Is there a free Microsoft Ads (Bing Ads) audit?

Most Microsoft Advertising accounts started life as a Google Ads import. That’s why they get audited badly: the reviewer runs a Google checklist, finds the same campaigns, and stops. The leaks that matter on Bing sit in Microsoft-only settings.

What Microsoft gives you for free

Microsoft runs a free consultation with its own team, by phone or chat, from setup through optimization. It’s worth a call if you’re new to the platform. It isn’t an independent read, because the team’s job is to grow your use of Microsoft’s products.

The second free option is the optimization score on the Recommendations page, a 0 to 100 percent rating for active Search, Shopping and Audience campaigns. Microsoft says you reach 100 percent by applying or dismissing every recommendation, so the score measures how much of Microsoft’s suggested work you’ve applied or dismissed. It doesn’t measure whether the account makes money.

While you’re on that page, check the auto-apply setting behind the lightning-bolt icon. Microsoft can apply recommendations automatically after a seven-day review window, including new keywords, broad match keywords and new ads. Accounts were opted in by default when the feature launched in 2022. Untick every type you haven’t chosen on purpose.

Third-party tools fill the rest of the free tier. They connect to the account, compare settings against a checklist, and return a score. That’s useful for hygiene. None of them knows what a sale is worth to you, so they can’t tell you whether the conversions Microsoft reports are real.

Is Google Import overwriting your Microsoft edits?

Check this second, after the tag, because it undoes every other fix. An imported campaign stays permanently linked to its Google source. On a scheduled import, Microsoft’s update options are all on by default. They cover bids, budgets, campaign and keyword status, keyword URLs, ad distribution and conversion goals. Lower a bid in Microsoft Ads on Monday and the Tuesday import can put the Google bid back.

Shared negative keyword lists are worse. Import merges the keywords from both platforms, and Microsoft’s own documentation says the Microsoft list associations get overwritten. A negative list you attached to one campaign in Bing can come off without warning.

A few things don’t sync the way people assume. Match type copies over on the first import and never updates after that, so phrase match stays phrase match. Broad match negatives arrive as phrase match negatives. Bid strategies Microsoft doesn’t support become Enhanced CPC, or manual CPC for Audience campaigns. Google’s “Search Network plus search partners” setting maps to every Microsoft search network, syndicated partners included.

Pick one platform as the source of truth for each item. If you manage bids and negatives inside Microsoft Ads, turn those update options off or stop the scheduled import.

Where does the budget go outside Bing search?

Ad distribution is set per ad group, with two choices: the entire Microsoft Advertising Network, or Microsoft sites and select traffic. Both include Audience ads. Microsoft removed the clean opt-out for Search campaigns in early 2023, so the narrower option plus exclusions is the only way to limit that traffic.

To see where the money went, run the website URL (publisher) report and sort by spend against conversions. Partner sites that take spend and return nothing go on the exclusion list, which holds up to 2,500 URLs on a campaign, and more in a shared exclusion list. You can’t exclude Bing, AOL or Yahoo search itself, and the “select traffic” bucket reports in aggregate only.

Ads in Copilot follow the same pattern. Eligible campaigns are opted in automatically and advertisers can’t opt out. Search ads need a logo extension to qualify. Your negative keywords still apply, and there’s no Copilot-only report yet, so negative keywords are your only control.

Is UET counting real conversions?

Microsoft tracks conversions through its UET tag, and an imported account often doesn’t have working goals. Import only brings over Google Ads tag-based and destination-URL goals. GA4 goals don’t come across, and data-driven attribution becomes last click.

The failure I remember best was on an inherited Shopify store. Three Microsoft Ads conversion tags had been firing the placeholder text YOUR_VALUE_HERE for six months, so the Bing campaigns were optimizing toward noise. No score flagged it, because the tags were firing. They were sending a template string where the conversion ID belonged.

A second store, on WooCommerce, failed the other way. In June 2026 its Microsoft account had spent $255.50 on 853 clicks so far that month with zero conversions recorded, and Microsoft’s overview flagged a goal with inactive tags. I had created those tags through the Google Tag Manager API, and the API had stored one setting, document-write support, as the text “false” rather than the value false. Any non-empty text counts as true, so the tags loaded in a mode that silently drops the script once the page has finished loading. Rebuilding them without that setting brought the Bing beacon back: it returned a success code on the live site.

Both failures had a tag that existed and looked configured. The check that catches them is watching the purchase page in the browser’s network panel for the request to bat.bing.com, then confirming a conversion shows up in Microsoft within a day.

Two more checks belong here. Enhanced conversions can be turned on per goal and recover matches that browser tracking loses. If you serve the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, consent mode has been enforced since May 5, 2025, and without it Microsoft stops recording UET conversions there.

Then reconcile. My rule of thumb: Microsoft-reported conversions should sit within ten percent of the sales or qualified leads your own system attributes to Bing, and a gap past 25 percent points to a tracking problem, which no bid change fixes. In between, check attribution windows and conversion counting before anything else. The Tracking Stack covers the reconciliation in full.

LinkedIn profile targeting

LinkedIn profile targeting lets you raise or lower bids by company, industry and job function, and since mid-2026 by job seniority on Search and Audience campaigns (Microsoft, August 2026), in a limited set of markets that includes the US. It works as bid-only: it adjusts what you pay for those people and doesn’t narrow who sees the ad, unless you add exclusions. For B2B, legal and high-ticket services, a bid increase on the job functions that buy is, in my view, the strongest reason to run Bing at all. For most ecommerce brands it doesn’t change much.

When a tool score is enough

A tool score is enough when the account was built natively in Microsoft Ads, conversions reconcile against your own records, and you only want a settings check. Get a human read when the account came from Google Import, when Microsoft’s conversion count and your sales count disagree, or when Bing spend is big enough that partner and Copilot traffic matter.

Microsoft’s head of search cited Comscore data putting Bing near 29 percent of US desktop searches in mid-2025. Across all devices worldwide the share is far smaller, so Bing earns the most where buyers search from a work computer.

What my free Microsoft Ads audit covers

The terms match my Google Ads audit. It’s free at any spend level, written by me, 5 to 7 pages, and back within 24 hours. Add me as a user with the read-only Viewer role, then remove the user from the same page once you have the audit. No call is required and no retainer comes attached.

It covers the import sync, ad distribution and partner spend, conversion goals checked against your own sales or lead records, the auto-apply settings, and one fix you can ship without me. If you also run Google Ads, I read both accounts together, because most Bing problems start on the Google side. Submit the account at /audit-request/.

When to bring me in

Bring me in when cost per lead keeps rising and the fixes above haven’t moved it, when you can’t tell which campaigns produce booked work, or when the search terms report shows money going to searches you’d never pick.

I'm Conner Crowe, and I write every audit myself. Send the free audit request and add me as a read-only user, and within 24 hours of access you'll have a written read on where the spend leaks and what to fix first. No call needed, and nothing in your account or store changes.

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