PPC Audit Checklist: Diagnosing a Stalled Google Ads Campaign

By Pankaj Singh, founder of Doon Digital. Published May 13, 2026.

You ran Google Ads for 6 months and it worked. Leads came in. Numbers made sense. Then somewhere around month 7 or 8, the campaign started underperforming. Same setup. Same spend. Fewer leads. Higher cost per lead. You can't figure out what changed.

I get this call from Dehradun businesses every other week. The diagnosis is almost always one of 7 things. Working through them in order, in 90 minutes, reveals the issue 95% of the time.

Here's the exact diagnostic sequence I run. Use it to self-audit before calling an agency.

Step 1: Has anything changed in your account in the last 30 days?

Sounds obvious. It isn't. Most Dehradun business owners don't track what they changed in their own account. Open Google Ads → Tools and Settings → Change History. Filter to the last 30 days.

Look for:

• Keywords added (especially broad match)
• Negative keywords removed
• Bid strategy changed
• Budget changed
• Ad copy rotated
• Conversion tracking modified

If you find a change that correlates with the performance drop, the answer is right there. Revert the change. Test again.

I've seen Dehradun accounts where the owner asked an intern to "optimize the campaigns" and the intern removed half the negative keyword list. Conversions tanked. Took us 20 minutes to find and another 5 to fix.

Step 2: Check for Quality Score degradation

Quality Score is Google's rating of how well your keyword, ad copy, and landing page work together. It influences CPC and ad position.

If Quality Score has dropped on major keywords, CPC rises, position falls, conversion volume drops, even with the same budget.

How to check:

• Go to Keywords tab in Google Ads
• Add the "Quality Score" column
• Sort descending by spend
• Look at top-spending keywords

Any major keyword (top 20% of spend) with Quality Score below 6 is a problem.

Common causes of Quality Score drop:

• Ad copy got refreshed and the new copy matches the keyword less well
• Landing page got redesigned and is less relevant to the search intent
• New competitors entered with stronger landing pages, raising the bar

The fix:

• Rewrite ad copy to include the keyword in the headline
• Update landing page H1 to match keyword exactly
• Add the keyword multiple times in landing page body
• Improve landing page speed and mobile experience

A Quality Score lift from 5 to 8 on a major keyword typically reduces CPC by 30% to 50% within 2 weeks. This is the highest-impact single fix.

Step 3: Audit your Search Terms Report

Search Terms shows actual queries that triggered your ads (different from your keywords list, which is what you bid on).

How to find leakage:

• Go to Keywords → Search Terms
• Filter to last 30 days
• Sort by Cost descending
• Look at the top 50

Common leakage patterns:

• Broad match expansion bringing irrelevant queries ("free", "job", "internship", "PDF")
• Brand confusion bringing wrong-business queries (similar-name competitor)
• Geographic leakage (Dehradun-related searches from outside Dehradun)
• Informational queries bringing browsers, not buyers ("what is", "how to", "meaning")

The fix: Add the bad search terms as negative keywords. This single weekly habit is what separates Dehradun PPC accounts that scale profitably from those that bleed budget.

Step 4: Check landing page conversion rate

Sometimes the campaign is doing its job (sending qualified traffic), but the landing page stopped converting. This can happen silently after a website redesign or a small theme update.

How to check:

• Identify your highest-traffic ad landing page
• Pull last 30 days of data: visits, conversions, conversion rate
• Compare to the previous 30 days

If conversion rate dropped 20% or more, the landing page is the problem, not the ads.

Common causes:

• Site redesign moved the CTA
• WhatsApp button broke or got removed
• Form added a required field that's friction
• Phone number changed but old number is still on page
• Page speed degraded (heavy new images, third-party scripts)

The fix: Restore what was working. If you don't remember what changed, run a quick A/B test: simplified page vs current page. The simpler version usually wins.

Step 5: Check for new competitor entry

Sometimes performance drops not because you got worse, but because a new competitor entered the auction.

How to check:

• Go to Auction Insights (in the Insights tab)
• Look at last 30 days vs prior 90 days
• Compare impression share, average position, overlap rate

New competitor with high impression share and high overlap rate? They're stealing your ad real estate.

Common new entrants in Dehradun (2026):

• National brands entering the local market (Apollo, Aakash, real estate developers from Delhi)
• New Dehradun businesses with aggressive launch budgets
• Existing competitors who hired a better agency

The fix options:

• Increase bid to maintain position (if economics support it)
• Differentiate ad copy and landing page so you don't compete head-on
• Shift focus to longer-tail queries the new competitor isn't targeting yet
• Accept reduced share on head-terms and grow elsewhere

Step 6: Check seasonal or demand-side changes

Sometimes the business hasn't changed but the world has.

How to check:

• Pull search volume trends for your top 5 keywords (Google Trends, Keyword Planner)
• Compare last 30 days to same period last year
• Look for industry-wide demand shifts

Common patterns:

• Coaching: dip between admission cycles
• Hotels: off-season demand drop
• Real estate: market-wide cooling
• Restaurants: post-festival slump

If overall search volume dropped 30%, your "campaign isn't working" might just be "the market shrank temporarily". Patience and seasonal planning, not more spend.

The fix: If it's seasonal, ride it out and reallocate budget toward off-season categories. If it's a structural demand shift, adjust strategy.

Step 7: Verify conversion tracking is still firing correctly

This should be obvious but is the most-overlooked cause of "no conversions". Tracking can break without anyone noticing.

How to check:

• Open your highest-traffic ad
• Click on it (use a private browsing window so it doesn't affect data)
• Complete a conversion action (form fill, phone click, WhatsApp click)
• Check Tag Assistant or Google Ads conversion column to confirm the conversion fired

If you completed a conversion and Google Ads didn't register it, tracking is broken. Until you fix it, every "we're not getting leads" report is wrong, because you might be getting leads that the system isn't counting.

Common breakage causes:

• Website rebuild without re-installing conversion tags
• Cookie consent banner blocking tracking
• Form provider changed (e.g., switched from one form plugin to another)
• WhatsApp button changed (e.g., changed from wa.me to a different format)

Run the checklist in this order

If you've worked through Steps 1 to 7 and found nothing wrong, the issue is rare (account-level penalty, payment issue, geo-restriction). Most "stalled" Dehradun campaigns are explained by one of the 7.

The order matters because the easier-to-fix problems come first. Don't skip ahead. Step 1 finds the problem in 30% of cases. By Step 4, you've covered 80%.

When stallment is permanent

Not every campaign can be revived. Sometimes the underlying conditions changed permanently.

Permanent stallment scenarios:

• Market structurally shifted (e.g., new regulation, demand collapse)
• Your service is no longer competitive on price
• The keywords have become saturated with large players you can't outbid
• Your business has outgrown PPC and should shift to other channels

In these cases, no amount of tactical fixing helps. The strategic conversation is whether to invest in different channels (SEO, content, partnerships) or to evolve the product itself.

For the deeper conversation on PPC vs other channels for Dehradun businesses, see SEO vs Google Ads for Dehradun: Real Cost Per Lead Compared. For the integration approach that often revives stalled standalone campaigns, see SEO + Google Ads Run Together: Why Each Costs Less.

Pankaj Singh is the founder of Doon Digital. He has run SEO and PPC campaigns for 200+ businesses across Uttarakhand since 2019.