Are you ready to AAUDIIT???!!!!  Welcome to the Account Settings worksheet. This is a supplementary training resource for Paid Search Magic’s Audit Month.  Depending on your role and relationship with the account, you may review settings often. Or, you may NEVER have looked at account settings before.   Either way, we hope these worksheets give you a new level of confidence in your account management and we’ve got plenty of screenshots to help you through it!   

   If you have questions along the way, feel free to reach out: amy@paidsearchmagic.com    

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AdWords Account Settings Audit Account Name: Account ID: 

Date of Audit: Performed by:  

We’ll be using the New AdWords Interface. In this guide, we’ll be mostly working with the information found here:  

 You may notice it says Setup and not Settings in the interface, but we felt that Settings is more descriptive of what we’re reviewing, while Setup brings to mind a one-time event.  

Navigate to each section starting from the Setup dropdown.  

Items Reviewed: Billing & payments 4 

Business Data 5 

Account Access 6 

Linked Accounts 7 

Preferences 8 

Bonus: Auto-Tagging & Other Settings 9 

 

Ready? Set a timer if you want to, and let’s dive in!   

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Billing & payments First, we’ll review the billing setup.  You can get details from the left pane, or the Summary page: 

  Who pays:  How is it billed:  Who is notified of billing issues:  

Are there any issues with billing or payments?  

 If a credit card is being used: 

● Is the expiration date approaching soon? ● Are there backup cards in case the primary card can’t be 

processed?  Billing issues or questions? Visit https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375375?hl=en 

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Business Data Now let’s take a look at the business data your account is using.  *Under the old interface, you’ll find Business Data under Shared Libraries. With the new AdWords Experience , it’s under Setup.  If you’re not familiar with Business Data features in Google AdWords, don’t worry; you’re not alone. Several of the advanced features offered under Business Data often go unused, while others are more common.   If any data feeds are used with an account your auditing, it’s important to know what they are and how they’re being used.   

      

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You can break up Business Data Feeds into a few categories.   Review your Ad Extensions feeds to check:   

❏ Which ad extension feeds are populated with live data? ❏ Is there seasonal copy live that shouldn’t be? ❏ Do any ad extensions have start and end dates other than what 

you would expect? to check, add the Start Date and End Date columns under Attributes under the individual feeds.  

 Note: We’ll do a deeper dive of ad extensions later, but for now, make a note if you see anything that needs to be fixed.  

 Review other Business Data Feeds You may see a few other data feeds as well.    Ad Customizer Feeds allow for tailored messaging and scalability. These might be used for custom sales/discount messaging or location-specification ad customizations like location-specific pricing and product availability.   

❏ Make a note of the type of ad customizers being used. This will be important later on when reviewing ad copy. 

 Dynamic Display Ad Feeds let you dynamically populate your ads with your products or services - with special functionality for a variety of business types like Hotel & Rentals, Local Deals, Travel, etc .  

 ❏ Review any Dynamic Display Ad Feeds for content and 

accuracy.    

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Differences between the old and new AdWords Experiences  You should be aware of some differences between the old and new AdWords Experience /UI. While some features are available 

exclusively in the new UI, others are only available in the old experience. Some they just haven’t gotten around to implementing yet - and others that are being retired permanently.  In terms of Business Data, the new experience does not support Bulk Uploads or Scheduled Feed Uploads as of January 2018. For that functionality you’ll have to switch back to the old UI.  For more information on what’s changed, what’s exclusive, what didn’t make the cut, and what’s not quite there yet, Google maintains this page on the latest.  Business data issues or questions? Visit https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6072708?hl=en Learn more about Ad Customizers at Search Engine Land:  https://searchengineland.com/ad-customizers-just-got-whole-lot-powerful-263774 

          

    

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Account Access Now, let’s look at who can access the account.  Account Access is broken into 2 tabs: Users and Managers 

  Managers is for MCC accounts: 

  Who has account access?  

Does anyone have access who shouldn’t?  Does anyone need access who doesn’t have it?  

 Keep in mind: the oldest agency on the account by date linked in the Managers tab accrues the revenue. Remove any old agency accounts to make sure your account is getting credit. This doesn’t have to do with billing, but it does count 

towards your spend in becoming a Premier Partner.   

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Linked Accounts Now we’re going to make sure we have a handle on the accounts that are linked.  From this version of the interface, you’ll need to click into each option for Details.  Note: the setup especially for Google Analytics is not very user friendly as of this writing, so it may be confusing to verify. Confusing is normal; increasing the number of rows on the page may speed up your review. 

  

Which of the following accounts are linked with AdWords: ❏ Google Analytics ❏ Search Console 

❏ Google Play ❏ YouTube 

❏ Google Merchant Center ❏ Salesforce.com 

❏ Firebase ❏ 3rd-party app analytics 

 Are the correct accounts properties, views linked?  Are there any surprises or missing / incorrect accounts linked? 

   

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Preferences Finally, we’ll check in on preferences.  Account preferences should be very straight forward. Just make sure everything is what you’d expect it to be: 

  On the Notifications tab, you’ll want to pay attention to who gets notified of what. 

  Who receives Disapproved ads and policy alerts? Should that change? 

    

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Bonus: Auto-Tagging & Other Settings Oh yeah, and this one is weird….  Auto-tagging was easy to review and verify in the old interface: 

  In the new interface, you can see whether auto-tagging is enabled under Linked Accounts > Google Analytics, but you can’t make any changes there.  

 Is auto-tagging enabled? Should it be?         

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To change auto-tagging if you want to , you’ll need to go back to the Campaign section of your account, and access Settings here:  

  As long as we’re in this new, random Account Settings section, you can also review your Tracking template optional and Content exclusions applies to Google’s Display Network, not the Search Network .  

        

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You did it!  Congratulations - you audited your account settings hopefully in record time .  You may have noticed some areas that need to be addressed. Jot them down below:  

High Priority Action Items       

Items to Review Later         

That’s it for this guide. Great work, and happy auditing! 

© 2018 Amy & James Hebdon, Paid Search Magic. All rights reserved. 13