A Google Ads Dashboard You Build by Asking

Most Google Ads dashboards are built once, trusted for a quarter, and then quietly drift away from the account. The fix is fewer views, one definition per metric, and a way to regenerate them.

A useful Google Ads dashboard is five views, built on metrics defined once as ratios of sums, and checked against the account every month. You can build it in a spreadsheet, in a BI tool, or by asking for each view as a question. The format matters less than the discipline.

Why dashboards drift away from the account

The first week, a dashboard matches Google Ads. Six months later it does not, and nobody knows when it changed. The common causes:

• A calculated column that averages daily CPA instead of dividing total cost by total conversions.
• A filter that excluded paused or removed campaigns, so last year's spend on a campaign that has since been retired disappears.
• A date window anchored to a specific month that nobody updated.
• A copy of the data that was exported once and never refreshed.

None of these are tool problems. They are the result of a dashboard with many views and no owner.

The five views worth having

1. Spend against budget

Cost by day for the current month, with the month's total beside your monthly budget. This is the only view you check daily. Pacing errors are cheap to fix on day eight and expensive on day twenty-eight.

2. Campaign efficiency

A table with campaign, cost, conversions, conversion value, ROAS and cost per conversion. Always show cost beside the ratio. A campaign with a ROAS of 8 on 40 spend and one with a ROAS of 3 on 4,000 spend are different stories, and a ratio column hides that.

3. Keyword waste

Keywords sorted by cost with zero conversions over the last quarter. This is the most direct source of recoverable budget. The manual approach is covered in finding wasted spend in Google Ads.

4. Ninety-day trend

Weekly cost, clicks and conversions on one timeline. The point is to separate "fewer clicks" from "lower conversion rate" when a number moves. Use weekly buckets, since a daily line of a small account is mostly noise.

5. Conversion quality check

Google Ads conversions beside your own count of orders or leads for the same period. They will not agree, and the size and stability of the gap is the information. A gap that doubles overnight usually means a tracking change.

Three rules for every chart

1. Sum, then divide. Every rate is a ratio of totals at whatever level the chart groups by.
2. Pair every ratio with its base. Show spend or clicks next to ROAS, CPA and CTR.
3. Label the window. A chart without a date range is a chart that will be misread.

If you want to build this by hand, the same principles as building a dashboard in Excel apply, with the Google Ads data on a protected raw tab.

Getting the views by asking, with Quiriz

Quiriz's Google Ads connector is in beta. It reads one ad account, read-only, over the last 13 months, refreshes daily, and is included in paid plans. The datasets match the views above:

• Campaign performance (daily) for pacing, efficiency and the trend.
• Ad group performance (daily) when a campaign needs to be split.
• Keyword performance (monthly, with match type and quality score) for waste.

Because Google Ads spend, conversions, conversion value, ROAS, CPA, CPC and CTR are defined once in Company Context, each view is a question rather than a build. For example:

• "How much did we spend on Google Ads each month this year?"
• "Which campaigns had the best ROAS last month, with their spend?"
• "Which keywords spent the most without converting last quarter?"

The questions you reuse can be kept as saved questions and rerun as the daily refresh brings in new data, so the "dashboard" is a short list of questions you trust. The answers show the table and the work, which is what makes a monthly reconcile quick.

A review cadence that keeps it honest

A dashboard is only as good as the habit of looking at it. A cadence that works for most accounts: glance at pacing daily, review campaign efficiency and the trend weekly, review keyword waste and the conversion quality check monthly, and reconcile total spend with the Google Ads interface at month end. Write the reconcile result down, even if it is just "matched". When a month does not match, the note tells you how long the drift has been running. Add a short change log too: any time someone edits a conversion action, a budget or a bidding strategy, record the date, because the dashboard will show a step change that has nothing to do with market demand.

One last habit: keep a notes line under each view saying what decision it feeds. If you cannot name the decision, remove the view. A dashboard with five views that each lead to an action is worth more than one with twenty that lead to a conversation about which chart is right.

Limits to know

• It is a question-and-answer view, not a wall display with fixed tiles. If you need a screen on an office TV, a BI tool still fits better.
• Conversions follow your Google Ads conversion actions and attribution, not your store's own count.
• Search terms, auction insights, device and location breakdowns, and ad or asset level results are not read.
• Data refreshes once a day, and the 13-month window is re-read each time because Google restates recent conversions.

Agencies reporting for several clients can start at Quiriz for agencies. If you want to ask rather than build, start with asking your Google Ads account questions.

Frequently asked questions