Why are my Google Ads clicks so expensive?

Your Google Ads clicks are expensive because the price is set by an auction, and in home services many companies bid for the same small pool of searches from people ready to hire. How well your ad and page match the search, how loosely your keywords are matched, and what your bidding setting is allowed to pay all move the price from there. Whether a click is too expensive is a different question, and it depends on what a booked job is worth to you.

The auction sets the price

In broad terms you pay what it takes to stay ahead of the advertiser below you, so the cost follows the competition. A search such as “emergency plumber near me” comes from someone about to hire, and one job can be worth a lot. Every plumbing company in the area knows that, and so do the franchises and lead sellers bidding on the same words. The more a job is worth and the more companies want it, the higher the click price goes.

Ad quality changes what you pay

Google ranks ads on more than the bid. It also judges how relevant the ad is to the search and how useful the page behind it is, and it has said that better quality can mean a lower price for the same position. An ad group that lumps AC repair, furnace installs and duct cleaning together and sends every click to the home page will generally pay more than a tight group per service with its own landing page. Google shows a Quality Score for each keyword as a rough guide. I use it as a hint about where to look, not as a target.

Settings that raise the bill quietly

• Loose keyword matching, which lets Google show the ad for searches only distantly related to the keyword you chose.
• No negative keywords, so you pay for job seekers, do-it-yourself questions and people looking for a competitor.
• Automated bidding with no ceiling. A strategy told to get as many conversions as it can will pay what the clicks cost unless you give it a limit or a target.
• Location targeting wider than your trucks travel.
• Bad conversion data. If the account counts every call as a success, wrong numbers included, the bidding goes looking for more of the same.

Expensive compared with what

A click price means little until it’s set against what the clicks produce. I won’t give a figure for what a click should cost, because it differs by trade, city and season, and any number would be wrong for someone. The sum uses your own figures:

1. How many clicks does it take to get one real call?
2. How many real calls does it take to book one job?
3. Multiply the two, then multiply by the click price. That’s the cost of a booked job.
4. Compare it with what the job earns, including repeat work.

By that sum, a costly click on a search for a full system replacement can be a good buy, and a cheap click on a vague search can be a waste. Working it out needs call tracking that ties calls back to the keyword.

What I’d look at first

I’d start with the search terms report, which lists what people typed before they clicked. It shows whether the money is going to the searches you meant to buy. Then come the match types, the bidding setting and the landing pages, changed one at a time and measured after each. That’s the routine work of managing search ads.

If the price for a service stays above what the job can bear, I’d say so and move that budget elsewhere. Sometimes, though, the honest finding is that the clicks are priced fairly and a competitor can afford more, because they book more of their calls or earn more per job. Then the fix is in the office and not in the account.