RevGoogle Ads for
Contractors.
What it costs, what to run, what to block.
Written by the team that runs the accounts.
Google Ads for Contractors in Four Lines.
Google Ads shows a business to people already searching for the job.
Published averages put a Google Ads lead at $94 to $228 by trade.
A Local Services lead costs less.
Start with Search, block wasted searches weekly, judge it on booked jobs.
Ten Lines, Then the Rest.
Most of the value on this page is sitting right here.
- Wire conversion tracking before you spend a dollar. Everything else is guessing.
- Start with Search. Someone typed your problem. That is the whole advantage.
- A lead costs about $94 to $228 depending on your trade. Know your number first.
- Negative keywords are the fastest money you will ever save. Add them weekly.
- One campaign per job type. Repair, replacement and maintenance are different businesses.
- Set the area by drive time, not by state lines.
- Turn call assets on. Half your leads want to tap, not read.
- Send every campaign to its own page. The homepage answers ten questions; the ad asked one.
- Read the search terms report every Monday. Fifteen minutes. Nothing teaches faster.
- Judge on booked jobs, not clicks and not leads.
What a Lead Costs by Trade.
Published averages, with the number of sources behind each.
About 7 to 10 clicks in every 100 become a lead. Published industry averages, 2024–2026. See the sources.
What the Trades Pay.
LocaliQ, 3,211 US search campaigns. Data from April 2024 to March 2025.
Home and home improvement overall: $8.33 a click, $90.92 a lead, 6.47% click-through, 8.05% conversion. LocaliQ, 13,474 US campaigns, April 2025 to March 2026.
Trade table is April 2024 to March 2025, the most recent trade-level cut published.
What Changed This Year.
Check the date on anything you read about Google Ads.
What Is AI Max for Search?
Google’s bundle of automatic matching, ad-text rewriting and landing page switching.
Google reports typically 14% more conversions at similar cost.
From September 2026 it switches itself on for campaigns using dynamic search ads, auto-created assets or campaign-level broad match.
Enhanced CPC Is Gone
Discontinued in the week of 31 March 2025 for Search and Display.
Campaigns that never migrated now run on Manual CPC.
Any article still offering it as a bidding choice was written before that and should be read with suspicion.
Display Folds Into Demand Gen
The voluntary migration tool opened in June 2026.
Later, new Display campaigns can only be built inside Demand Gen, and the rest move over automatically. Google has not fixed the final date.
Demand Gen covers YouTube including Shorts, Discover, Gmail, Maps and the display network.
Still New: Performance Max Takes Negatives
Campaign-level negative keyword lists, up to 10,000 per campaign.
Search themes went from 25 to 50 per asset group, and the channel performance report now shows which channel spent your money.
This is the fix people asked for since 2021.
How the Ad Auction Works.
Nobody buys position with money alone. That is the part most people miss.
Do the Highest Bidders Win?
No. Google ranks you on your bid, your expected click-through rate, how relevant your ad is, and how useful your landing page looks.
A well-built account with a good page outranks a lazy one bidding more. That is why the page matters as much as the budget.
The Real Cost per Click
Less than your bid, most of the time. You pay the least it takes to hold your position against the advertiser below you.
So a high maximum bid is not the same as a high cost. It is a ceiling, not a price.
The Five Pieces, Linked
Keyword, ad, landing page, tracking, bid. They are one chain, not five jobs.
Break any link and the rest stops working.
A perfect keyword pointing at a bad page still wastes money, and perfect ads with broken tracking teach the bidding the wrong lesson.
Why Quality Score Exists
Google makes more money when people click, so it rewards ads people want to click.
Your score, out of ten, is Google telling you how it rates your keyword, ad and page. It is a diagnostic, not a target.
Key takeaway: Position is bid times quality, so a better ad and page can beat a bigger bid.
Back to contentsTwo Campaign Types Worth Running First.
There are several. Start with two.
Search Ads
Someone typed the problem into Google. Highest intent there is, and where almost every contractor should start.
You choose the words, you see what you paid for, and you can switch it off in a second.
Local Services Ads
Pay per lead, not per click. They sit above everything including search ads, and they need license and insurance checks.
Best for emergency work, where the person calls the first name they see.
Performance Max, Later
Google decides where the ad goes across every surface it owns. Useful once tracking is solid and you have enough leads to teach it.
Before that it spends your budget learning things you already know.
Demand Gen, Later
YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps. This is where Display campaigns are being moved.
It is for being remembered, not for being called today. Worth money once the search campaigns are full and you want more demand.
Key takeaway: Start with Search, add Local Services Ads for emergencies, and leave the rest for later.
Back to contentsEight Steps, in the
Order That Saves Money.
Do them out of order and you pay for the privilege.
Tracking First, Always
Before a single ad runs. Google tag on the site, conversions defined, and a test lead pushed through end to end.
Ads built on bad data do not just waste money.
They teach the bidding to chase the wrong thing, which costs more to undo than to prevent.
Know What a Job Is Worth
Average ticket, close rate, and how many leads it takes to book one.
At a $129 lead and one booking in four, you are paying about $516 a booked job.
If your average job is $400 you have a problem no keyword fixes.
One Campaign per Job
Repair, replacement and maintenance want different budgets, different words and different pages.
Put them together and the cheap repair clicks will quietly eat the install budget, because there are always more of them.
Area Set by Drive Time
Your service area, not the whole state. Use a radius or a list of towns your truck actually reaches.
A lead 90 minutes away costs exactly the same as one ten minutes away and turns into work far less often.
Hours Match the Crew
If nobody answers at 10pm, do not pay for 10pm clicks.
The exception is emergency trades, where the night calls are the profitable ones.
Then keep the hours and make sure the phone is genuinely answered, because a paid call to voicemail is money set on fire.
Exact and Phrase Before Broad
Start tight so you can see what is happening. Widen only once the search terms report says it is safe.
Broad match works, but only with a real negative list underneath it and tracking good enough to steer the bidding.
Build the Negative List on Day One
Jobs, salary, DIY, free, cheap, parts, courses, wrong trade, wrong town.
You will add to it every week for the life of the account.
Starting with nothing means paying for two weeks of job hunters before you notice.
Send Each Campaign to Its Own Page
The ad promised same-day repair. The page has to say same-day repair above the fold, on a phone, without scrolling.
This one decision moves cost per lead more than any bidding change you will ever make.
Key takeaway: One campaign per job type, one theme per ad group, one page per campaign.
Back to contentsKeywords, Search Terms and Match Types.
Keywords are what you bid on. Search terms are what you actually paid for.
What Is a Search Term?
A keyword is what you told Google you want. A search term is what the person actually typed.
They are rarely the same.
The gap between them is where the money goes, and the search terms report is the only place you can see it.
Exact Match
Square brackets: [ac repair near me]. Matches that search and close variants, including plurals, misspellings and searches Google judges to mean the same thing.
Tightest control, lowest volume. Start here for the words you know convert.
Phrase Match
Quote marks: "ac repair". Matches searches containing that meaning, with words before or after.
The sensible middle. Most contractor accounts should live here for the first month.
Broad Match
No punctuation: ac repair. Google matches anything it judges related, which can be generous.
It is the default and Google pushes it hard alongside smart bidding. It works, but only with a strong negative list and tracking you trust.
Broad match modifier no longer exists.
Key takeaway: Start with exact and phrase match, and widen only when the search terms say it is safe.
Back to contentsFour Groups That Catch
Almost All the Waste.
Add all four on day one, then keep adding weekly.
Buyers, Not Browsers
jobs, hiring, career, salary, apprentice, training, course, school, certification, union.
These are the single biggest leak in contractor accounts, because job hunters search the same words your customers do and they click just as readily.
People Who Want to Do It Themselves
diy, how to, tutorial, video, youtube, guide, fix it myself, step by step.
They are researching, not buying. Nothing wrong with them, but they are not worth eleven dollars a click.
People Who Want It Free or Want a Part
free, cheap, discount, coupon, used, second hand, parts, replacement filter, manual, warranty.
Parts searches are especially expensive because they look commercial and never convert into a service call.
Wrong Trade, Wrong Town, Wrong Building
Every trade next to yours, every town you do not serve, plus commercial or residential if you only do one.
A plumber paying for HVAC searches is common and almost invisible unless you read the report.
Key takeaway: Load all four negative groups on day one and add to them every week.
Back to contents
Search Terms, Reviewed Weekly.
It lists the actual searches you paid for, not the keywords you chose.
Nothing else in the account teaches you as fast.
The Free Real Estate
Most Accounts Never Use.
They cost nothing, make the ad bigger, and lift click-through.
Call Assets
Puts your number in the ad so a phone user can tap and ring without ever seeing the site.
For contractors this is the most valuable asset there is, because half your leads want to tap, not read.
Set the hours so it only shows when somebody answers.
Location Assets
Pulls your address and distance from your Google Business Profile into the ad.
It tells a nearby searcher you are actually nearby, which is most of the decision for emergency work.
Sitelink Assets
Extra links under the ad: Emergency repair, Financing, Reviews, Service area.
They make the ad physically taller, which pushes competitors down the screen, and they let people jump straight to the thing they came for.
Callout and Structured Snippets
Short phrases with no link: Licensed and insured, 24/7, Free estimates, Financing available.
Cheap credibility. Structured snippets list your services in a tidy row underneath.
Lead Form Assets
A form that opens inside Google, so the person never reaches your site.
Use with care. The leads are cheaper and noticeably colder, and you must pull them into your own system quickly or they go stale.
Image Assets
A photo beside your search ad. Real vans, real crews, real finished work.
Stock photos of smiling strangers do nothing. A picture of your actual truck does.
Price Assets
Starting prices for named services, shown as cards under the ad.
Only worth it if your pricing is genuinely competitive, because it filters hard. Sometimes that filtering is exactly what you want.
Promotion Assets
A dated offer, like a seasonal tune-up price.
Set the real dates. A promotion that has clearly expired does more harm than no promotion at all.
Fifteen Headlines Beat One.
Responsive search ads are the only kind you can build now.
What Google Requires
Minimum three headlines, two descriptions, one final URL. Maximum fifteen headlines at 30 characters and four descriptions at 90.
Google shows three headlines and two descriptions at a time, mixing them. Give it all fifteen and it has something to test.
Say the Thing the Ad Promised
If the keyword was emergency ac repair, the headline says emergency AC repair. Not "Your Comfort Is Our Priority".
Matching the search back to the searcher is most of what a good ad does.
Put the Proof In
Licensed and insured. Same-day. 24/7. Twenty years. A real review count.
Specific beats warm. "Trusted local experts" is what everybody writes, which is why it persuades nobody.
Pin Only What Must Be Pinned
Pinning locks a headline to a position. Pin your brand name or a legal line if you must.
Pin everything and you have rebuilt an expanded text ad by hand and thrown away the testing you are paying for.
Key takeaway: Give Google all fifteen headlines and say exactly what the search asked for.
Back to contentsThree Parts, and
the Fix for Each.
Scored one to ten per keyword. A diagnostic, not a scoreboard.
A better score lowers what you pay for the same position. Chasing the number is a waste; fixing what it points at is not.
Key takeaway: Fix the part of Quality Score marked below average, then stop watching the number.
Back to contentsWhat to Use, and When.
Start manual. Move to automatic only when the data deserves it.
Enhanced CPC was discontinued in the week of 31 March 2025. Campaigns that never migrated now run Manual CPC.
If an article offers it as an option, it predates that.
A Small Budget Costs
More per Lead, Not Less.
Under these, you are buying noise, not data.
Why a Small Budget Costs More per Lead
You need roughly thirty conversions before automated bidding has anything to learn from.
At a $129 plumbing lead, $1,000 a month buys about eight.
You will spend four months getting to a conclusion a proper budget reaches in two weeks.
Published Starting Points
About $1,600 a month for electrical, $1,850 for plumbing, $2,000 for HVAC and $3,000 for roofing.
Roofing is highest because the leads cost most: $228 each on average, against $94 for electrical.
Split It by Job Value, Not Evenly
Repair clicks are cheap and plentiful. Install clicks are expensive and rare.
An even split means the repair campaign quietly eats the install budget every month, and install is where your margin lives.
When to Raise It
When cost per booked job is steady and you still have capacity to take the work.
Raising a budget to fix bad leads only buys more bad leads. Fix the leak first, then pour more in.
Key takeaway: Work out cost per booked job before choosing a budget.
Back to contentsWhere the Click
Becomes a Call.
About 8 clicks in 100 become a lead. The page decides which.
Why Not Just Use the Homepage?
The homepage answers ten questions. The ad asked one.
Someone who searched emergency furnace repair at 9pm needs a phone number and the word tonight.
Making them find it among your history, your services list and your gallery is how you lose them.
See landing page development.
What Has to Be Above the Fold
The promise from the ad, a phone number that dials on tap, and one line saying who you are.
On a 360-pixel phone screen that is about all that fits. Everything else is below, and that is fine.
The Form
Name, phone, and what is wrong. That is it.
Every extra field costs you leads. Ask for the address once they are talking to you, not before.
Speed
Every second of load time costs you leads, and contractor customers are on phones in a hurry.
Compress the images, stop loading five tracking scripts, and test it on a real phone on cellular data, not on your office wifi.
Key takeaway: Each ad needs a fast page that repeats its promise above the fold.
Back to contentsThe Part That Makes
Every Other Number Real.
Get this wrong and everything downstream is a guess.
The Google Tag
One piece of code on every page. It is what lets Google see a visit, a form submit or a call.
Install it once, through Google Tag Manager if you have anything else to track, and test it before you trust it.
What Counts as a Conversion
A form submitted, a phone number tapped, a call longer than your threshold.
Not a page view. Not time on site.
If you count soft things as conversions, automated bidding will chase them and you will buy visits instead of jobs.
Counting Calls Properly
Tap-to-call from the ad, tap-to-call from the page, and calls from your Google Business Profile are three different things.
Count each once. The most common broken account we open counts one lead three times, so the budget chases a number that was never real.
Enhanced Conversions
Sends hashed customer details back to Google so it can match conversions it would otherwise miss.
Two kinds: for web and for leads. Email is lowercased, phone goes in international format, and it is hashed before it leaves the browser.
Do I Need Consent Mode?
Not if you only advertise in the United States.
Consent Mode v2 is required for visitors from the European Economic Area and the UK. Plenty of plugins will tell you it is mandatory.
For US-only traffic it is not.
GA4 Alongside
Google Analytics tells you what happened on the site. Google Ads tells you what the ad did.
Link them so you can see which campaign brought the visitor who called, but do not import soft GA4 events as ad conversions.
Test It With a Real Lead
Fill in your own form. Call your own number. Then check it appeared, once, in the right campaign.
Do this before launch and again after any site change. Site changes break tracking constantly and silently.
See conversion tracking setup.
Google Tag Gateway
Google’s newer server-side route for tag data, which it reports recovers about 14% more signal.
Worth it once the basics are clean. Never a substitute for them.
Key takeaway: Count every call and form once, and test with a real lead after every change.
Back to contentsFour Numbers, in Order.
Click-to-lead range from 6 published sources, 2024–2026.
Key takeaway: Judge the account on booked jobs, the bottom of the funnel.
Back to contentsThe Ads That Sit
Above Everything.
Pay per lead, not per click. Different product, different rules.
What They Are
A separate Google product that puts you above the search ads, with a Google Verified badge, your rating and your review count.
You are charged for a lead, not a click, and Google credits leads it judges invalid.
See Local Services Ads management.
Getting Verified
Business registration, license, and insurance certificate, plus background checks on the business and sometimes the owner.
It takes days to weeks, not hours. Start it before you need it, because you cannot rush it when the season turns.
What Decides Ad Position
Your review score and count, how close you are, and how fast you answer.
Also your responsiveness to past leads, and whether you are open right now.
Answering the phone is the part most contractors underestimate. Missed calls quietly drop your ranking.
Bad Leads and Credits
Google now reviews charged leads and credits invalid ones automatically.
Rate every lead in the app and mark the bad ones Dissatisfied. That is how you flag the misses.
LSAs or Search Ads?
LSAs win emergencies, where the person calls the first name on the screen and does not read anything.
Search ads carry planned work and high-ticket jobs, where people compare and want a page to read. Most contractors need both.
Why the Lead Looks Cheaper
Published averages put an LSA lead at roughly $46 for electrical, $58 plumbing, $61 HVAC and $100 roofing, against $115 to $240 on search.
The catch: you get less control, less information, and no landing page to make your case on.
Reviews Carry the Weight
Your LSA rating comes from your Google reviews, so the two channels are connected.
A steady habit of asking every finished customer for a review is the cheapest ranking work available in either place.
Keep the Budget Honest
LSA budgets are set weekly and Google will happily spend them on leads you cannot service.
Set the job types tightly. Turning off the ones you do not want is the whole art of running it well.
Key takeaway: Local Services Ads reward reviews and fast answers more than money.
Back to contentsThe Free Channel
People Leave Broken.
It feeds the map pack, your ads and your Local Services ranking.
Why It Matters
Location assets pull from it, LSA ranking leans on its reviews, and the map pack sits above the organic results.
An abandoned profile drags on all three at the same time, which is why it is the first thing worth fixing and it costs nothing.
See Google Business Profile optimization.
What Moves the Ranking
Distance from the searcher, how complete and consistent your information is, and how many recent reviews you have.
You cannot change distance. You can change the other two this afternoon.
The Completeness Checklist
Exact categories, real service area, hours including holidays, services list, description, and photos that are yours.
Add photos regularly rather than once. A profile that has not been touched in two years looks closed.
Reviews, and Answering Them
Ask every finished customer, every time, the same day. Reply to all of them, including the bad ones.
A calm reply to an angry review sells better to the next reader than five happy ones do.
Avoiding Suspension
No keyword stuffing in the business name, no fake address, no PO box, no service area you do not serve.
Suspensions take weeks to reverse and you lose the reviews while you wait. It is never worth the risk.
Service Area Businesses
If you go to customers rather than them coming to you, hide the address and set a service area.
Listing a house as a storefront is a common and avoidable reason for suspension.
Posts and Questions
Post seasonally, answer the questions people leave, and seed the obvious questions yourself honestly.
It is low effort and it is one of the few places you control the words a customer reads before calling.
Keep the Details Identical
Name, address and phone must match everywhere: your site, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing, Nextdoor.
Inconsistency is invisible to you and very visible to Google.
Better Than It Was.
Still Not for Beginners.
It got a lot better in 2025. It is still not a beginner product.
What It Does
One campaign across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps, with Google deciding the split.
You give it assets and a goal. It gives you results and, until recently, very little explanation.
What Changed
Campaign-level negative keyword lists, up to 10,000 per campaign. Search themes raised from 25 to 50 per asset group.
Plus a channel performance report that finally shows which channel spent your money and what came back.
When to Turn It On
After the search campaigns are running well, tracking is clean, and you have a real flow of conversions to teach it.
Turn it on before that and it will spend the budget discovering what your search campaign already knew.
The Honest Risk
It will find your brand searches and cheap irrelevant traffic and count them as wins.
Add a brand exclusion if your own name already brings the call for free, and read the channel report monthly rather than trusting the headline number.
Key takeaway: Turn Performance Max on only after Search works and tracking is clean.
Back to contentsFifteen Minutes, Every Week.
Fifteen minutes on the search terms.
The whole job is two to three hours a week.
Read the Search Terms
The actual searches you paid for. Block anything that is not a customer.
2Check the Calls
Did the leads answer the phone? Which campaign produced them?
Move the Money
Budget shifts to the campaign booking work. Everything else waits.
Key takeaway: Fifteen minutes on the search terms every Monday beats any big monthly fix.
Back to contentsWhen Each Trade Gets Busy.
Flat budgets waste the peak and overspend the lull.
US HVAC search peaks from Google Trends, 2021–2026. The rest is from running the accounts.
Sixteen Things to Check.
Miss one and you find out the expensive way.
- Google tag live on every page, and tested with a real submission
- Conversions defined: form, phone tap, and calls over your threshold
- Each conversion counted once, checked by sending yourself a test lead
- Billing set, with a card that will not expire mid-season
- One campaign per job type, not one campaign for everything
- Service area set by drive time, not by state
- Hours matched to when the phone is genuinely answered
- Negative keyword list loaded before the first click
- At least ten headlines and three descriptions in every ad
- Call assets on, with their own schedule
- Location assets linked to a live Google Business Profile
- Sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets filled in
- A landing page per campaign, matching what the ad promised
- That page tested on a real phone, on cellular data
- Daily budget that reaches thirty conversions a month, or a plan to get there
- Your own business name decided: bidding on it, or blocked as a negative
Eight Things That Break,
and Why They Are Normal.
None of these mean the account is broken.
Why Are My Ads Disapproved?
Usually the landing page, not the ad. Missing contact details, no privacy policy, a claim you cannot back, or a page that fails on mobile.
Fix the page and resubmit. Most clear within a day.
Repeated disapprovals on the same policy can suspend the account, so read the reason rather than resubmitting blindly.
Why Does It Say "Limited by Budget"?
Your campaign could spend more than you gave it, so Google is rationing your ads through the day.
Three fixes: raise the budget, tighten the keywords so it stops chasing expensive searches, or narrow the hours.
Raising the budget is only right if the leads are good.
Why Did My Costs Jump After a Change?
Any significant change restarts the learning period, which typically runs one to two weeks.
Performance is unstable while it relearns. The mistake is changing something else in the middle, which restarts it again. Make one change, then wait.
Why Am I Getting No Impressions?
Usually bid too low, keywords too tight, area too small, or the ad still in review.
Check the keyword status column first.
It will usually tell you plainly, and "Rarely shown due to low quality score" means Google rates the keyword, ad or page as weak.
Check the three parts of Quality Score above.
Why Are the Leads Bad?
Almost always the search terms, occasionally the page.
Pull the search terms report for the last thirty days and read every line.
The answer is nearly always sitting there in plain sight, and it is nearly always a word you never thought to block.
Why Did My Cost per Click Double?
A competitor started bidding, or you drifted into broader searches.
Check the auction insights report to see who turned up. If nobody new did, the problem is your match types, not the market.
Why Do I Get Calls From the Wrong Town?
Location targeting defaults to people who show interest in your area, not only people in it.
Switch it to presence only, and watch a chunk of the wasted spend disappear the same week.
Why Is the Phone Quiet but Clicks Are Up?
Something between the click and the call is broken.
Test it on a real phone.
A number that does not dial on tap, a form that fails silently, or a six-second page will all do this.
The First Ninety Days.
Knowing the shape of it stops people quitting in week three.
Clicks and Nerves
Ads live, money moving, and the search terms report full of things you need to block. This is normal and it is the point.
2The Waste Comes Out
Negatives added weekly, budget moving to what books work, cost per lead starting to settle.
A Real Answer
Enough leads to judge cost per booked job honestly, and to decide whether to scale, fix or stop.
Eight Things That
Are Simply Not True.
Each one costs contractors real money every month.
"Google Ads Does Not Work for My Trade"
It works in every home-services trade. LocaliQ measured 3,211 US campaigns across them.
What varies is the price. A roofing lead averages $228 and a cleaning lead $47. If it failed for you, the account was usually the problem.
"I Need to Outbid My Competitors"
Position is bid times quality times context, not bid alone.
A tight ad group pointing at a fast, matching page will outrank a lazy account paying more. That is the whole reason Quality Score exists.
"More Keywords Means More Leads"
More keywords usually means more waste.
Twenty well-chosen keywords with a real negative list beat two hundred loose ones every time, because you can actually see what each one is doing.
"Pausing at Night Saves Money"
Only if nobody answers at night.
For emergency trades the night calls are often the profitable ones. Check which hours actually produce booked jobs before you switch anything off.
"My Quality Score Should Be 10"
It is a diagnostic, not a target.
A 7 on a keyword that books work beats a 10 on one nobody calls about.
Fix what the score points at, then stop looking at it.
"Clicks Are the Thing to Watch"
Clicks are the thing you pay for. Booked jobs are the thing you keep.
Plenty of accounts with a cheap cost per click are quietly losing money, because the cheap clicks never turn into work.
"I Will Set It Up Once and Leave It"
The search terms change every week, and so do your competitors.
Fifteen minutes a week is the difference between an account that improves and one that slowly rots.
"Google Support Will Optimize It for Me"
The call you get offering to help is a sales call, and the advice is usually to spend more.
Some of it is fine. None of it is neutral. Read the search terms yourself before you take any of it.
Google Ads Against
Everything Else.
Not the only way to get the phone ringing. Not always the best.
Start with the profile, then search ads. One is free and the other is immediate. Everything else is worth adding once those two are working.
Every channel compared: the best advertising for contractors.
Where the Lead-Cost Numbers Come From.
Each figure above averages the published sources named here.
Checked in September 2026.
- Electrical, Google Ads lead, 6 sources:
LocaliQ, SearchLight Digital, 99 Calls, Watson & Co, Lengreo, Sprout Sage - Electrical, Local Services lead, 9 sources:
Hook Agency, PerfoAds, BaaDigi, SearchLight Digital, 99 Calls, Watson & Co, Sprout Sage, Blue Grid Media, Lengreo - HVAC, Google Ads lead, 8 sources:
LocaliQ, SearchLight Digital, 99 Calls, PPC Chief, RYN Digital, Purdy Design, Schulze Creative, Built Right Digital - HVAC, Local Services lead, 6 sources:
SearchLight Digital, The Media Captain, Blue Grid Media, 99 Calls, RYN Digital, Schulze Creative - Plumbing, Google Ads lead, 8 sources:
LocaliQ, PPC Chief, SearchLight Digital, 99 Calls, Hook Agency, Housecall Pro, RYN Digital, M.Wolf Media - Plumbing, Local Services lead, 5 sources:
Hook Agency, PerfoAds, BaaDigi, SearchLight Digital, 99 Calls - Roofing, Google Ads lead, 8 sources:
LocaliQ, PPC Chief, SearchLight Digital, 99 Calls, Rebel Ape, Softtrix, Brand House, Thomastown Digital - Roofing, Local Services lead, 6 sources:
99 Calls, The Media Captain, Hook Agency, Creative Roofing Marketing, PushLeads, Watson & Co
Tools Used on the Accounts.
Free and paid, side by side.
Google AdsPerformance Max
Local Services Ads
Meta Ads Manager
YouTube AdsMeta Pixel
GA4
Tag Manager
Search Console
Microsoft Clarity
WordPressBusiness Profile
Google Search
ChatGPT
Claude
Perplexity
WhatsApp BusinessNo affiliate links anywhere on this page. We get nothing if you sign up.
Product names and logos are trademarks of their owners. RevRigs is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.
Where Things Live
in the Interface.
Google moves the furniture often. These are the four screens that matter.
Search Terms Report
Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms.
The single most useful screen in the account. Set the date range to the last thirty days and read every line before you touch anything else.
Conversions
Goals, then Conversions, then Summary.
Check here that a form, a phone tap and a call are each counted once.
If these numbers are wrong, every other screen is wrong too.
Assets
Campaigns, then Assets.
Call, location, sitelinks, callouts and images live here now. They used to be called extensions, and most guides still call them that.
Change History
Campaigns, then Change history.
When performance moves for no reason, this tells you what was changed and when. Often the answer is that Google changed something, not you.
A Plain Glossary.
Everything on this page, in one place.
Averages from LocaliQ benchmark data. See the benchmarks section above for dates and sample sizes.
Two to Three Hours a Week.
Every week, for as long as the ads run.
Plenty of contractors run their own ads well. This guide exists so you can.
If you want teaching rather than doing, the live course runs on your own account and the first two classes are free.
Booked Jobs Beat
Everything Else.
Clicks are noise. Leads are better.
Booked jobs are the truth.
Three Ways to Go From Here.
All three are fine. They just suit different people.
Do It Yourself
Everything on this page, free. Start with the checklist.
Learn It Properly
Eight live classes. The first two are free.
Hand It Over
$1,497 a month. No minimum term, no setup fee.
Not Sure Yet
Free written audit of your account in two working days.
Google Ads FAQs
The questions contractors actually ask. Anything else, call (848) 292-0070.
Ask the team running it. No script, no waiting.
(848) 292-0070 Or send a few details →Google takes the click, and that runs about $9.68 for AC work, $9.30 for heating, $10.49 for plumbing, $12.18 for electrical and $10.70 for roofing.
Then a lead costs about $128 for AC, $129 for heating and plumbing, $94 for electrical and $228 for roofing.
Source: LocaliQ, 3,211 US campaigns, April 2024 to March 2025.
Published starting budgets run about $1,600 a month for electrical, $1,850 plumbing, $2,000 HVAC and $3,000 roofing.
Most contractors end up running both, with the emergency money in LSAs.
They are the single fastest way to stop waste, and Performance Max now takes them too, up to 10,000 per campaign.
Smart bidding also has a learning period of roughly one to two weeks after any big change.
Note that Enhanced CPC was discontinued in the week of 31 March 2025, so any guide still offering it is out of date.
From September 2026 campaigns using dynamic search ads, automatically created assets or campaign-level broad match are upgraded to it automatically.
A slow page, a buried phone number, or a page that answers a different question than the ad asked will halve that.
If you want to be taught properly, the live course runs eight classes and the first two are free.
If you want it run for you, that is $1,497 a month.
But it matters far less than cost per booked job. A high click-through rate on the wrong searches is an expensive way to look busy.
Watch it though: if nobody is bidding against you, you may be paying for a click you would have had free.
Repair, replacement and maintenance all want their own page.
Get My Free Ad Audit.
Four details. Two working days.
Free. No card. We reply the same day, US hours.
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