer.
Look at the change history. In Google Ads: Tools > Change History. Set it to the last 30–90 days. If it’s empty and you’re not happy with results, that’s the conversation you need to have. If the account is 6+ months old and running smoothly, lighter activity is normal — but you still want to see something.
Check your actual lead count. Not Google’s reported conversions — your CRM, your call log, your email inbox. Do the numbers feel roughly right? If Google says 40 conversions last month and you got 4 calls, something is wrong with the tracking and everything downstream is unreliable.
Ask a direct question. Pick one: “Why is our CPL trending up this month?” or “What did you change in the last 30 days and why?” A good agency answers that directly. A bad one gives you paragraphs that don’t say anything.
When to Get Help
If the change history is empty and you’re unhappy — that’s the moment to get a second opinion, not six months from now. The longer a poorly-managed account runs, the more structural debt you accumulate: bad keyword matches, no negative list, trained algorithms pointing the wrong direction.
If you have access to the account, start with a 30-minute audit you can do yourself. It’ll tell you whether the basics are in place, and it gives you specific, concrete things to ask about in your next agency call.
If the account checks out but you still don’t feel the results in the business, the problem might not be the agency — it might be the offer, the economics, or what happens after the lead comes in. That’s a harder conversation, but it’s the right one. Blaming the agency for a unit-economics problem doesn’t fix anything.
And if you’re genuinely stuck — you can’t get straight answers, you don’t have access, the CPL is broken and nothing’s being done about it — that’s not a case where patience helps. Get a real audit, get a second opinion, and make a decision. Paying a retainer for six more months hoping it turns around isn’t a strategy.
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