Google charges you 15 to 40% more per click than a top-quality competitor pays in the same auction.

Every keyword in your Google Ads account has a Quality Score from 1 to 10. That number is determined by three things Google measures continuously: Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience.

A keyword at Quality Score 5 costs roughly twice what the same keyword at Quality Score 10 costs — for the same ad position, in the same auction, against the same competitors.

That gap is what Google charges accounts that don't optimize. It's not punitive. It's mechanical. Google's auction is designed to reward accounts that produce relevant, useful experiences for searchers and to charge a premium to accounts that don't. The premium is real, it's measurable, and it appears on every click — but it doesn't show up on your invoice as a separate line item. It's just baked into the average CPC you've gotten used to seeing.

Most PPC managers know the system works this way in general. Almost none can tell you, for your specific account, on the keywords accounting for the largest share of your spend, what the dollar consequence has been for the last 90 days.

That's the gap our audit closes.

You've probably been pitched one before. Someone screen-shared for 15 minutes, pointed at your CPC, told you it was high, recommended "more negative keywords," and sent a four-page PDF.

That isn't an audit. That's a sales pitch with a chart.

A real audit pulls the data via the Google Ads API — every keyword with 100+ impressions in the last 90 days, with full Quality Score history, component grades, average CPC, impression share, click volume, conversion data. Landing page performance with Core Web Vitals data joined in. Auction Insights for the top 20 keywords by spend, showing exactly which competitors are winning the auctions you're losing. RSA asset performance. Conversion tracking configuration review. Account structure analysis.

The output is a 20 to 30 page written report, naming specific keywords, specific landing pages, and specific dollar figures. Not "your CPC could be lower." Specifically: "This keyword at this Quality Score, on this landing page, with these component grades, is costing you this many dollars per month above the optimized benchmark, and here's what fixing it actually requires."

The methodology is the same one we use across our 2,760-attorney comparative dataset, which is what lets us tell you whether your Quality Score is "average for your practice area in your DMA" or "23% below the firms winning the auctions you're competing in." Most audits compare your account to a generic industry average. We compare it to the specific accounts beating you.

We've run this audit enough times to recognize the patterns. The biggest dollar leaks almost always sit in five places.

Any one of these is recoverable. All five together is usually where the "why is our cost per signed case creeping up every quarter" question is hiding.

You've probably been asked for Google Ads access before. Here's what we ask for and why.

We request a Manager Account (MCC) link to your Google Ads account at read-only access. That means we can pull every byte of data the API exposes, but we cannot change a single setting in your account — not bids, not budgets, not keywords, not ad copy. Read-only is what Google's permission tiers actually allow, even though the default disclaimer in the invitation flow makes it sound otherwise. We walk you through that screen on the kickoff call if you want to see it for yourself.

You remain the account owner the entire time. You can terminate the MCC link from your side, without notice, at any moment. We never take ownership of client accounts — it's a hard policy, not a marketing claim.

What the API extraction pulls:

• Every keyword's Quality Score and component history over the last 90 days
• Full landing page performance with Core Web Vitals data from real Chrome users
• Auction Insights at the keyword level for your top 20 keywords by spend
• All ad performance, RSA asset grades, CTR by variant
• Conversion tracking configuration and integrity
• Account structure, match type distribution, negative keyword coverage

What it doesn't pull:

• Anything from your CRM
• Anything from your case management system
• Anything about your clients
• Anything about your firm's finances beyond what's already in your Google Ads spend data

This is purely a Google Ads account audit. The boundary is deliberate and bright.

Because we pull the data via API, not by clicking around the UI. The API exposes data the UI hides, including 90-day Quality Score histories and component-level grades that don't appear on standard agency screen-shares.

Because the report names specific keywords and specific dollar figures, not "your CPC could be lower." Generality doesn't pay invoices.

Because the same audit costs $5,000 to $8,000 at standard consulting rates, and we provide it free to firms that meet the criteria — because seeing your own data presented this way is most of the work of selling the engagement. We'd rather spend a week proving competence than a quarter pitching it.

Because the 2,760-attorney comparative dataset means our benchmarks are real, your DMA, and your practice area — not a generic industry average. When we tell you your account is below market, "market" is a specific number derived from specific accounts.

Because somebody has to sit on the side of the table that's measuring the work rather than producing the work. That asymmetry is what every PPC vendor has structurally avoided. We built around it on purpose.

The audit represents 30 to 50 hours of senior analyst time. We provide it at no charge to firms that meet all four criteria:

1. $10,000+ monthly Google Ads spend on Search campaigns (not Display, not YouTube, not Performance Max alone — Search specifically)
2. Personal injury, criminal defense, family law, or related practice area (this is where our diagnostic framework is calibrated)
3. Decision-maker on the findings call — managing partner, marketing director, or whoever has authority to commission a paid engagement based on the findings
4. Genuine intent to act on findings that justify it

Firms outside these criteria can commission paid audits starting at $5,000 with the same deliverable scope.

We don't run this for every account that asks. The work is substantial and the findings are useless if the firm isn't prepared to act on them.

1. 30-minute discovery call. You ask whatever you want about our methodology and prior work. We ask about your current spend, current performance, and what's driving the inquiry. If we're a fit, we proceed.
2. MCC invitation. Sent and accepted in about two minutes from inside your Google Ads account.
3. Data extraction. Our API pulls the dataset over the next day or two. No interaction required from your end.
4. Analysis. A senior analyst — not a junior, not an offshore contractor — runs the diagnostic framework against your data and writes the report. Five to seven business days.
5. Findings call. 60 minutes. We walk through the report with your team. Decisions get made here.
6. Engagement proposal, if applicable. Sent within 48 hours of the findings call.

Total elapsed time from first call to a clear next step: typically 10 to 14 days.

A 30-minute conversation. We'll ask about your account, your current PPC arrangement, and what's driving the inquiry. You can ask whatever you want about the methodology, our prior work, the technology stack, the team, or anything else.

If the call surfaces that your account is already well-managed and the audit would mostly confirm what you know — we'll say so. The audit is too expensive to run for firms that don't need it.

If it surfaces real exposure, you'll leave the call with a clear sense of what the audit will look at and what kind of dollar figures we typically find in accounts that look like yours. From there, the decision to proceed is yours.