What Local Services Ads Really Cost per Booked Job

A plumber who pays $50 for a call has not paid $50 for a job, and the gap between the two is the subject of this page. We wrote it for the owner who has been quoted a price per lead and wants to know what that means per booked job. The two products people compare it with are covered in Google Ads or Local Services Ads for a Plumber or HVAC Company.

How Local Services Ads charge

Local Services Ads sit at the very top of the results page, above the other ads. You pay when a customer gets in touch, not when someone clicks, and there is no keyword bidding.

Google’s own words Google calls them “pay-per-lead listings for verified local service providers”.

What counts as a chargeable lead is defined on Google’s help page:

• You answer a call, or you call the customer back and speak with them.
• You miss a call during business hours and the caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds.
• You receive a text message, an email or a voicemail from the customer.
• You receive a booking request (United States and Canada).

Google filters out spam and duplicate contacts, and each lead is first assessed when the customer makes contact. Three more rules change the arithmetic:

• Price varies. The price of a lead depends on location, job type, lead type and bidding mode, and message leads are typically priced lower than phone leads, though not always.
• The 15-day rule. After a lead is charged, follow-up calls or messages from the same phone number or email within 15 days are not charged again; after 15 days of silence, a new contact is a new lead⁵.
• Budgets. You set an average weekly budget. You can spend more than that in a given week but not more than the monthly maximum, which is the weekly budget times the average number of weeks in a month, and once you reach it the ad stops showing for the rest of the month.

The badge: Guaranteed, Screened, and what Google calls it now

Older articles, and some vendors, still describe separate badges: Google Guaranteed, which signalled a money-back guarantee, and Google Screened. Google’s help page now describes a single badge for all advertisers, the Google Verified badge. Advertisers who had completed verification received it automatically, and new advertisers must complete the Local Services screening and verification process to get it. Google says ad rankings are not affected by the change, and that it is ending the Money Back Guarantee tied to the old badge; customers could still ask for reimbursement for services booked through Local Services Ads before December 7, 2025⁶.

The vendors have not all caught up. Housecall Pro’s May 2026 guide still says a business earns “a Google Verified or Google Screened badge”, and a Google business page from August 2025 lists the Guarantee, Screened and License Verified badges. If a salesperson sells you the guarantee as a feature, ask for Google’s page that says so; Google’s page, as of October 2026, says it is ending.

The screening steps

Screening is the cost of entry, and most of it is paperwork you can gather in advance. Google’s page lists these steps:

1. Verify the business. Google checks registration, usually with a D-U-N-S number, or a Secretary of State registration, an EIN or a Department of Revenue registration if you have none. A D-U-N-S application can take up to 30 days⁷. You must also verify that you own or manage your Google Business Profile.
2. Check the licenses. Google verifies state licenses for the business and its owners or managers where it can, and expects the county and city licenses to be in place.
3. Show the insurance. In the United States, insurance is required for applicable categories, the minimum depends on category and location, and in North America the document must still be valid 14 days after you submit it⁷.
4. Pass the background check. In the United States and Canada, for select categories, every business owner gets a criminal background check, and so do the service professionals who do the core work; office and customer-support staff do not. The business is not charged and there is no credit check.
5. Wait for the extra checks if your category has them. Electrician, garage door, HVAC, locksmith and plumbing are listed as urgent categories with extra screening, and garage door and locksmith also go through Google’s Advanced Verification.

Google adds that background check, registration and insurance requirements apply to select users only, and that it re-evaluates advertisers regularly, so you may be asked to repeat checks. Some advertisers can receive the badge quickly and then have 14 days to complete the remaining steps to keep the ad serving⁷. Google’s pages do not say which categories, if any, cannot run before the badge is complete.

What the published numbers say

Four published sources give a cost per lead for plumbing or HVAC, and they are not the same kind of number.

Sources disagree The ranges overlap but do not match, and none of them is a measurement of one company. Contractor Magazine’s author runs a marketing agency for home-service contractors, says the figures draw on his client accounts and on widely reported ranges without naming them, and tells readers to treat them as directional. Housecall Pro is a software vendor; its HVAC page says its estimates rest on 2026 benchmarks from two other firms, and its LSA guide takes the $25 to $130+ range from a third party’s 2026 data⁴.

Read the table as the outer edges of the market, not as a quote. Your market, job mix and close rate move every figure.

From cost per lead to cost per booked job

The formula has one division in it:

cost per booked job = cost per lead ÷ share of leads that become paid jobs

At $50 a lead and one lead in three becoming a job, a booked job costs $150. At the same $50 and one lead in five, it costs $250. The lead price did not change; the close rate did. Here is the arithmetic on the Contractor Magazine ranges, pairing each end of the cost range with the matching end of the close-rate range:

The inputs are the published ranges in the table above; the pairing, the midpoints and the divisions are ours, rounded to the dollar. The spread in the last column is the honest answer to “what does a booked job cost”: between about two and four times the lead price, depending on the close rate, which only you can measure.

What the arithmetic leaves out

• A booked job is not a profitable job. The table gives what you pay to book work. Whether $150 is cheap depends on what the job earns after materials and labor, and that comparison is yours to make before any money is spent.
• Missed calls cost money. A call you miss in business hours is chargeable if the caller stays on past 20 seconds⁵. A phone that rings out at the wrong hour is paid for and produces nothing.
• Weekly budgets set the volume. Housecall Pro’s worked example: a company that can do 10 jobs a week and books one lead in three needs about 30 leads a week⁴. At $50 a lead that is $1,500 a week, a figure we put in to show scale, not as a plan.

Disputing leads

The sources disagree about this, and the disagreement matters if you budget for credits. Housecall Pro’s May 2026 guide describes a “Dispute” button in the dashboard, a 30-day filing window and a list of qualifying reasons⁴. Google’s help page describes something different: charged leads are reassessed over a 30-day period, and a lead judged poor quality, duplicate or invalid is credited automatically to the account balance⁵. You can also rate each lead with a feedback survey on the Leads page, and Google may credit leads reported poor through it; the page describes no separate formal dispute process. The Leads page shows a charge status for each lead: Charged, Not charged, In review or Credited.

Google’s page also says automatic credits are not available for health care verticals or tax specialists. For a trade business that means no assumption about credits should sit in the budget. Treat any credit as a bonus.

A ninety-day test that produces your number

A test is a fixed budget, a fixed period and four numbers written down on day one. This is how we set one up; the budget figures are our planning assumptions, not a quote.

1. Finish the screening first. Collect the D-U-N-S or registration, the licenses, the insurance certificate and the owner’s ID before you start. The calendar clock for the ninety days starts when the ad serves, not when you apply.
2. Set the weekly budget from a lead target. Five leads a week at $50 is $250 a week, or about $3,250 over 13 weeks (ours). Google applies a monthly maximum of the weekly budget times the average weeks in a month.
3. Answer every call, and write down every lead. Log the date, the source (call, message, booking request), whether it was inside the service area, whether a quote was given and whether the job was booked. Google’s Leads page records the lead and its charge status; the job outcome is yours to add.
4. Compute the number at day 30, 60 and 90. Total charged leads, total booked jobs, and the division above. Using the same assumptions, 65 leads at one in three is about 22 jobs, and $3,250 over 22 jobs is about $150 a booked job.
5. Decide against the job’s profit, in advance. Write down on day one the cost per booked job you would keep paying, so the decision at day 90 is not made while looking at the invoice.

What we do about it

For clients where Local Services Ads fit, we gather the screening documents with the owner, set up the account, and run the ninety-day test described above. We never hold a client’s ad money: spend goes to Google from the client’s own card, and the client can see every charge in their own account. We state a minimum test budget before anything is spent, and we do not promise a lead count or a cost per booked job, because the sources above show the range is wide and the market decides. Where the arithmetic says the ads cost more than the work earns, we say so. The service page is PPC management.

When to get help

The screening paperwork and the first month of lead logging are worth doing with someone, because a rejected application or an unanswered call costs money. If you are weighing Local Services Ads against Angi or Thumbtack, Is Angi Worth It for Contractors? does the same arithmetic for that product. The consultation is free, and an honest answer can be that the ads are not worth running.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do Local Services Ads cost per month?

There is no fixed price. You set an average weekly budget and the monthly maximum follows from it; the ad stops for the month when the maximum is reached. What a lead costs depends on location, job type, lead type and bidding mode.

Are Local Services Ads pay per click?

No. Google describes them as pay-per-lead listings, and a lead is a call, a message or a booking request.

What is the difference between Google Guaranteed and Google Screened?

Both were badges earned by passing Google’s screening, and the guarantee was a money-back promise to the customer. Google’s help page now describes a single Google Verified badge and says it is ending the Money Back Guarantee.

Do Local Services Ads require a background check?

For select categories in the United States and Canada, yes. Every business owner gets a criminal background check, as do the service professionals who do the core work, and the business is not charged and no credit check is run.

Can I get a refund for a bad lead?

Google reassesses charged leads over 30 days and credits those it judges poor quality, duplicate or invalid; you can also rate a lead in a feedback survey, and Google may credit leads reported as poor⁵. Credits are not available for health care verticals or tax specialists.

What does a lead cost for a plumber?

Contractor Magazine gives $25 to $75 a lead in August 2026 and calls it directional¹; Housecall Pro gives $25 to $80+ for Local Services Ads in March 2026².

Sources