You're paying your Google Ads agency a management fee every month. They send you a report. Maybe you get a monthly call. Everything seems fine.
But here's the uncomfortable question: are they actually doing anything to your account?
After managing Google Ads accounts worth over £1M in annual spend, I've audited dozens of agency-managed accounts. The pattern is always the same — most agencies do shockingly little once the initial setup is done.
Here are the seven red flags I see over and over again.
1 Your change history is almost empty
Every change made to a Google Ads account is logged in the Change History. If your agency is actively managing your account, you should see regular activity — keyword adjustments, bid changes, new ad copy, negative keyword additions.
If you pull up your change history and see mostly automated changes (or barely anything at all), that's your first and biggest red flag. An agency spending £5,000+ a month of your money should be making dozens of changes every week.
2 All changes are "automated" or "system"
Google Ads makes automated changes on its own — things like auto-applied recommendations, automated bidding adjustments, and system-generated tweaks. These happen whether or not your agency lifts a finger.
If your change history is full of automated changes but almost no human-initiated ones, your agency isn't managing your account. Google is. And you're paying your agency for the privilege.
3 The same report, different month
Does your monthly report look suspiciously similar each time? Generic screenshots, the same commentary, no specific action items? Many agencies use templated reports that take minutes to generate. A real management report should reference specific changes made, tests run, and results observed.
Curious what your change history actually looks like?
Upload your Google Ads Change History CSV and get your Agency Activity Score in 60 seconds. It's free, private, and your data never leaves your browser.
Audit Your Agency Now Not sure how to export your data? We'll show you.4 They never add negative keywords
Negative keywords are how you stop your ads showing for irrelevant searches. A well-managed account should have a growing list of negatives, refined over time as new search terms come in.
If your agency hasn't added negatives in months, they're not reviewing your search term reports. That means you're almost certainly wasting money on clicks that will never convert.
5 No ad copy testing
Good agencies constantly test new ad variations — different headlines, descriptions, calls to action. If you look at your ads and see the same copy from six months ago, no one is optimising your messaging. Ad fatigue is real, and stale ads lead to declining click-through rates.
6 They can't explain what they changed
Ask your agency a simple question: "What specific changes did you make to my account this month?" If they give you vague answers like "we optimised your campaigns" or "we adjusted bids", that's a red flag. A competent agency should be able to point to specific, concrete actions.
7 Activity only happens right before your call
Pull your change history and look at the dates. If all the activity is clustered in the day or two before your monthly review call, your agency is cramming. They're not managing your account continuously — they're doing the minimum required to look busy for 30 minutes.
What to do about it
If several of these red flags sound familiar, you don't have to guess whether your agency is doing their job. You can check.
Google Ads keeps a complete log of every change made to your account. You can export this as a CSV file and see exactly what happened, when it happened, and whether it was a human or an automated system.
That's exactly what our free audit tool does. It takes your Change History CSV, analyses the activity, and gives you a clear score based on how much (or how little) your agency has actually been doing.
No account access needed. No login. Your file never leaves your browser. You'll have answers in 60 seconds.
Find out if your agency is actually working
Upload your Google Ads Change History and get your free Agency Activity Score. Takes 60 seconds.
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