Google Ads for Contractors

Google Ads for contractors is a way to show up when someone searches a job you can start, in a place you will drive, and then answer the phone with the same offer. It is not a substitute for a license, a crew, or a page that explains the work. The management service is Google Ads. The beginner map of the auction is the small business guide. This article is the contractor version: what to split, what to refuse, and what not to promise.

SEO for contractors is the slower path to the same jobs. Ads rent the click while that work is early. They do not fix a site that lists trades you dropped. Run them against pages that are true. The industry overview is contractors.

Split the work the way the crew is split

A general contractor often sells three kinds of demand that should not share a budget.

• Repair and emergency language: a leak, a broken window, a door that will not close. The caller is deciding today.
• Replacement: a roof, a water heater, a deck that is already scheduled in their mind. They will compare.
• Remodel: a kitchen, a bathroom, an addition. The search is longer, the lead is a conversation, and many of them are not ready to hire.

If one campaign contains all three, you cannot turn off remodels when the crew is buried in repairs. You also cannot tell whether the repair clicks were the ones that paid for themselves. Separate campaigns, or at least separate ad groups with separate landing pages, for the jobs you actually sell. If you do not remodel kitchens, do not bid on kitchen words because the search volume looks large. Volume you must decline is a bill.

Plumbing-only and HVAC-only companies already have tighter guides: Google Ads for plumbers and HVAC Google Ads. Use those if that is the whole company. Use this one if you pull permits across several trades or you sell the project rather than the single repair. Do not copy the emergency plumbing structure onto a design-build firm. The phone will hate you for it.

Keywords you refuse

Negative keywords are the adult part of the account. Add them before you celebrate the first lead.

• Jobs you do not do: "DIY," "how to," "jobs," "salary," "wholesale," "parts only," if you are not a parts counter.
• Trades you will not take this season: roofing, if the crew is booked through hail season and you do not want the calls.
• Places you will not drive. A Fort Worth contractor who will not work in Dallas should say so in the campaign locations and in the negatives, not only on the website. Indianapolis is a different market from its northern suburbs. If you will not go to Carmel, do not buy Carmel.

"Free," "cheap," and "cost" need a decision, not a reflex. Some contractors want the cost question because it starts an estimate. Some lose money on it. Decide from your last twenty jobs, not from a default list you found in a forum. Write the decision down so the next person who touches the account does not undo it.

Competitors' names are a legal and a practical question. Bidding on another company's name can drag you into a trademark dispute and into a click from someone who wanted them. If you do it, the ad must not imply you are them. If you do not, add the names you keep seeing in the search terms report so you stop paying for their navigational searches.

Read the search terms report every week at the start. The waste is visible there. A query for a job you did not know you were buying is a negative or a new ad group. It is not a reason to "let the algorithm learn" while it spends the repair budget on careers pages.

Location settings are a drive-time decision

Google's help page on targeting geographic locations says location targeting is Google's best effort, based on settings, devices, and behavior, and that 100 percent accuracy is not guaranteed. It describes broad targeting, "Presence or interest," which can include people who are not in the place but have shown interest in it, and "Presence," which is the setting to consider when you only want people in or regularly in the locations. A contractor who works a real map usually wants presence. Someone researching your city from another state is a weak click for a leak and a possible click for a remodel they will not visit. Check the locations report. Do not trust a single setting to be perfect, because Google says it is not.

Radius targeting has a floor: Google says it does not allow a radius under 1 kilometer, and that a very small target may show ads only intermittently or not at all. A radius that covers a county you will not enter is the opposite problem. Draw the radius, then exclude the cities on the far side of the line you will not cross. City targeting plus exclusions is often clearer than a circle that looks tidy and drives badly.

Language and location should match the ads. If you are not prepared to take the call in another language, do not target that language because the interface offered it.

The ad, the page, and the phone are one sentence

Each ad group needs a page that repeats the job. A roof ad lands on the roof page. A bathroom ad lands on the bathroom page. The homepage is the right landing page only when the company truly has one offer. The page needs the area, the license if you are required to show it, and a phone number that reaches a person during the hours the ad runs.

Call assets and call-only ads are useful when someone will pick up. They are expensive when they run at 8 p.m. into voicemail. If an AI receptionist answers, it has to know the trades and the cities, and it has to transfer the jobs you marked urgent. It must not price a remodel on the call. The contractor receptionist page is that scope. A reminder or a form follow-up is a later workflow, described in appointment reminder automation, and it should not invent a site visit that was never booked.

Do not write a result you cannot stand behind. "Best contractor in the city" is a slogan a competitor and a regulator can both dislike. "Licensed, and we pull the permit when the job requires one" is a sentence you can prove. Before-and-after photos need the client's permission and need to be your jobs. A stock kitchen is a false ad.

Google's misrepresentation policies are the floor, not the strategy. If the ad says you are available today and the crew is two weeks out, fix the ad. Seasonal capacity belongs in the campaign calendar. Hail week, a freeze, and a permit backlog are reasons to lower a budget or change the sentence, not reasons to keep buying a promise you will break.

Local Services Ads are a different product

Local Services Ads versus search ads is the comparison. Local Services Ads, where Google offers them for your trade and your city, come with screening and a different way of paying for a lead. They are not "the Google Ads campaign, but green." A contractor can qualify for one and still want search ads for remodels that the other product does not cover. Budget them as separate lines so a bad week in one does not get explained as a mystery in the other.

If you are not eligible, do not let a vendor imply you are one checkbox away. Eligibility is Google's decision. Your decision is whether the search auction, for the jobs you can staff, is worth a defined spend.

Money: the fee, the spend, and the lead you did not want

Three numbers get conflated.

• Ad spend is the money paid to Google for clicks or, in other products, for leads. It is not the agency fee.
• The management fee is what you pay someone to structure the account, read the queries, and change what is not working. Public discussion of that fee is in the pricing guide and in how agency fees get explained.
• A cost per lead is a result you measure after the fact. It is not a number a responsible proposal guarantees. The lead still has to be a job you can do, in a place you will go.

The CodeHunterz Growth plan starts at $2,400 per month after a 20% launch offer (regular starting price $3,000 per month). Ad spend is separate. Limited-time launch offer, final quote after free strategy call. A contractor with one trade and one city is a different scope from a design-build firm with several offers. The quote should name which.

Track calls in a way you will still understand in a month. A spreadsheet with the date, the job type, the city, and whether you bid is enough to start. A dashboard that hides those four facts behind a "conversion" is not. Compare the calls with the search terms. If the calls are for jobs you negated, the negatives did not ship. If the calls are for jobs you want and the crew cannot start them, the budget is ahead of capacity. Lower it. Buying leads you will not call back is how the next account review goes badly.

What to ignore in the first month

Ignore vanity metrics that are not calls, form submits from real people, and booked estimates. Ignore a recommendation to raise the budget because last week spent fully. Full spend means the auction took the money. It does not mean the jobs were good. Ignore a stack of town pages built only to host ads. One honest service page beats a doorway URL with the city in the title and the same photograph.

Ignore anyone who promises a cost per lead before they have seen your trades, your map, and your capacity. The auction clears at whatever other contractors are willing to pay this month. Hail, a housing cycle, and a competitor's new budget move that number. Your defense is the split, the negatives, the location setting, and a person who answers.

Set the campaigns to the jobs you can start in the next few weeks. Point them at pages that describe those jobs. Read the queries. Then decide whether the next dollar belongs in the same campaign, in a different trade, or back in the crew. That is the whole practice. It does not require a slogan, and it does not require a fake office in a second city.