Key takeaways
- The fee is the cheap part of a bad lead. The expensive part is the estimating time you spend before you learn the project was never real.
- Leads for job types or areas you do not serve are no longer credited, so your settings are the filter, not Google's credits.
- Ask five questions before you agree to bid: what, where, plans, start date and budget.
- Judge Local Services Ads on cost per qualified bid in the first weeks and cost per signed contract over a full building season.
Bad leads from Local Services Ads cost a contractor far more than the lead fee. The real cost is the site walk, the sub quotes and the evening of takeoffs spent on a project that was never going to sign. Most of them come from three settings and one missing habit: job types, service area, hours, and no screen before you agree to bid.
Why junk leads happen
Junk leads get through because the ads connect a caller to your category, job types and map, and know nothing about plans, land, financing or whether the work clears your minimum. Before you tune anything, confirm that a category fitting your work is offered where you build, because Google sets eligibility by category and location (Google's requirements).
A plumber turns a small call into a same-day ticket. A general contractor turns a lead into a bid, and a real bid on an addition, a new build or a build-out takes days of someone's time. That is why these poor fits hurt:
| Lead type | What the caller says | What it costs you | The setting that let it in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Handyman-size job | "Can you hang two doors and patch some drywall?" | A callback and a fee | Small-repair job types left on, no minimum stated anywhere |
| Single trade | "We only need the foundation poured." | A lead you hand to a sub | Trade job types added for reach |
| Idea, no plans | "We're thinking about building someday. What would it run?" | A site walk with nothing to price | Nothing in the settings; the screen catches it |
| Owner-builder | "We'll run it ourselves, we just need your license on the permit." | Your license on someone else's schedule | No statement of how you work |
| Trade or vendor | A framing crew looking for work, a lumber rep | Office time | Your ad is the easiest contractor number to find |
| Out of area | An addition 70 minutes past your last job | A season of daily drives, or a pass | ZIP codes added in a slow month |
Some callers feel like junk and are not: the family closing on a lot next spring, or the business owner whose new lease starts in six months. That is a future bid. Give it a follow-up date in your CRM instead of a junk label.
Sorting a bad lead
What kind of bad lead was it?
- Invalid Not charged Google assesses invalid leads automatically
- Wrong job or area You still pay Tighten job types and service area
- Real but missed Answer faster List only hours you can answer
Cutting them
- Tag 60 days of leads. Label each recording and message with the rows above, plus qualified bid and good fit lost. Whichever label is largest points to the first setting to change.
- Confirm where your account lives. Local Services Ads is moving into Google Ads as Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals, one group of categories at a time, with service-area businesses without storefronts due after the first home-service groups (the transition notes). Once it moves, settings and lead replies sit in Google Ads and manual bidding ends.
- Switch off what you will not bid. If you do not take repairs, punch-list work or single-trade jobs, those job types should be off. Keep the addition, new construction and build-out work you want more of.
- Draw the map around a season of drives. Your superintendent drives to an addition every working day for months. A project an hour away adds two hours of windshield time to each of those days. Remove the ZIP codes you would not staff all season.
- Run ads when a screener answers. Planned projects can wait until morning. Run the ads only while someone who can ask the step 7 questions is at the phone. Outside those hours, let calls reach a voicemail that promises a callback before 9 a.m.
- Say how you work. On your profile and site, state the project types you take, whether you bid from an architect's plans or offer design-build, and whether you work with owner-builders.
- Screen before you bid. Ask what they are building, where the property is and who owns it, whether plans or a designer exist, when they want to break ground, and what budget range they have set and how it is funded. Book the site walk only when the answers fit.
- Log every lead with its source. Create it in Buildertrend, JobTread or Procore with the channel attached, so a contract signed months later still traces back to the first call.
Credits and disputes
Credits catch spam, not poor fits. Google now reviews leads on its own and does not charge for ones it judges invalid, and it no longer credits leads for "job type not serviced" or "geo not serviced" (lead credits, how leads work).
So the door-hanging call you let in through a job type is yours to pay for. So is the honest caller with half the budget an addition needs: to Google, that is a valid lead. Your protection is upstream, in the job types, the map and the screen. Keep notes on anything that looks like spam, because support will ask for them.
When to shift budget
Move money away only after the clean-up has run through a full bidding cycle and Local Services Ads still costs more per signed contract than your other channels. A general contractor's bid cycle runs for months, so read cost per qualified bid in the first six to eight weeks and cost per signed contract over the building season.
These are the signs it is time:
- Handyman and single-trade calls keep arriving after those job types are switched off.
- Search ads on terms like "home addition contractor" bring qualified bids for less money. Work it out with the cost per lead guide.
- Most of the work you want is commercial. Local Services Ads is built around a homeowner calling a local pro; build-outs usually come through brokers, property managers, architects and search ads.
Before your account moves into Google Ads, download the lead history you have rated, so a season of outcomes is not lost in the switch. The Local Services Ads guide for contractors covers what the move changes.
How VETS Growth Marketing helps
We label your recent leads, turn off the job types and ZIP codes letting the wrong projects through, write the screening script for your office, and log every lead in your CRM so a signed contract can be traced to the call that started it. The ads account and CRM stay in your name. The clean-up is a short project with a finish date, and the report that follows counts qualified bids and signed work, not lead volume. Bring a month of LSA call recordings to a growth consultation and we will point to the settings that are eating your estimating time.
Sources
- About automated Local Services Ads lead credits, Google Local Services Help
- How leads work, Google Local Services Help
- Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals, Google Ads Help
- Local Services Ads requirements, Google Advertising Policies Help