It’s 4:30 on a Saturday in July and a homeowner’s AC just quit. They grab their phone and type “ac repair near me”.
Before they see a single website, Google shows them Local Services Ads with a Google Verified badge, then a few sponsored results, then the map. The companies at the top of that screen are paying to be there.
So the question isn’t whether to run Google Ads. It’s which kind, for which jobs, and whether you can tell a lead that booked a job from one that just cost you money.
This guide covers PPC (pay-per-click advertising) for home services as it works today: what Local Services Ads and Search ads each do, what leads actually cost by trade, what Google changed in the last year, and how HVAC, roofing, plumbing and contractor campaigns should differ.
Key Takeaways
There are two products, not one. Local Services Ads charge per lead and need Google's screening. Search ads charge per click and need keywords, bids and a landing page.
Google rebuilt Local Services Ads in the last year. One Google Verified badge replaced Google Guaranteed on October 20, 2025, and since August 2026 those accounts have been moving into Google Ads.
Missed calls cost money. Google charges for a missed call during your business hours when the caller stays on the line more than 20 seconds, voicemail included.
Cost-per-lead benchmarks disagree. LocaliQ's median plumbing search lead was $129.02 in its April 2024 to March 2025 data, while SearchLight Digital measured $183 for non-branded plumbing search in early 2026.
Roofing and remodeling pay the most per lead. LocaliQ measured roofing at $228.15 and general contractors at $165.67, with the lowest conversion rates of any home services category.
Track booked jobs, not leads. SearchLight found 43.9% of Local Services Ads leads booked a job in February 2026, so more than half of the leads you pay for may never become work.
What PPC For Home Services Actually Covers
PPC for home services means paying Google to put your business in front of people searching for the work you do, in the towns you serve. For a plumber, HVAC company, roofer or contractor, that’s mostly two products:
- Local Services Ads (LSAs): the listings at the top of many service searches with your star rating, hours and a Google Verified badge. You pay per lead: a call, a message or a booking.
- Google Ads Search campaigns: the text ads marked “Sponsored” in the search results. You pay per click, whether or not the person ever calls.
You’ll also hear about Performance Max (PMax), Google’s automated campaign type that runs across Search, Maps, YouTube and more from one budget. It now matters to home services for a new reason, covered below.
LSAs and Search aren’t either-or. They do different jobs, and most trades are best served running both once the basics are in place.
Local Services Ads Vs Search Ads: How Each One Works
| Local Services Ads | Google Ads Search | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Per valid lead: a call, message or booking | Per click |
| What triggers the ad | Your trade, the service types you pick and your service area. No keywords | Keywords you choose, plus negative keywords that block the searches you don't want |
| Who shows first | Your bid, how likely you are to turn a search into a lead (answering calls counts), relevance, and profile quality: rating, review count, response time, photos and verification | Your bid, ad quality, expected click-through rate and landing page experience |
| Before you can run | Pass Google's screening: background, license and insurance checks depending on your trade and state. Google says it takes 3 to 4 weeks on average | A Google Ads account, ads that pass review and a landing page |
| How much control you get | Budget, bid mode, service types, service area and schedule | Every keyword, ad, bid, town, hour and landing page |
| Best for | Urgent repair calls and quick quotes | Specific high-value jobs, towns you want to grow in, and searches LSAs don't cover |
LSAs are simpler, and you only pay when someone reaches out. Search ads take more work, but you choose the searches. In LSAs you pick service types and Google decides which searches match them. In Search you can bid hard on “furnace replacement” and leave “furnace filter sizes” alone.
What Google Changed About Local Services Ads
If you set up LSAs a couple of years ago and haven’t looked since, a lot has moved:
- One badge. On October 20, 2025, Google replaced Google Guaranteed, Google Screened and License Verified by Google with a single Google Verified badge. The money-back guarantee ended with it; customers can only claim for jobs booked before December 7, 2025. If your trucks, website or ads still say “Google Guaranteed”, update them.
- LSAs are moving into Google Ads. Google is converting LSA accounts into Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. The first wave started in August 2026 with select US home and storefront service advertisers, including plumbing, HVAC, electrical and roofing. Service-area businesses without a storefront follow later in 2026, and remaining categories in 2027. You still pay per lead, there are still no keywords, and the ads still show in the same spots on Search and Maps.
- Your old reports don’t come with you. Google says LSA performance reports won’t transfer, manual bidding goes away and weekly budgets become daily averages. Your account admin gets an email 14 days before the move. Download your lead and cost history before then.
- Missed calls get charged. Google counts a missed call during your business hours as a valid lead if the caller stays on the line more than 20 seconds. Voicemail counts. With a phone menu, the 20 seconds start after the caller presses a key. Google uses the hours on your Google Business Profile, so if nobody answers after 5, don’t list 7.
- Credits are automatic. Google scores every lead and credits the ones it decides are low quality. It no longer credits leads for jobs you don’t do or areas you don’t serve, so keeping those settings tight is on you.
What Home Services PPC Costs
Most of the cost-per-lead numbers you’ll find online trace back to one study. LocaliQ analyzed 3,211 US home services search campaigns run by its customers on Google and Microsoft Ads between April 2024 and March 2025. Its figures are medians, and “conversion rate” is the share of clicks that became a lead.
| Trade | Cost per click | Conversion rate | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| All home services | $7.85 | 7.33% | $90.92 |
| AC installation and repair | $9.68 | 6.56% | $127.74 |
| Heating and furnaces | $9.30 | 7.48% | $129.02 |
| Plumbing | $10.49 | 7.63% | $129.02 |
| Roofing and gutters | $10.70 | 3.70% | $228.15 |
| Electricians | $12.18 | 9.08% | $93.69 |
| General construction and contractors | $5.31 | 2.61% | $165.67 |
Cost per lead rose for 69% of the home services businesses in that data, by an average of 10.51% over the year before. Electricians had the best conversion rate of these trades and some of the priciest clicks; our guide to SEO for electricians covers how they win the same searches without paying per click.
Why Your Numbers Won't Match The Benchmark
Other data sets land in very different places:
- Search can cost more than LocaliQ shows. SearchLight Digital, which sells call and revenue tracking to contractors, measured $183 per lead for non-branded plumbing search across 524 plumbing contractors from January to March 2026. That’s 42% above LocaliQ’s plumbing figure. SearchLight left out branded searches (people already looking for you by name), counted only contractors with their CRM (customer relationship management software) connected, and weighted by spend, so bigger accounts count more.
- LSA leads usually cost less per lead. SearchLight tracked 888 contractors in February 2026 and found a blended $53 per LSA lead: $39 for electrical, $51 for HVAC and $57 for plumbing. AdGenius, which pulled LSA data from several platforms, puts the typical June 2026 lead at $59 for HVAC and $71 for plumbing, and says the average rose from $53 in February to $62.56 in June.
- Roofing LSA numbers rest on tiny samples. SearchLight’s first-quarter 2026 roofing figure covers 10 contractors. Treat any single roofing LSA number with suspicion.
- The numbers move fast. LocaliQ’s own 2021 home services data put plumbing at $48.91 per lead and roofing at $101.49. That study counted accounts instead of campaigns, so it isn’t a clean comparison, but it shows how far these figures travel in a few years.
- A lead isn’t the same thing in both products. An LSA lead is a call, message or booking Google decides is valid. A Search “lead” is whatever the account was set up to count, which can include form fills, short calls and spam.
Use benchmarks to spot a campaign that’s way off. Don’t use them to set your budget. For how to set one, and what management should cost on top of ad spend, see how much Google Ads costs.
Cost per lead is the wrong number to manage. A $50 lead that books half the time costs you $100 a job. A $30 lead that books one time in ten costs you $300. SearchLight found 43.9% of LSA leads in its February 2026 data became booked jobs. Track cost per booked job by trade, and the "expensive" campaign is often the one paying for itself.
HVAC PPC: Plan Around Repairs, Replacements And The Weather
HVAC demand follows the weather. A heat wave or the first cold snap fills the phones, and in both seasons the same company is selling a quick repair call and a full system replacement worth many times more. In LocaliQ’s data, AC installation and repair ran $127.74 per lead and heating and furnaces $129.02.
- Split repair from replacement. Put “ac repair”, “furnace repair” and “no heat” searches in one campaign, and “ac replacement”, “new furnace cost” and “heat pump installation” in another. Replacement searches are worth more, so they get their own budget and their own landing pages.
- Let LSAs carry the urgent calls. No-heat and no-cool searches are where a badge, a star rating and a call button win.
- Move budgets before the weather turns. When the first 90-degree week or hard freeze is in the forecast, raise budgets and extend ad schedules ahead of it, not two days into it.
- Sell maintenance in the shoulder seasons. Tune-up and maintenance plan campaigns keep techs busy in spring and fall, when repair searches drop.
- Watch where the budget goes if you sell more than one trade. Google drops vertical-level target cost per lead when LSA accounts move into Google Ads. One campaign covering HVAC and plumbing can’t hold each trade to its own target, so check the lead mix every week.
Roofing PPC: The Most Expensive Leads In Home Services
Roofing had the highest cost per lead and the lowest conversion rate of the trades LocaliQ measured: $228.15 per lead, with 3.70% of clicks turning into leads. A roof is a big, rare purchase, and plenty of people searching “roofing” aren’t buying one this month.
- Separate repair, replacement and storm work. “Roof leak repair” is urgent. “Roof replacement cost” is research. “Hail damage roof inspection” spikes after a storm. Each needs its own ads and its own landing page.
- Be ready before the storm. Have storm ads written and paused, so you can switch them on for the affected ZIP codes the day after hail or high winds.
- Cut the junk hard. Roofing pulls searches from job seekers, DIYers and people pricing shingles. Negative keywords (words that stop your ad from showing) matter more here than in almost any trade.
- Answer the money questions. Replacement shoppers want a price range, financing, insurance claim help and warranty details. A landing page that covers those gives them a reason to call you instead of the next roofer.
- Track signed jobs, not estimates. With weeks between estimate and contract, import closed jobs back into Google Ads (offline conversion import) so its bidding learns which searches turn into roofs.
A Starter Negative Keyword List For Home Services
hiring
salary
careers
apprentice
school
training
course
certification
license exam
how to
diy
youtube
parts
supplies
wholesale
manual
Add these at the account level, then read your search terms report every week and add the new junk you find. Keep anything that matches work you actually sell.
Google Ads For Plumbers: Win The Emergency, Then The Big Job
Plumbing searches split between emergencies (“burst pipe”, “sewer backup”, “emergency plumber near me”) and planned work (“water heater replacement”, “repipe cost”, “tankless water heater installation”). LocaliQ put plumbing at $10.49 a click and $129.02 per lead.
- Run LSAs for the emergencies. Google runs extra background checks on plumbers, including the field workers who go into homes, and your profile lists the checks you passed. That matters to someone letting a stranger in at midnight.
- Answer every call, or pay for the ones you miss. Emergencies come at bad hours. Set your Business Profile hours to the hours someone actually picks up, or use an answering service.
- Make the phone the ad. On mobile, a call asset (your number on the ad) or a call-only ad sends people straight to your line. Only run emergency campaigns around the clock if someone answers around the clock.
- Give water heaters and repipes their own campaigns. They’re bigger tickets that people research for days. Send them to a page with a price range and the brands you install, not your homepage.
- Block the DIY searches. “How to unclog a drain” and “plumber salary” can cost you a click without ever becoming a call.
Our guide to SEO for plumbers covers the organic side of the same split.
Google Ads For Contractors: Fewer Leads, Bigger Jobs, Longer Waits
General contractors and remodelers had the lowest conversion rate in LocaliQ’s data, 2.61%, and a $165.67 cost per lead, even with the cheapest clicks at $5.31. People pricing a kitchen remodel or an addition click around for weeks before they call anyone.
- Pick the jobs you want. “Kitchen remodel”, “basement finishing”, “bathroom remodel” and “home addition contractor” are different buyers. One campaign bidding on “contractor” buys everyone, including people studying for a contractor license.
- Judge it on signed contracts over a quarter. A remodeler can get a handful of leads a month and still come out ahead on one signed job. Leads per week will mislead you.
- Show the work. Landing pages need project photos, a rough price range, your process and a realistic timeline. That’s what people comparing three contractors look for.
- Stay in front of the researchers. Remarketing (showing ads to people who already visited your site) keeps your name in front of homeowners during a long decision.
- Check LSA eligibility. General contractor, kitchen remodeling and bathroom remodeling are on Google’s list of LSA categories, but availability varies by market, so check yours before you plan around it.
Our guide to SEO for contractors covers how to win the research phase without paying for every click.
Which One Sounds Like Your Business?
Pick the closest match and we'll start the call there.
Build The Campaign Around The Phone
Most home services leads arrive by phone, and the phone is where most campaigns lose track of them.
- Track calls as conversions. Count calls from your ads and from your website, with a minimum call length so a 10-second wrong number doesn’t count as a lead.
- Send booked jobs back to Google. Import booked and completed jobs from your CRM (usually your field service software) into Google Ads. Without that, automated bidding chases whatever you count as a conversion, junk calls included. Tracking is check number one in our PPC audit checklist.
- Use Presence targeting. Google’s default location setting also shows ads to people who have only shown interest in your area. For a service-area business, we switch to “Presence”, so you pay for people who are actually there.
- Send each ad to a matching page. A “water heater replacement” ad should land on your water heater page, not your homepage. One page per service, with a tap-to-call number at the top. Our guide to PPC landing pages that convert covers what goes on that page.
- Schedule ads for when you answer. Run ads around your real hours, and keep your Business Profile hours honest, since that’s what Google uses to decide which missed LSA calls you pay for.
- Let people book. If you take online bookings, Google’s Book Online button can show on your Business Profile and in AI Mode. Our guide to the Book Online button covers how to get it.
Where PPC Stops And SEO Takes Over
Ads stop the moment you stop paying. That’s fine for emergency calls you want today. It gets expensive for the planned jobs people research for weeks.
Paid search and SEO (search engine optimization, the free results) cover different searches. LSAs and Search ads buy the urgent calls and the jobs you want more of right now. Your Google Business Profile and service pages win the map pack and the organic results, and they keep working when the budget pauses. Those same service pages make better landing pages for your ads, too.
Our post on running SEO and PPC together covers how the two split the work, and our home services SEO guide covers the organic side. If the map pack is the priority, start with local SEO.
Pay For Calls You Answer, Not Clicks You Can't Trace
PPC for home services comes down to three calls.
Use Local Services Ads for urgent work, and answer the phone, because Google charges for the calls you miss. Use Search ads for the specific jobs and towns you want more of, with negative keywords and a landing page for each. And judge both on booked jobs by trade, not on a benchmark someone else’s account produced.
Google changed the badge, the billing and the dashboard in the past year. The account that tracks booked jobs by trade can adjust to all of it. The one that only counts leads can’t tell what changed.
Our PPC team is based in Philadelphia and runs paid search for businesses across the US.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on your trade, your market and how many jobs you can take on. Start from the number of jobs you want each month, your close rate and what a lead costs in your market, then work backward. For LSAs, Google recommends a budget of at least 10 leads a week when you use its Maximize Leads bidding. A budget too small to buy a steady flow of leads won’t tell you much either way.
For most trades that qualify, yes, especially for urgent calls. You pay per lead, not per click, and the people calling picked your profile. Watch two things: missed calls during business hours get charged, and Google no longer credits leads for jobs or areas you don’t serve, so keep your service types and service area tight.
No. On October 20, 2025, Google replaced Google Guaranteed, Google Screened and License Verified by Google with one Google Verified badge and ended the money-back guarantee. Update any trucks, yard signs, websites or ads that still show the old badge.
LSAs charge per lead and match you to searches by trade and service area, after Google screens your business. Google Ads Search campaigns charge per click and match you to the keywords you choose. Since August 2026, Google has been moving LSA accounts into Google Ads as Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals, but they still work like LSAs: pay per lead, no keywords.
Big jobs, rare purchases and a lot of research. In LocaliQ’s April 2024 to March 2025 data, roofing and gutters had the highest cost per lead of any home services category at $228.15, with only 3.70% of clicks becoming leads. Tight negative keywords, separate storm and replacement campaigns, and pages that answer price and insurance questions are where we’d start.
If you need calls this month, ads get you there faster. If you want calls you don’t pay for one at a time, SEO builds that, and how long SEO takes depends on where your site starts. Most home services companies end up with both: ads for urgent calls and growth markets, SEO for the map pack and the planned jobs.
Ask who owns the Google Ads account if you part ways (it should be you), how they’ll report booked jobs and not just clicks, how often they review your search terms, and how they’ll handle your LSA account’s move into Google Ads. Be wary of anyone who won’t give you access to your own account.
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- Whether Local Services Ads, Search ads or both fit your trade and your market
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