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Dental PPC account audit checklist

Twelve checks for a dental Google Ads or Meta account: ownership, conversion tracking, consent, search terms, location, compliance and reporting. Score up to three accounts or agencies side by side.

By Antoine Martin, Founder, Dental Mastery.
Published 1 November 2026. Last reviewed 1 November 2026.

How to use it

Use one column per account (for example your Google Ads and Meta accounts), or one per agency you are comparing. Answer from what you can see in the account, not from what you have been told. Anything you have not checked stays "Not asked yet". The reasoning behind each check is in the Google versus Meta guide. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.

Audit checklist

Accounts you are auditing

Ownership

Does the practice hold admin access to the ad account? Deal-breaker

Only admin users manage who else has access.

Is the account billed to the practice, so spend is visible on your own invoices?

Or at least itemised, separate from the agency fee.

Tracking

Is a conversion an actual enquiry (call, form, booking), not a page view or button click? Deal-breaker

Check the list of conversion actions and which ones are used for bidding.

Is the click identifier (GCLID or Meta click ID) stored with each lead in the CRM?

With auto-tagging on for Google.

Are later stages (attended, started) reported back to the platform?

Using neutral stage names, never clinical detail; values only after privacy advice.

Do tags respect the cookie banner? Deal-breaker

Nothing optional should fire before consent.

Targeting

Is the search terms report reviewed at least monthly, with irrelevant searches excluded?

Jobs, courses, free NHS care if you do not offer it, other towns.

Does location targeting match the area your patients really travel from?

And exclude people only interested in the area, where the platform allows.

Have any remarketing or customer-list audiences been checked against health targeting policies?

Google restricts advertiser-curated audiences for sensitive categories.

Ads and pages

Do the ads and landing pages meet GDC advertising guidance?

GDC number, NHS or private status, specialist titles, no misleading claims.

Does each ad lead to a page about the same treatment, with a clear way to call or book?

Not the homepage.

Reporting

Does monthly reporting show cost per started patient, not just cost per lead?

Over a quarter, given the sample sizes.

Results

Account A
No answers yet0 of 12 questions answered. Score = weighted points / maximum points for the questions answered.
Account B
No answers yet0 of 12 questions answered. Score = weighted points / maximum points for the questions answered.
Account C
No answers yet0 of 12 questions answered. Score = weighted points / maximum points for the questions answered.

A score only compares the answers you entered. Treat any deal-breaker as decisive, and do not compare two columns until you have asked both the same questions.

What to fix first

  1. Access. If the practice is not an admin on its own account, fix that before anything else.
  2. What counts as a conversion. Bidding on page views or button clicks trains the platform to find the wrong people.
  3. Consent. Tags that fire before the cookie banner is answered are a legal problem, not a tracking detail.
  4. Search terms. A monthly review usually finds money spent on searches you would never have chosen.