Google Ads checklist: 7 checks an agent runs at 7 a.m.

Anyone who runs Google Ads knows the problem is rarely a lack of reports. The account has every report you could want. The problem is that nobody opens the right 7 reports every day, in the right order, with a defined threshold for each one. The outcome is predictable: the wrong search term spends for 3 weeks, the winning campaign sits limited by budget and the conversion tag breaks on a Tuesday and gets noticed on Friday.

This guide is the step by step promised in the post. It covers 7 checks an AI agent can run on its own at 7 a.m., with the exact threshold for each, the path inside the Google Ads interface to do it by hand and the logic an agent uses to flag the problem before you open the account.

Direct answer: the morning Google Ads checklist has 7 items: search terms with no conversions, monthly budget pace, CTR drops, CPA above target, keywords with no impressions or a low Quality Score, winning campaigns limited by budget and conversions that stopped counting. Each item has a numeric threshold and a specific report. An agent connected to the account, like the ones in Sherlok, runs all 7 and delivers only what crossed the line.

1. Search terms with spend and zero conversions

What to check: the actual queries people typed that triggered your ads, not the keywords you added. This is where the most common waste in a search account lives.

Threshold: a term with more than R$ 100 spent in the last 7 days and 0 conversions. For high-ticket accounts raise it to R$ 300; for accounts with a daily budget under R$ 50, use R$ 50.

How to do it by hand:

1. In the Campaigns menu, open Insights and reports and click Search terms.
2. Set the date range to the last 7 days.
3. Sort by the Cost column, highest first.
4. Add a filter: Conversions equal to 0.
5. Select each term above the threshold and click Add as negative keyword, choosing campaign level when the term makes no sense in any ad group.

How an agent does it: it reads the search terms report every day, applies the threshold you set and suggests the negative list with the accumulated cost of each term. You approve the whole list in 1 click or remove a term you still want to test.

2. Monthly budget pace

What to check: whether spend to date is on pace with the agreed monthly budget. Spending too fast burns the end of the month; spending too slowly leaves sales on the table.

Threshold: a gap above 15% between accumulated spend and expected spend for the day. The math is simple: monthly budget divided by days in the month, multiplied by days already run.

How to do it by hand:

1. In the Campaigns overview, set the date range to This month.
2. Add up the Cost column across all active campaigns.
3. Calculate the expected figure: for example, R$ 9,000 for the month, day 10 of 30, expected R$ 3,000.
4. If the total is above R$ 3,450 or below R$ 2,550, adjust daily budgets under Budgets and bidding.

How an agent does it: it knows the monthly budget because you entered the goal once, calculates the expected figure every day and only alerts you when the gap passes 15%, with the new daily budget already worked out.

3. CTR drop on an ad

What to check: ads that lost click-through rate against their own history. A CTR drop comes before a CPC rise, because the Google auction penalizes ads with falling relevance.

Threshold: CTR 20% below the peak of the last 14 days, with at least 1,000 impressions in the period so the reading is reliable.

How to do it by hand:

1. In the Campaigns menu, open Ads and assets and click Ads.
2. Set the range to the last 14 days and turn on comparison with the previous period.
3. Sort by the CTR column and look at the percentage change.
4. For ads that dropped more than 20%, open Ad strength and replace the 2 worst-performing headlines.

How an agent does it: it compares each ad's CTR with its own peak, ignores ads with too few impressions and suggests copy changes based on the headlines that perform best in the same campaign.

4. CPA above target for 3 days in a row

What to check: cost per conversion of each campaign against the target you set. One bad day is noise. Three days in a row is a trend.

Threshold: CPA 30% above target on 3 consecutive days. If the target is R$ 80, the alert fires when the campaign passes R$ 104 for 3 days straight.

How to do it by hand:

1. In the Campaigns overview, add the Cost per conversion column.
2. Click Segment and choose Day.
3. Look at the last 3 days of every active campaign.
4. For those over the threshold, cut the daily budget by 20% or pause the ad groups with the worst CPA.

How an agent does it: it stores the CPA target you entered, segments by day on its own and suggests a budget cut proportional to the deviation instead of a panic cut. To understand how to read CPA next to CPC and CPL, see CPM, CPC, CPA and CPL: the difference and when to look at each.

5. Keywords that only weigh the account down

What to check: active keywords that generate no impressions or carry a low Quality Score. They do not spend, but they drag the account average down and muddy the reading.

Threshold: 0 impressions in the last 14 days, or Quality Score of 4 or less with more than 100 impressions.

How to do it by hand:

1. In the Campaigns menu, open Audiences, keywords and content and click Search keywords.
2. Add the Quality Score and Impressions columns.
3. Filter by Impressions equal to 0 over the last 14 days and pause or remove.
4. Filter by Quality Score less than or equal to 4 and review the match between keyword, ad and landing page.

How an agent does it: it lists the keywords in those two conditions with the reason for each and suggests pausing, moving to another ad group or rewriting the ad, ordered by impact.

6. Winning campaign limited by budget

What to check: campaigns that are below the CPA target and have no budget to grow. This is the most expensive mistake because it is invisible: nothing is wrong, there is just not enough money in the right place.

Threshold: CPA 20% below target over the last 7 days and status Limited by budget for 3 days or more.

How to do it by hand:

1. In the Campaigns overview, filter the Status column by Limited by budget.
2. Compare each campaign's Cost per conversion with the target.
3. For those 20% below target, raise the daily budget by 20% to 30% and watch for 3 days before raising again.

How an agent does it: it crosses budget status with CPA and suggests the budget increase already calculated, taking the amount from campaigns above target so the monthly total does not change.

7. Conversions that stopped counting

What to check: campaigns that converted every day and suddenly dropped to zero. Nine times out of ten the problem is not the campaign, it is the tag.

Threshold: 0 conversions in 48 hours on a campaign averaging 1 or more conversions per day over the previous 14 days.

How to do it by hand:

1. In the Campaigns overview, segment by Day and look at the Conversions column for the last 2 days.
2. If it is zero, go to Goals, Conversions and Summary and check the status of each conversion action.
3. If the status is No recent conversions or Inactive, test the tag with Google Tag Assistant on the thank-you page.
4. While the tag is down, reduce the budget of campaigns using automated conversion bidding, because they lose the signal and start buying cheap, worthless clicks.

How an agent does it: it compares the historical conversion average with the last 48 hours and alerts you the morning after the drop, pointing out that the likely cause is measurement, not performance.

How to set this up in your account in one week

Start with items 1, 4 and 7. They are the 3 that cost the most when left unattended: search term waste, CPA off target and broken measurement. Run them by hand for 5 business days, noting how long it took and how much was cut. Then write the thresholds as a single line per item, because that line is what becomes a rule for an agent. Without a written threshold there is no automation, only opinion.

In the second week, delegate. An agent connected read-only to the Google Ads account runs the 7 items before business hours and delivers a short list: what crossed the line, by how much and the suggested action. You approve and apply. That is the Sherlok model today: the agent suggests, the owner decides. To understand the right order of analysis when the list arrives, read how to analyze Google Ads campaigns: the right order.

Frequently asked questions

Do the thresholds work for any account?

No. The numbers in this guide are starting points for accounts spending R$ 3,000 to R$ 50,000 a month. Smaller accounts need lower cost thresholds and longer periods, because the data volume is smaller and 7 days may not be enough to read a search term.

Do I need to run all 7 every day?

Items 1, 2, 4 and 7 are daily. Items 3, 5 and 6 can be read twice a week without meaningful loss, because they change more slowly. If you have an agent running, there is no cost in running all of them daily.

Can the agent apply the change on its own?

It depends on the tool and the stage. The safest path is to start with suggestion plus human approval, measure the hit rate for 30 days and only then release automatic execution for the lowest-risk items, such as adding negatives.

Google Ads does not reward whoever looks at the most reports. It rewards whoever looks at the right 7, with a defined threshold, every day. Do it by hand this week and delegate next week.