Why Your Google Ads Aren't Converting

The average home service contractor wastes 76% of their Google Ads budget on clicks that never become a lead. You’re paying $25-40 per click, watching the budget drain, and the phone isn’t ringing. Your ads show up. People click. Then nothing.

Google Ads follows a funnel: impressions lead to clicks, clicks lead to landing page visits, and landing page visits lead to conversions. Your money is leaking at one or more of these stages, and pinpointing which stage is broken determines the fix.

This isn’t about preventing mistakes before you start — we covered that in our guide on Google Ads mistakes home service companies make. This is for contractors already spending money and seeing no return.

Stage 1: Your ads aren’t getting impressions

If your ads aren’t showing up, they can’t generate clicks or leads. Low impression share is the first place to check.

Impression share below 30% means Google is choosing not to display your ads for the majority of relevant searches. Two things cause this: budget constraints and low Ad Rank.

Budget-limited impression share means your daily budget runs out before the day ends. If you set a $50/day budget in a market where CPCs average $25-30, you’re getting 2 clicks and then your ads disappear until tomorrow. Your competitors with larger budgets capture every remaining search.

Ad Rank is calculated from your bid, Quality Score, and expected impact of ad extensions. A low Quality Score (below 5) means Google considers your ads less relevant, and you need to bid significantly higher to win the same placement.

How to fix low impressions

Narrow your geographic targeting. If you’re targeting a 50-mile radius, tighten it to 20 miles around your highest-value service areas. Fewer eligible searches means your budget stretches further, and you show up more often for the searches that matter.

Add all available ad extensions: call extensions, location extensions, sitelinks, and callout extensions. Ads with 4+ extensions see 20-30% higher click-through rates and earn higher Ad Rank without increasing your bid.

Review your keyword match types. Broad match keywords trigger your ads for loosely related searches, burning budget on irrelevant impressions. Switch to phrase match and exact match to focus on searches closely aligned with your services. Our Google Ads keyword guide for home services details exactly how to structure your keyword strategy.

Stage 2: You’re getting impressions but not clicks

A low click-through rate (CTR) means people see your ad and scroll past it. The average CTR for home service Google Ads is 5.3%. If yours is below 3%, your ad copy is the problem.

Generic ad headlines kill CTR. “Professional Plumbing Services” competes against every other plumber running the same lifeless copy. Specific headlines outperform generic ones by 28%. “Same-Day Drain Cleaning — $49 Clear Any Drain” gives the searcher a reason to click.

What drives higher CTR

Include a specific offer or differentiator in your headline. “$0 Diagnostic Fee,” “Licensed and Insured Since 2008,” or “4.9 Stars — 300+ Reviews” all give the searcher a reason to choose your ad over the three others on the page.

Use the keyword in your headline. If someone searches “emergency AC repair,” your headline should contain those exact words. Google bolds matching terms in ad copy, which draws the eye and signals relevance.

Add a sense of urgency without being dishonest. “Book Today — Same-Week Installation” or “Limited Availability This Week” works. “LAST CHANCE!!!” does not.

Test at least 3 ad variations per ad group. Google’s responsive search ads let you enter up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Use all available slots. After 2-3 weeks, check which combinations perform best and pause the underperformers.

Stage 3: You’re getting clicks but nobody converts

This is where most contractor ad budgets die. Clicks cost money. Conversions generate revenue. The gap between the two is where 76% of your budget disappears.

The average conversion rate for home service landing pages is 7.33%. But that average hides enormous variation. Well-optimized dedicated landing pages convert at 10-15%. Homepages convert at 2.4%. The difference between those two numbers represents thousands of dollars in wasted spend every month.

Problem: You’re sending traffic to your homepage

Sending paid traffic to your homepage drops conversion rates by 63% compared to a dedicated landing page. Your homepage tries to serve every visitor — new customers, existing customers, job seekers, vendors. A paid click from someone searching “water heater installation” needs to land on a page exclusively about water heater installation.

A dedicated landing page matches the searcher’s intent. It has one service focus, one offer, and one call-to-action. No navigation menu to distract. No links to your blog. No “About Us” section pulling attention away from the conversion. For more on this problem, read our deep dive into why landing pages don’t convert.

A contractor on Reddit shared that switching from his homepage to a dedicated landing page for “drain cleaning” doubled his conversion rate from 3.2% to 7.8% overnight. The landing page had the same content as a section of his homepage — the only difference was removing the navigation menu, sidebar, and footer links that gave visitors 47 other places to click.

Problem: Message mismatch between ad and landing page

Message match increases conversion rates by up to 212%. If your ad says “$50 Off Any Repair” and your landing page says nothing about a discount, the visitor feels misled and bounces.

Every promise in your ad needs to appear prominently on the landing page. Same offer. Same language. Same service. If your ad targets “emergency plumber,” your landing page headline should reference emergency plumbing service, not “Full-Service Residential Plumbing.”

Problem: Your landing page is too slow

A 1-second delay in page load time reduces conversions by 7%. A landing page that takes 6 seconds to load has already lost 30-40% of visitors before they see a single word.

Mobile load time matters most. 70% of home service ad clicks come from mobile devices. If your landing page scores below 50 on Google PageSpeed Insights for mobile, you’re burning ad budget on visitors who never see your page.

Strip heavy images, remove unnecessary scripts, and use a fast hosting provider. A landing page should load in under 2.5 seconds on a mobile connection.

Problem: No clear or compelling call-to-action

Your landing page has one job: get the visitor to call or fill out a form. If that action isn’t obvious within 5 seconds of the page loading, you’re losing conversions.

Landing pages with a single CTA convert 266% better than pages with multiple competing actions. “Get Your Free Estimate,” “Call Now for Same-Day Service,” or “Schedule Your Inspection” — pick one and make it impossible to miss.

Place the CTA above the fold with a contrasting color button. Repeat it at least twice more as the visitor scrolls. Include a clickable phone number that’s visible without scrolling on mobile.

Stage 4: You’re getting conversions but they’re junk

Conversions that don’t turn into booked jobs aren’t real conversions. If your phone rings but the callers want services you don’t offer, or they’re from 50 miles outside your service area, your targeting is the problem.

Negative keywords are non-negotiable

Contractors without negative keyword lists waste an average of 41% of their budget on irrelevant searches. Without negative keywords, your “plumber” ad shows up for “plumber salary,” “plumber apprenticeship,” “plumber snake rental,” and dozens of other searches from people who will never hire you.

Pull your Search Terms Report weekly. This shows the actual queries that triggered your ads. You’ll find searches you never intended to target. Add those as negative keywords immediately.

One HVAC contractor on ContractorTalk pulled his Search Terms Report for the first time after 6 months of running ads and found he’d paid for 340+ clicks from people searching “HVAC technician jobs,” “HVAC certification courses,” and “how to fix AC yourself.” Total wasted spend: approximately $4,200. He added 85 negative keywords in one session and his cost per lead dropped 38% in the following month.

Common negative keywords every contractor should add from day one: “jobs,” “salary,” “career,” “apprentice,” “DIY,” “how to,” “free,” “cheap,” and “near me” (if you’re targeting specific cities rather than radius targeting). Build this list aggressively in the first 30 days.

Geographic targeting gaps

If you serve a 15-mile radius but your ads target a 30-mile radius, half your leads come from homeowners you can’t profitably serve. Tighten your geographic targeting to match your actual service area.

Princeton Air Conditioning in New Jersey narrowed their Google Ads targeting from a 30-mile radius to specific zip codes within 15 miles. Their cost per lead dropped from $180 to $65 and their close rate on ad-generated leads improved from 18% to 31%. The farther-away leads had been requesting estimates but choosing local competitors for the actual work.

Use “Presence” targeting, not “Presence or Interest.” The default Google setting shows your ads to people “in or interested in” your target area, which includes someone in another state researching your city. Switch to “Presence” only to limit ads to people physically located in your service territory.

The conversion tracking gap

34% of home service businesses running Google Ads have no conversion tracking installed. They’re spending money with no idea whether it’s working.

Without conversion tracking, Google can’t optimize your campaigns. Smart Bidding strategies like Target CPA and Maximize Conversions need conversion data to function. Running these strategies without tracking is like driving with a blindfold — Google is guessing, and guessing is expensive.

On the Owned and Operated podcast, Jack Carr (Rapid HVAC) described running Google Ads for 4 months before realizing his conversion tracking was only counting form submissions, not phone calls. Since 73% of his leads came by phone, his campaign data showed a $340 cost per lead when the real number was closer to $95. Google’s algorithm was optimizing for form fills instead of the phone calls that actually generated revenue.

Set up conversion tracking for phone calls (both from the ad and from your website), form submissions, and any chat or booking widget interactions. Every lead source needs to be tracked. Read our guide on tracking PPC leads that don’t convert for the full setup.

The Quality Score multiplier

A Quality Score of 7+ reduces your CPC by up to 50%. A Quality Score of 4 or below inflates your CPC by 25-64%. Two contractors bidding on “AC repair” in the same city can pay wildly different amounts per click based solely on Quality Score.

Quality Score is built from three components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. All three must be strong.

Improving Quality Score from 5 to 8 on a keyword with a $30 base CPC drops your actual CPC to roughly $19. Over 500 clicks per month, that’s $5,500 in savings. Over a year, $66,000. Same keywords, same market, dramatically different costs.

A plumber posting on r/PPC described spending $42 per click on “emergency plumber” with a Quality Score of 3. After restructuring his campaign into tighter ad groups, writing ad copy that matched his landing page headlines, and improving his landing page speed, his Quality Score climbed to 8. His CPC dropped to $18 — saving over $12,000 per month on the same click volume.

The fastest Quality Score improvements come from tighter ad group structure. Instead of one ad group with 50 keywords, create 5-10 ad groups with 5-8 tightly related keywords each. Write ad copy specific to each group. Point each group to a landing page specific to that service.

Diagnosing your specific problem

Open your Google Ads dashboard and check these metrics in order.

Impression share below 30%? Your budget or Ad Rank is too low. Narrow targeting or improve Quality Score.

CTR below 3%? Your ad copy isn’t compelling. Rewrite headlines with specific offers and keyword matching.

Conversion rate below 5%? Your landing page is the bottleneck. Build dedicated pages, improve speed, and strengthen CTAs.

Cost per conversion above your target? Check negative keywords, geographic targeting, and Quality Score.

Leads not turning into jobs? Check lead quality, response time, and follow-up process. Our guide on lowering cost per lead on Google Ads covers the optimization steps in detail.

Most contractors have problems at multiple stages simultaneously. A campaign with mediocre ad copy, broad match keywords, and homepage-targeted traffic stacks problems that multiply waste at every step.

Fix the funnel from the bottom up. Start with your landing page and conversion tracking. Then improve ad relevance. Then refine targeting. Each fix compounds with the others, and a campaign that wastes 76% of budget can be tightened to waste 30% or less with systematic optimization.

The goal isn’t perfection. Some waste is inherent in paid advertising. But the difference between a 3% conversion rate and an 8% conversion rate on a $3,000/month budget is the difference between 3 leads and 8 leads from the same spend. In a business where each job is worth $500-15,000, those extra 5 leads per month change everything.