What an expensive click actually buys

While managing Google Ads for an HVAC and plumbing company in Houston, I saw searches for AC repair, installation and replacement fail to convert, even when the campaign was using exact match. Depending on the campaign and the budget, one or two expensive clicks could consume the money available for the day. For a family business, that hurts. There is demand, the company can do the work, and the money is gone before there is a job to show for it.

The word I keep coming back to is surgical. With a smaller budget, you have to be extremely careful about the searches you buy, where the customer is, what you promise and what happens when the phone rings.

Houston is where I had this experience. The wider problem belongs to the US market, and it changes quite a lot from one city and service to another.

What the data covers

To put some numbers behind that, I collected Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO on November 5, 2026. I used the same 32 search phrases for the United States and nine cities: Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston and Seattle. The selection covered repairs, replacements, emergencies, commercial work, and a few searches for jobs, parts and DIY help.

A $273 click

The highest reported CPC in that sample was $273.08 for “sewer line repair” in Phoenix. The phrase had a reported monthly search volume of 90. This is a provider's keyword metric, not an invoice from an advertiser's account or a typical price for the whole industry. Even with that limitation, it is a number worth stopping at.

At that price, the contractor has paid for someone to click. The person may leave without calling or filling in a form. If they do inquire, they may only be comparing prices. If they book, they may cancel, decline the estimate or need a much smaller job than the company hoped to win.

A click costing more than $270 does not make the customer a high-ticket customer. It certainly does not make the job profitable.

To see what that can mean for a small company, take a hypothetical example: 20 clicks at $273.08 would cost $5,461.60. Suppose those clicks produced two genuine inquiries and one appointment. That would be $5,461.60 in media spend for a single booking, before finding out whether the estimate was accepted or the work was completed and paid for. Those are illustrative assumptions, not conversion rates measured in this research.

This is the part I think gets lost when people talk about an expensive keyword being worth it because the service can have a high ticket. The company still has to reach that sale. The value of a possible sewer replacement does not pay for the clicks that went nowhere, and even a large invoice has labor, materials and other costs behind it.

For a family business, that is a serious amount of money to put at risk before a technician has done any paid work. It is why I want the conversation to go beyond cost per click and even cost per lead.

A big market with two calendars

The market itself is substantial. EIA's 2020 residential survey found that roughly nine in ten US households used air conditioning. That is an enormous base of equipment to maintain and eventually replace, before considering heating or commercial properties. US Energy Information Administration.

The search data also makes it difficult to talk about HVAC as though it were only a hot-weather business. For the national phrase “air conditioning repair,” the returned monthly estimates were 201,000 searches in January 2026 and 673,000 in July. For “furnace repair,” January returned 450,000 and July 110,000.

Those are selected months and selected phrases, not a complete measure of seasonal demand. But they make a practical point: the campaign calendar has to follow the services and the local market. A cooling campaign in Arizona and a heating campaign in Minnesota need different preparation.

Plumbing has another calendar again. Emergencies can happen throughout the year. Cold weather can add problems with frozen and burst pipes; the National Weather Service specifically identifies that risk. Other work comes from renovations, maintenance, property transactions and equipment reaching the end of its useful life. National Weather Service.

A contractor needs to know which of those jobs it is trying to win before choosing a budget.

Houston was not the most expensive city

In my Houston experience, competition felt particularly intense around the more affluent neighborhoods we were trying to reach. The business had a local base and served surrounding areas, including commercial customers. That shaped the advertising.

It would be easy for me to turn that experience into “Houston is the most expensive market.” The numbers do not support that statement.

Here is the same pair of phrases across all nine city targets. CPCs are in US dollars.

Phoenix had the highest reported CPC for “air conditioning repair” in this selection. Seattle had the highest for “emergency plumber.” Houston was expensive for emergency plumbing, but it did not lead either column.

That matters when someone asks what budget an HVAC company needs. I want to know the city, the service and the actual account before answering. Even these two phrases produce different comparisons between markets.

There were also figures in the dataset that I would treat cautiously. Dallas returned a CPC of $0.04 for “furnace repair.” Chicago returned $3.06 for “emergency ac repair.” Smaller follow-up requests returned the same values. That confirms what the provider returned; it does not prove a contractor can reliably buy those clicks at those prices.

I have kept those observations in the research files. They are a reason to check a benchmark against real campaign data before making a promise.

Have these costs been going up?

An expensive snapshot still leaves a question: have these costs actually been going up?

I made a separate historical query to check. DataForSEO Labs provides national keyword history, so this comparison is for the US. It does not tell me how the Phoenix figure changed over time.

Of the 25 service phrases in the original selection, 15 had a reported CPC for every month from January through September in both 2025 and 2026. I compared the simple average of those nine monthly records in each year. All 15 increased. The median increase across those phrases was 18.4%.

Here are six of those comparisons:

“Emergency ac repair” went from $53.26 to $71.10 in that comparison, an increase of 33.5%. If a contractor's actual CPC rose by the same proportion and its budget stayed fixed, it would buy roughly 25% fewer clicks. The pressure would be there before anything changed in the sales process.

There were exceptions in the wider dataset. “Drain cleaning” was missing two monthly CPC observations needed for the full comparison. Across the seven months available in both years, its average fell 20.7%. I would not leave that out just because it makes a less dramatic story.

The evidence supports rising reported CPCs across much of this selected service panel. It does not give me a national inflation rate for HVAC and plumbing advertising, or establish why those costs moved. It also cannot show whether contractors raised their own prices or improved conversion enough to compensate.

What concerns me is the business with a fixed budget facing higher click costs while still losing inquiries before the booking. Better margins and better conversion could help it absorb that increase. Hoping every lead will become a large job will not.

Emergency is not always the most expensive service

The service comparison was just as useful. Emergency searches felt especially expensive in the account I worked on, but the national sample showed why I should not turn that into a universal rule.

“Whole house repiping” had a higher CPC than either emergency phrase in this table, although its reported search volume was much smaller. “Commercial plumber” had a lower CPC than “emergency plumber.”

That does not establish that commercial work is cheaper to acquire or more profitable. There are no conversion rates, accepted estimates or completed jobs in this dataset. It does show that there is a reason to examine the service mix before putting all the money into the most obvious emergency keywords.

Plumbing is almost a market of its own. A blocked drain, a water heater replacement, a repipe and a commercial maintenance inquiry can come to the same company, but the work, urgency and buying process are different.

Older properties are worth investigating for planned work. So are relationships with renovation companies and property managers. I would want to understand the property and the actual problem, though. An old house does not automatically need repiping, and an expensive keyword does not automatically produce a valuable job.

The homeowner with water escaping inside the house needs someone who can respond. The person planning a repipe needs confidence in the scope, disruption, estimate and contractor. Those people should not receive an interchangeable message.

The same applies to AC repair and replacement. A repair customer may want someone today. A replacement customer may be comparing options, warranties, installation dates and financing. The company needs a page and a conversation that fit the decision.

Paying for searches that were never customers

One of the biggest risks I saw was paying for searches that were related to the trade but had nothing to do with hiring the company.

People looking for employment. People looking for parts. People trying to understand a fault or repair it themselves. You have to watch those searches closely, especially when the campaign has room to match more broadly.

The national research returned 27,100 monthly searches for “hvac jobs” and 12,100 for “plumbing jobs.” “Air conditioner parts” returned 9,900. Those figures do not show that these searches entered my client's account. They show that other types of demand exist around the same trade vocabulary.

Exact match still needs attention. Google says it can match searches with the same meaning or intent as the keyword. It gives you a useful degree of control, but it cannot tell you that the person is ready to book the service you want to sell. Google Ads keyword matching documentation.

Negatives need judgment too. I would not exclude every search containing “cost.” Someone asking what a replacement costs may be moving toward a purchase. The issue is whether the query fits the offer and whether the business can turn that inquiry into suitable work.

Another detail in the research is worth mentioning. The provider labeled “emergency plumber” as LOW advertiser competition, with an index of 8, while returning a CPC of $74.89. “Air conditioner parts” had an index of 89 and a CPC of $2.58.

A competition label is not a price forecast. It is also not the same as organic ranking difficulty. Looking at the label alone could give a contractor a very different impression from looking at the cost and purpose of the search. DataForSEO field definitions.

Geography is just as easy to oversimplify

In Houston, the company's base and the areas around it mattered. A business has to be able to reach the customer, fit the work into its schedule and still make money after delivering the service.

A ZIP code can help define a service area, but it cannot tell you what an individual household can afford. A wealthy neighborhood can attract heavy competition. An area with a lower average income can still produce suitable repair work and repeat customers.

What I want to know is which services sell, what the company charges, how far technicians have to travel and which jobs actually work financially.

Google's location settings also need checking. “Presence or Interest” can reach people interested in an area as well as people in or regularly in it. Google says location matching uses several signals and cannot guarantee complete accuracy. The service address given by the customer is therefore important evidence when reviewing results. Google Ads location options.

There can be useful inquiries from outside the area, too. A property owner may live elsewhere. I would check the location of the job before deciding that the caller is irrelevant.

The offer, the page and the phone

Then there is the offer itself. This is where small differences can become expensive.

I saw how a service-call or diagnostic fee could matter when competitors were advertising offers without that upfront charge. The answer is not automatically to remove the fee. The customer needs to understand what it covers and whether any conditions apply.

If the ad gets someone interested and the person on the phone introduces a charge they were not expecting, you have created another obstacle after paying for the click.

The page needs to answer the immediate questions: do you cover my area, do you handle this problem, when can you come, and how do I contact you? For bigger work, it also needs evidence of the company's experience and a clear explanation of what happens next.

This is why I said a smaller contractor has to get as close to perfect as possible. I do not mean an elaborate website. I mean fewer avoidable problems between the search and the appointment.

That includes the phone.

You cannot work hard to bring in an emergency plumbing inquiry and then leave the person waiting. Someone needs to answer, establish what is happening and explain what the company can do. If the business promises emergency availability, the team and schedule have to support it.

Google makes responsiveness an explicit consideration in Local Services Ads, and says missed calls may negatively affect it. So answering the phone affects both the customer conversation and, potentially, how the business performs in that channel. Google Local Services Ads ranking factors.

Search, Local Services Ads and the Business Profile

For me, Search ads, Local Services Ads and the Google Business Profile belong in the same discussion. Search gives me more control over the terms, messaging and landing page. Local Services Ads can provide another route to inquiries where the company is eligible. The Business Profile is where customers can check the business and its reviews.

That does not mean splitting a small budget equally between them. Each has to justify its place through the work it brings in and the company's ability to handle it.

Google's local ranking guidance identifies relevance, distance and prominence or popularity as key considerations. It also says reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking. Keeping the profile accurate and earning honest reviews should be part of the ongoing operation. Google Business Profile guidance.

After the first job

You still have to do a good job when you arrive. A customer can leave a review, recommend the company and call again. The first visit may be the beginning of a relationship that lasts for years.

Commercial relationships can extend that further. A company renovating houses, a property manager or an owner with several buildings can bring repeated work. I see a lot of value in those opportunities, provided the contractor can handle the scope and follow through.

They need suitable examples of previous work, a clear proposal and someone who follows up. A large potential contract is worth little if the response takes too long or the company cannot deliver what it has offered.

I would also be careful with the numbers used to justify acquisition costs. Repeat work is valuable when it actually happens. An optimistic lifetime-value estimate can make almost any expensive campaign look reasonable on paper.

Follow the inquiry to the completed job

For current performance, I want to follow the inquiry through to the job: was the person reached, was the work suitable, was the appointment booked, was the estimate accepted, and was the work completed and paid for?

The $273.08 benchmark is a useful reminder of how far apart those stages can be. Counting an inquiry as a conversion in Google Ads does not turn it into a booked job, and counting a booking does not establish its value or margin.

The cost calculation has to include management as well as media. That includes my own fee. A family company needs the total acquisition cost to make sense after labor, materials and the other costs of doing the work.

What I look for now

I did not get the Houston setup right immediately. It only started working toward the end of my contract. It took time, and I learned a lot from that account.

I can be more specific now about what I look for: the service, the area, the search, the offer, the page, the fee, the response and the completed job. Any one of those can explain why demand exists but the campaign is not bringing in useful work.

The research has also given me reasons to qualify some of my own impressions. Houston was not the highest-cost city in the two comparisons here. Emergency terms were not always the most expensive. Some local figures were too unusual to use confidently in a budget forecast. The historical comparison also showed increases across the complete service panel, alongside a decline in one of the partially available series.

That is how I want to use data alongside experience. It should help me make a better decision about the next dollar the contractor spends.

A family business does not need every job in the city. It needs enough of the right jobs, at a cost it can carry, with a team ready to answer and do the work well.

There is plenty of work to compete for in the US. A family business does not need every job in the city. It needs enough of the right jobs, at a cost it can carry, with a team ready to answer and do the work well.