How to Track PPC Leads That Don't Convert for Home Service Businesses

You paid for 100 clicks last month. 4 of them became leads. Google charged you for all 100.

Google knows exactly who clicked. They tracked every one of those visitors across the web, matched them to a profile, and served your ad at the right moment. That’s how they justify charging $15-50 per click in competitive home service markets.

But here’s what Google won’t share with you: the identity of the 96 people who clicked, browsed your AC repair page, and left without calling. You paid for that traffic. Google knows who they are. You don’t.

Those weren’t random clicks. Many of them needed a plumber or HVAC tech. They had real intent—enough to click on an ad.

They just didn’t convert on their first visit. And without knowing who they were, you have no way to follow up, retarget effectively, or understand why they left.

The visibility gap you’re paying for

Google Ads shows you three numbers: clicks, conversions, and cost.

If someone clicks your ad and then calls your tracking number or fills out your contact form, you see a conversion. If they don’t, you see nothing—just a charge on your account.

What you can’t see:

• The property manager who browsed your commercial HVAC page for 4 minutes before leaving
• The homeowner who clicked Monday, came back Thursday, and finally called Friday
• The 30 people who compared you to competitors and chose someone else
• The customers who booked a job 60 days after their first click (outside your conversion window)

Google’s algorithm learns from conversions it can see. If it only sees form fills, it chases more form fills.

If it can’t see that a $150 lead turned into a $12,000 HVAC replacement job, it treats that lead the same as the $30 lead that went nowhere.

You end up paying for clicks that look good in the dashboard but don’t put money in your bank account.

The cost per lead trap

Most contractors track cost per lead. It’s the default metric in every Google Ads dashboard.

The problem is that cost per lead tells you almost nothing about profitability.

Consider two leads:

• Lead A costs $30, never books, wastes 15 minutes of your CSR’s time
• Lead B costs $150, books a $8,000 water heater replacement, joins your maintenance plan, leaves a 5-star review

Lead A looks better in your Google Ads account. Lead B is the one paying your bills.

When you only track cost per lead, you make decisions based on incomplete data.

You might pause the keywords driving Lead B because they look expensive. Meanwhile, you double down on the cheap keywords that never result in booked jobs.

The metric you should track is cost per booked job. That requires connecting your ad data to what happens after the phone call—which most contractors never set up.

When tracking breaks, everything breaks

One contractor’s Google Ads campaign went from 25 leads a day to near zero in two weeks. The client was ready to fire their agency.

Turns out the IT team had removed call tracking numbers from the website during a redesign. Without those numbers, CallRail stopped reporting phone calls as conversions.

Google’s algorithm saw zero conversions and assumed the campaigns were failing. It stopped serving ads to qualified searchers.

The ads were fine. Broken tracking made the whole system look like it had failed.

The fix took an hour: restore the tracking numbers, temporarily raise the target CPA to help the algorithm relearn.

Within two weeks the campaign was back to 25 leads a day.

Sudden lead drops usually point to tracking problems, not ad problems.

How to track non-converting clicks

Tracking the 96% who don’t convert requires tools beyond what Google Ads provides out of the box.

Call tracking with dynamic number insertion

Call tracking software like CallRail assigns unique phone numbers to each visitor based on where they came from. When someone clicks a Google Ad and calls, you know exactly which keyword and campaign drove that call.

Set the minimum call duration to 60 seconds or longer. Anything shorter is usually a hang-up or wrong number, and you don’t want those polluting your conversion data.

The setup takes about an hour: install a JavaScript snippet, create a number pool, and connect to Google Ads.

Once it’s running, phone calls appear in your ad account as conversions with full attribution.

Offline conversion tracking

Phone calls and form fills are only the beginning of a sale. The homeowner still needs to book an appointment, and you still need to close the job.

Offline conversion tracking lets you feed that data back into Google Ads. When a lead from your Google Ads campaign becomes a paying customer in ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro, that conversion gets imported into your ad account.

The process requires four steps:

1. Enable auto-tagging in Google Ads (this adds a unique click ID to every URL)
2. Capture that click ID when someone fills out a form or calls
3. Store the click ID in your CRM alongside the lead
4. When the lead becomes a customer, upload the conversion back to Google Ads

The click ID links the original ad click to the eventual sale, even if it happens 60 days later.

CallRail and ServiceTitan have a native integration that handles most of this automatically. If you’re using other tools, Zapier can connect your CRM to Google Ads for automated uploads.

Visitor identification software

Call tracking shows you who called. Offline conversions show you who became a customer.

But what about the people who clicked your ad, browsed your website, and left without doing anything?

Visitor identification tools like RB2B, Warmly, and Visitor Queue can identify a portion of anonymous traffic. They match IP addresses and device data to business records and consumer databases, giving you company names or sometimes individual contact information.

These tools work better for B2B. But they can still flag commercial accounts visiting your site—property managers, facility directors, restaurant owners who need HVAC work.

If you’re running PPC to commercial customers, visitor identification can surface leads that would otherwise disappear.

Retargeting pixels

You can’t identify everyone who visits your site. But you can show them ads after they leave.

Install the Facebook Pixel and Google Ads remarketing tag on your website. When someone clicks your PPC ad but doesn’t convert, they get added to a retargeting audience. You can then show them display ads, Facebook ads, or YouTube ads reminding them to come back.

Retargeting works because most people don’t convert on their first visit. They’re comparing options, checking reviews, talking to their spouse.

A well-timed retargeting ad keeps you top of mind when they’re ready to book.

The cost is low—typically $300-500/month in ad spend for a local service area—and the conversion rates are higher than cold traffic because these people already know who you are.

The attribution model problem

Google Ads defaults to “last click” attribution. This means if someone clicks three different ads before converting, all the credit goes to the final click.

That model creates problems for home services.

Imagine a homeowner who:

1. Sees your YouTube ad in January
2. Clicks a Google search ad in February but doesn’t convert
3. Searches your company name in March and books

Under last-click attribution, the March search gets 100% of the credit. The YouTube ad and the February search ad get nothing.

But without those earlier touches, the March conversion might never have happened.

Switch to data-driven attribution, which Google now recommends as the default. This model uses machine learning to assign credit across the full journey based on which touchpoints actually influenced conversions.

You can also extend your conversion window. The default is 30 days, but high-ticket jobs like HVAC replacements often have longer decision cycles. Set your window to 60 or 90 days so Google captures conversions that happen weeks after the first click.

What to track instead of cost per lead

If cost per lead is the wrong metric, what should you track?

Cost per booked job. This is your ad spend divided by the number of appointments that actually got scheduled. It accounts for leads that ghost you, tire-kickers, and people outside your service area.

Booking rate. What percentage of leads become appointments? If you’re getting 50 leads but only booking 10, your booking rate is 20%. Tracking this separately from cost per lead helps you diagnose whether the problem is lead quality or sales process.

Revenue per lead. Total revenue generated divided by total leads. This weights high-value jobs appropriately. A lead that becomes a $15,000 install is worth more than a lead that becomes a $89 service call, even if both count as one conversion.

Return on ad spend (ROAS). Revenue generated divided by ad spend. If you spend $5,000 and generate $50,000 in jobs, your ROAS is 10x. This is the metric that actually connects your marketing to your bank account.

These metrics require connecting your ad data to your job management software. It takes work to set up, but once it’s running, you’re making decisions based on revenue instead of guesses.

Common tracking mistakes

Tracking too many conversion actions. Stick to 2-3 primary conversions: phone calls, form submissions, and booked jobs. Don’t count page views, PDF downloads, or other micro-conversions. They clutter your data and confuse the algorithm.

Not filtering spam calls. If you count every call as a conversion, you’re including wrong numbers, robocalls, and 10-second hang-ups. Set a minimum duration of 60-90 seconds.

Geographic leakage. If your ads target a 50-mile radius but your tracking shows leads from 200 miles away, you’re paying for clicks you can’t serve. Tighten your targeting to the areas you actually work. Google’s data suggests 10% of ad budgets can be lost to invalid traffic and geographic leakage.

No conversion values. Tell Google that a signed $8,000 contract is worth more than a quote request. When you assign values to conversions, Smart Bidding pursues revenue instead of volume.

Ignoring assisted conversions. Some keywords help drive conversions without being the final click. Check your attribution reports to see which terms assist the buying process. Don’t pause a keyword just because it doesn’t get last-click credit.

Start with what you can control

You don’t need to implement everything at once.

Week one: Install call tracking with dynamic number insertion. Make sure every phone call from a Google Ads click gets recorded as a conversion with full keyword attribution.

Week two: Set up your conversion window to 90 days. Switch to data-driven attribution. Add conversion values based on your average job size.

Week three: Install retargeting pixels for Facebook and Google. Create audiences of people who visited your site but didn’t convert. Start a basic retargeting campaign.

Week four: Connect your CRM to Google Ads for offline conversion tracking. If you use ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro, check if there’s a native integration. If not, set up Zapier to upload conversions when jobs close.

Each step gives you more visibility into what happens after the click. And more visibility means better decisions about where to spend your next dollar.

Where to go next

Tracking non-converting clicks is only part of the puzzle. Good marketing measurement connects what you spend to what you earn, but it only works if you’re also capturing the leads that do show interest.

To understand why those clicks don’t convert in the first place, read about why website visitors don’t fill out forms. To make sure you’re capturing the leads that do convert, learn about capturing lost leads. If speed is killing your conversions, review why responding in 5 minutes makes you 21x more likely to win the job. And for a step-by-step guide, see how to track lead sources.

Pipeline explains the full approach to measuring intent and lead capture in its methodology documentation.