Most Jacksonville business owners hire a Google Ads agency the same way: a couple of calls, a proposal, and a gut feeling about who sounded most confident. Then, six months later, they find out they don’t own the ad account, the reports only show clicks, and nobody can say how many customers the spend produced.

This checklist is what we would want a business owner to ask any agency, including us. It covers ownership, credentials, tracking, reporting, contract terms and the red flags that should end the conversation. It doesn’t rank agencies; the right one is the one that passes these checks for your business.

1. You own the Google Ads account

The account should be created in your business’s name, with your billing, and the agency added as a manager. If the agency runs your ads inside its own account, you lose the history, the conversion data and the keyword research when you leave. Ask directly: “If we part ways, do we keep the account and everything in it?” The only acceptable answer is yes.

2. Credentials you can verify

Google offers free certifications through Skillshop for Search, Display, Video, Shopping, Apps and Measurement. Every certificate has a link that can be checked, so ask to see them for the person who will run your account. Agencies can also earn Google Partner status, which requires certified staff, a minimum level of ad spend across the accounts they manage and an account optimization standard. Partner agencies appear in Google’s Partner directory, so check it there rather than trusting a badge on a website.

Certifications prove someone studied the platform. They don’t prove results, which is why the rest of this list matters more.

3. Tracking before spending

A good agency won’t turn on ads until calls, forms and bookings are tracked as conversions in Google Ads and GA4. Without that, Google’s bidding optimizes for clicks, and you can’t tell which keywords bring customers. Ask: “What will you track, how, and will you test it before launch?” Call tracking matters most for local service businesses, because most leads phone instead of filling out a form.

4. Reporting on leads, not clicks

Clicks, impressions and click-through rate are useful to the person managing the account. As the owner, you need cost per lead, number of calls and forms, which searches produced them and what is being changed next. Ask to see a sample monthly report. If it is all charts of traffic with no lead count, expect the same for your account.

Google’s own transparency rules for agencies help here. An agency must give you your Google Ads customer ID when you ask, must disclose any management fee it charges on top of ad costs, and, where it sends monthly reports, must show costs, clicks and impressions with the exact amount Google charged, separate from its fee. If you own the account, you can also sign in and see everything yourself.

5. A person you can actually talk to

Find out who will work on the account every week, how often they look at it, and whether you can reach them directly. Some agencies sell with a senior strategist and hand the work to someone you never meet. Neither model is wrong, but you should know which one you are buying.

6. A clear explanation of fees and contract terms

Agencies charge in different ways: a flat monthly fee, a percentage of ad spend, or a mix. Whatever the model, you should know exactly what is included (setup, landing pages, call tracking, reporting) and what costs extra. Check the contract length, the notice period and what happens to the account, the landing pages and the tracking when it ends. Your ad budget should be paid directly to Google from your own payment method, separate from the agency fee.

7. Someone who can fix the landing page

Paid clicks sent to a slow, general homepage are the most common way budgets leak. Ask whether the agency will build or fix landing pages, and how fast those pages load on a phone. An agency with an in-house web team can fix the page instead of blaming it.

8. Local targeting that matches how Jacksonville works

Jacksonville covers roughly 875 square miles, and customers in Mandarin, the Beaches, Nocatee and Orange Park behave differently. A good local plan targets by ZIP code or radius around where your customers actually are, uses “presence” location targeting rather than Google’s broader default, schedules ads for the hours your phones are answered, and handles visitor-heavy markets like St. Augustine or premium suburbs like Ponte Vedra Beach as separate campaigns when it pays.

9. Experience with your industry’s rules

Some categories carry advertising restrictions or extra verification, including healthcare, legal and financial services. Ask whether the agency has run campaigns in your field and how it handles those rules. For examples of what that looks like, see our pages on Google Ads for law firms, healthcare, dental and med spas and contractors and home services.

10. A plan for the first 90 days

Ask what happens in week one, the first month and the third month. A credible answer sounds like: audit and tracking first, a focused launch on your most profitable services, weekly search-term reviews and negative keywords, then budget moves toward what produces leads. Vague answers about “optimizing” are a warning sign.

11. Red flags

• Guaranteed first position or a guaranteed number of leads. Ad position is decided in an auction that changes with every search. No one controls it.
• “Google sent us to you” or claims of a special relationship with Google. Google doesn’t assign agencies to businesses.
• The agency owns the account or won’t give you admin access.
• Reports with no lead or call numbers.
• Long lock-in with no performance review point.
• No questions about your business. An agency that can quote a plan without asking what a customer is worth to you can’t know whether the plan will pay.

12. Questions to ask on the first call

• Will the account be in our name, and will we have admin access?
• Who will manage it day to day, and can we see their certifications?
• What will you track as a conversion, and how do you track calls?
• Can we see a sample monthly report?
• How do you set the budget? (Our method is in how to set a Google Ads budget.)
• Who builds or fixes the landing pages?
• What are the contract length and notice period, and what do we keep if we leave?
• What will you change in the first 90 days, and how will we know it is working?

Already running ads?

If you are unsure whether your current agency passes these checks, a Google Ads audit will show what is being tracked, where the budget goes and which settings are wasting it. Our own Google Ads management in Jacksonville is built around the points above: your account, certified specialists, tracking first and reporting on cost per lead.

Frequently asked questions

Talk to a certified specialistCall (904) 574-9775