Know if your marketing agency is actually working.
You pay every month for SEO, ads and a website, and the only report you get comes from the people you pay. AgencyReferee checks the work from outside and explains it in plain English.
Prefer email? Write to james@agencyreferee.com, a real person reads every message.
Audit summary
Real findings from an anonymized sample audit (roofing contractor, Texas, Oct 2026).
For local service businesses that pay an agency every month.
If you run the trucks, the chairs or the crews, you shouldn't need to read a marketing dashboard to know whether it's working.
Roofers
Storm and insurance pages that never rank. Ad clicks nobody can trace to a call.
Dental practices
Premium treatments in the headline that don't show up on Google.
HVAC
New blog posts every month and still missing from “AC repair” in your own city.
Plumbers
A retainer every month and no clear answer on what it brings in.
It's hard to tell whether the spend is working.
When calls slow down, you can't tell whether the market changed or the work stopped. Owners say so in public forums, like the posts below.
Range was $1,200/month to $4,500/month. No idea how to evaluate them.
Small-business owner · r/smallbusinessI'm a plumber, i don't have 12 months and $40k.
Owner quoted a $3,500/mo SEO retainer · r/smallbusiness…pays $5k a month to run his website and to run google ads… no internet presence.
Thread on r/smallbusinessThese are verbatim public Reddit posts. They aren't our customers, and we don't present them as testimonials.
Six things you're paying for
and may never have seen checked.
The free audit uses only public information, the same view Google and your competitors have.
Conversion tracking
Can Google Ads tell which clicks became calls or form leads? Are retired tags still running?
Where you really rank
Your position for searches that pay, like “roof repair” plus your city, not keywords nobody types.
The map box
Whether you're in Google's top-3 map results for core services, and who takes the spot when you're not.
Mobile speed
How long your site takes on a phone, measured with Google's own Lighthouse engine.
Business details
Do your name, phone and years in business match across your site, Google profile and ads?
Who advertises on your name
Every ad Google publicly lists for your domain, including any from an advertiser you don't recognize.
What turns up when someone outside looks.
Three real sample audits from October 2026, using public data only, with names removed. Click a finding to see the evidence and the question to ask.
Google's Ads Transparency Center lists 13 ads for the domain. The site and its public Tag Manager file have no Google Ads conversion or call-conversion tag. Conversions could be imported another way, and only the agency can show that.
Ask: “How does our Ads account know which clicks turned into calls?”
Source: adstransparency.google.com · public GTM container
Tag Manager still loads Universal Analytics, which Google stopped processing on July 1, 2024. The page and Tag Manager also load two different GA4 IDs, so traffic may be split across two reports.
Ask: “Which Analytics property is the real one, and can we remove the old tag?”
Source: homepage source · public GTM container
Lighthouse mobile performance is 39/100. Main content appears at 6.9 s, and the page weighs 3.7 MB. Google indexes sites mobile-first, so the phone version is the one that counts.
Ask: “What's the plan to get mobile load under 4 seconds?”
Source: Lighthouse 12 mobile lab test (results vary run to run)
The site wasn't on page one of regular results for any of 4 searches. For “roof insurance claim” it was in neither the map nor regular results, despite about 20 storm and insurance pages on the site.
Ask: “Which pages are meant to rank for insurance work, and where are they today?”
Source: Google searches, Oct 17, 2026 · sitemap
The website says “28+ years” and the Google profile says “35+ years”. They also list different phone numbers, with no call-tracking script on the site.
Ask: “Which number and history are correct, and is the second number a tracking line?”
Source: homepage · Google Business Profile panel
Top 3 in the map box for 3 of 4 core searches. 5.0★ from 509 reviews.
Source: Google searches, Oct 17, 2026
The homepage leads with one premium treatment and has a dedicated page for it. Searching for that treatment in the practice's area, it appeared in neither the map box nor page-one results.
Ask: “Which searches are we targeting, and where do we rank for them today?”
Source: homepage · Google search, Oct 17, 2026
The site, Google profile and page text use three variants of the name. A different practice with a nearly identical name held #1 in the map box for “family dentist” in the city.
Ask: “Can we use one consistent name everywhere?”
Source: page title · Google profile · Google search
21 ads are listed publicly. Tag Manager has a Google Ads call conversion but no Ads conversion for form or booking submissions. Bookings could still be imported from GA4.
Ask: “Are online bookings counted as conversions in Ads?”
Source: adstransparency.google.com · public GTM container
Lighthouse mobile performance is 70/100, and main content appears at 7.9 s. Layout stability is good.
Source: Lighthouse 12 mobile lab test
4.8★ from 217 reviews. Of the 10 newest, 6 have no owner reply, including some from 1–2 months ago.
Source: Google reviews sorted by newest
The practice is #1 in the map box for “dentist + ZIP”. The Google profile booking link carries tracking tags, so bookings from Google can be measured.
The homepage title targets “AC repair” in the city. For that search and “HVAC company” in the city, the company was in neither the map box nor page-one results.
Ask: “What's the plan for our two most valuable searches?”
Source: Google searches, Oct 17, 2026
Of 5 public ads pointing to the domain, one comes from a different, unrelated verified advertiser. It could be an agency account, a lead-gen partner or something else.
Ask: “Who is this advertiser, and are we paying for those clicks?”
Source: adstransparency.google.com
The website, the company's own ad, its Google profile and another listing give four different histories: since 2008, 17+ years, 26+ years and 25+ years.
Source: homepage · ad preview · Google profile
The sitemap lists 177 posts. Two carry a future date but are already live. Volume alone hasn't produced visibility for the searches above.
Ask: “What are the blog posts meant to achieve, and how is that measured?”
Source: sitemap.xml
Lighthouse mobile performance is 63/100. Main content appears at 4.5 s, with heavy JavaScript (670 ms blocking time).
Source: Lighthouse 12 mobile lab test
Google Ads conversion tags are installed, including enhanced conversions. Reviews are 4.9★ from 865, and at least 9 of the 10 newest have owner replies. We say so in the report.
Findings are facts to ask about. None of them is an accusation. Search results vary by location and device; we record the date and settings for every check.
Three steps. No sales call.
Send your website
Your site, your main services and your city. No logins, no passwords.
services: roof repair, replacement
city: your city
We run the checks
Tags, real search results, the map box, speed, listings and public ad records, with evidence saved for each.
✓ 5 core searches checked
● mobile speed measured…
Get a one-page summary
What's working, what to ask about, and the exact questions to put to your agency.
Check retired tag
Good map listing
Start free. Go deeper only if it's useful.
We're onboarding a limited number of owners while we refine the process.
Free mini-audit
An outside view of what's installed, ranking and visible.
- Conversion and analytics tags, including retired ones
- Rankings and map box for up to 5 core searches
- Mobile speed via Google Lighthouse
- Business-detail consistency
- Public ad records for your domain
- Five questions to ask your agency
Spend-vs-leads review
Uses read-only access you grant and can revoke at any time.
- What you spent, and the calls and forms it produced
- Search terms that spent money and brought nothing
- Whether “conversions” are real leads or page views
- Call tracking checked against booked jobs
- Your agency agreement checked against what was delivered
Why you can trust a review from us.
We aren't an agency
We don't sell SEO, ads or websites, and we won't pitch you a replacement.
No referral fees
No agency pays us. We take no commissions for sending you anywhere.
Evidence, not opinion
Every finding names its source, so you or your agency can check it.
Fair to your agency
We report what's working too, and avoid blaming anyone. Anything we can't see is clearly labeled.
Read-only, always
The deeper review only needs view access. No passwords, no edit rights.
Private by default
Your report goes to you and no one else. We never publish rankings of businesses or agencies.
Fair questions.
Not from us. The free audit uses only public information. The deeper review needs read-only access that you grant yourself, usually as an extra user on your own account, and you can remove it whenever you like.
No. We don't offer marketing services, take referral fees or recommend replacements. Sometimes the honest answer is that your agency is doing fine, and the report will say so.
Public data can't show what you spend or what each lead costs. The free audit shows what's installed, ranking and visible. Spend against leads needs the deeper, read-only review.
Results vary by location and device. We record the date, the searches and the location setting for every check, and we don't extrapolate beyond what we saw.
AgencyReferee is new. Audits are prepared by us and sent by email, and the self-serve dashboard shown on this page is a preview of where the product is going. There are no accounts to create yet; everything happens by email.
We'd rather learn from real owners than guess. The free audit lets us earn your trust before we ask for anything.
Check the basics yourself.
Plain-English, sourced guides for owners. Each one answers a single question with a checklist you can use today.
How to tell if your marketing agency is working
Check leads, map rankings, your profile, site speed, spend and ownership in about an hour.
Read the guide →
Questions to ask your SEO agency before signing or renewing
The questions that protect your money, your accounts and your ability to judge the work.
Read the guide →
Red flags in monthly marketing agency reports
No leads, fake conversions, vanity rankings and other signs a report hides more than it shows.
Read the guide →
How to check your Google Business Profile yourself in 15 minutes
Ownership, name, category, hours, phone, photos, reviews and duplicates, with a timer.
Read the guide →
How to switch marketing agencies without losing rankings or accounts
Secure ownership first, keep tracking running, and redirect every URL if the site must change.
Read the guide →Get an outside view before your next invoice.
Send us your website. We'll email you to confirm before we start. No call, no contract.