If an agency runs your Google Ads, you should be able to answer one question in under a minute: where did last month's budget go? Which searches, which clicks, which calls, which jobs. If the answer is a pretty chart and a "trust us," this post is for you.
⚡ QUICK SUMMARY
You have the right to see every search term your money bought . The single biggest red flag we find when auditing contractor ad accounts is a missing or abandoned negative keyword list , and it quietly burns huge amounts of budget. Here are the five questions your agency should answer without flinching, and what each answer should look like.
You pay $1,500 a month. What did it buy?
Plenty of agencies do good work. This is not an agency hit piece. But we audit contractor ad accounts all the time, and there is a pattern: the owner knows what they pay, and almost nothing else. Not the cost per lead. Not the search terms triggering their ads. Not whether the tracking even works.
That gap is not a small problem. It is the difference between marketing you own and marketing you rent. When you can see where every dollar went, a bad month becomes a fixable month. When you cannot, every month is a coin flip you pay for up front.
The number one red flag: no negative keyword list
Here is Keith Carpenter, our founder, on the first thing he checks when a contractor asks us to look at their existing account:
"The biggest red flag I see when I'm auditing an account is that they don't have a negative keyword list in place that's being updated on a regular basis. We do not want to be paying for keyword phrases that don't lead to customers, and especially ones that are completely different from what we do and would never lead to a conversion. Managing that list weekly is going to save a huge piece of your ad spend. I'd say close to half of most people's budget gets blown on junk searches nobody ever managed. "
A negative keyword list tells Google which searches should never see your ad. A roofer probably wants no part of "free roof repair," "roofing jobs hiring," or "DIY shingle install." Every one of those clicks costs the same real money a customer click costs. The list is not a set-it-once task, because people invent new junk searches every week. That is why the update schedule matters as much as the list.
The good news: this is checkable in five minutes. Ask your agency to show you the negative keyword list and the date it was last updated. Both answers tell you everything.
The five questions your agency should answer in one meeting
1 What search terms did my money buy last month?
Not keywords they bid on. The actual searches people typed. This report exists in every account. If they will not show it, ask why.
2 When was the negative keyword list last updated?
The right answer is measured in days, not months. Weekly management is the standard that protects your budget.
3 What is my cost per lead, and what counts as a lead?
A call over 60 seconds? A form fill? A booked estimate? If "lead" is not defined, the number is decoration. Tracking has to be real; see our guide to conversion tracking without a developer.
4 Do I own my ad account?
You should. If the account lives under the agency and you lose the history, the data, and the learning when you leave, that is leverage, not service.
5 What changed in my account last month?
Google logs every change. "We optimized" should mean specific edits on specific dates. Zero changes for months at $1,500 a month is a subscription, not management.
Why the wasted spend hides so well
Wasted ad spend does not look like waste on a summary report. Clicks went up. Impressions went up. The chart is green. The junk hides one level deeper, in the search terms report, where "roofing company" sits next to "roofing company jobs no experience" and both cost you money.
That is why the monthly PDF is not enough. Summaries show totals; totals cannot show which half of the spend did the work. It is the same lesson we keep coming back to in advertising without tracking: what you cannot see, you cannot fix, and someone else is deciding what you see.
💡 Pro Tip
Want to check your own account before that meeting? Our 15-minute Google Ads audit checklist walks through the five money leaks, negative keywords included, in plain English. No login help from your agency required if you own the account.
What good transparency looks like
A transparent ads partner, agency or in-house, gives you three things every month without being asked:
- The real numbers: spend, cost per lead, and the search terms report, not just clicks and impressions.
- The changes: what they adjusted, added, and excluded this month, including negative keyword updates.
- The verdict: what is working, what is not, and what happens next. In plain English a busy owner can read in two minutes.
If you get those three, keep your agency and buy them coffee. If you cannot get them after asking twice, the silence is the report.
| See Where Your Marketing Dollars Are Going We will look at your account, show you the search terms your budget actually bought, and tell you the truth about what we find. Free, no strings.
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Written for contractors, not marketers. What is working in local search and AI right now, in five minutes. No fluff, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.
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