Cleaning has the lowest cost per lead of any category in home services and the smallest tickets to pay for it. That combination means your average ticket, not your lead price, decides whether paid search makes money. It is also the number almost nobody has worked out.
This is not opinion. LocaliQ benchmarked 3,211 home services search campaigns running from April 2024 to March 2025 and reported medians across 16 categories. Cleaning came out with the lowest cost per lead of the lot and the second highest conversion rate.
| Metric | Cleaning services | Home services median | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per lead | $46.99 | $90.92 | Roughly half the median. The lowest of the 16 categories tracked. |
| Conversion rate | 17.65% | 7.33% | Well over double. People searching for cleaning are ready to book. |
| Click-through rate | 9.01% | 6.37% | The ads get clicked more than the industry average. |
| Cost per click | $8.50 | $7.85 | Slightly above median per click, but far cheaper per lead. |
LocaliQ 2025 home services search advertising benchmarks. Median values across 3,211 US campaigns, minimum 103 active campaigns per category, April 2024 to March 2025. The category is cleaning services, which is the closest published grouping to carpet cleaning.
If that were the whole story, carpet cleaning would be the easiest trade in the country to advertise. It is not the whole story.
A roofer paying $90 a lead is spending a fraction of one job. A carpet cleaner paying $47 a lead on a three room job is spending a third of the invoice before a van moves.
| Job | Published price | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Per room | $25-$75 | Varies with room size, carpet condition and local rates |
| Per square foot | $0.20-$0.50 | Residential |
| Small home | $120-$200 | Two to three rooms |
| Medium home | $180-$350 | Four to six rooms |
| Large home | $300-$600+ | Seven rooms or more |
| Commercial | $0.10-$0.30 | Per square foot, or $60 to $100 an hour |
| Small office | $200-$500 | One-time clean |
Housecall Pro 2026 carpet cleaning price guide, national averages.
Two operators can run the same ads in the same city at the same lead price and one makes money while the other does not. The variable is not the advertising. It is what the job is worth when the tech leaves.
Every rung below is a published Housecall Pro price, added to a three room job at $50 a room. Nothing here raises your per-room rate. It is all work that is already in the house.
This is why we do not lead with bids. A bid change moves your cost per lead by a few percent. An add-on script moves your average ticket by 40%, and the second one is the difference between an account that pays and an account you eventually switch off.
It is also why the commercial line in the table above matters more than it looks. Recurring office work at $200 to $500 a visit does not need an add-on ladder to clear break-even. It clears on arrival, and it comes back on a schedule.
Most ROI calculators ask what you will earn from a budget. This one runs backwards and asks the question that decides everything: given what a lead costs you, what does the average job have to be worth? Runs in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere.
If your current average is below the number this returns, more leads will lose you more money. That is worth knowing before you raise a budget.
Not a sales list. These are the things that turn up again and again when we open one of these accounts for the first time.
A homeowner with a stained rug and a property manager with 4,000 square feet of office carpet are not the same buyer, and they are not worth the same lead price. Merged, the cheap residential clicks eat the budget and the commercial work never gets served.
When the account optimizes toward form fills, Google buys the cheapest possible enquiry, which in this trade means the smallest possible job. Importing job value back into the account changes what it goes looking for.
Most owners can tell us their per-room rate and not their average invoice. Those are different numbers, and only the second one tells you whether advertising works.
Carpet cleaner rental, carpet cleaning machine hire, how to clean carpet, best carpet shampooer. Enormous volume, near zero jobs. Without negatives they quietly take a slice of every budget.
Carpet Cleaning is an eligible category and the business is not in it. For a trade this price sensitive, paying per lead rather than per click removes a real source of waste.
Every item above is a structure or a measurement problem. They are cheap to fix relative to what they cost while they sit there.
Two campaigns, two budgets, two targets. Commercial can carry a much higher cost per lead because a $200 to $500 office clean recurs. Residential cannot. One blended target gets both wrong.
Whole-house, pet odour, water damage and upholstery searches carry bigger tickets than a single room. They get their own ad groups and their own bids, because they can afford them.
Call tracking, then offline conversion import with the actual invoice value. It is the single change that stops the account chasing the cheapest possible job, and almost nobody has it running when we arrive.
An ongoing list, not a one-off. This trade has more high-volume worthless search terms than almost any other, and they change with the seasons.
If the add-ons only get mentioned when the tech is standing in the hallway, most of them do not get sold. Putting them on the page with prices does part of that job before the visit. Pages are included at no charge.
If your average ticket is well under break-even, the honest first move is your add-on process or your commercial mix, not your budget. We would rather tell you that on the first call.
No setup fee, no annual contract, no commitment. Month to month, cancel any time.
Custom landing pages free on every plan, normally $500 each. Your ad spend goes to Google directly on your own card.
Book a Free Audit Call“ You will own your Google Ads account, Local Services Ads account, tracking systems, landing pages, and conversion data from day one. Your accounts stay in your name. Your billing stays on your card. Your data stays yours. If you decide to leave, everything stays with you. No account transfers. No hostage situations. No starting over from scratch. ”
The lead economics are the best in home services. LocaliQ's 2025 benchmarks, drawn from 3,211 home services campaigns, put cleaning services at a $46.99 cost per lead against a $90.92 median across the industry, on a 17.65% conversion rate against 7.33%. The catch is on the other side of the transaction. A two or three room job runs $120 to $200, so the same lead price that is comfortable for a roofer is most of your revenue.
It means your average ticket decides whether paid search works at all, and it is the number most operators have never calculated. At a $46.99 lead and a 40% booking rate you are paying about $117 for a booked job. On a $150 job with no add-ons that is not a business. On a $350 job it is a good one. Same ads, same market, same lead price.
No. We are telling you to sell the work that is already in the house. Housecall Pro's 2026 price guide puts stain removal at $20 to $40 a room, pet odour treatment at $30 to $75, carpet protector at $20 to $50 a room and upholstery at $40 to $120 an item. Two of those on a three room job moves the ticket without touching your per-room rate.
Yes. Carpet Cleaning is one of Google's Local Services Ads categories. It charges per lead rather than per click, sits above the regular search ads, and carries the Google Verified badge once you clear screening. For a trade with a small ticket, paying per lead instead of per click removes a real source of waste.
If your residential ticket will not clear break-even, commercial is usually the better answer than more residential volume. Housecall Pro puts commercial at $0.10 to $0.30 a square foot or $60 to $100 an hour, with a one-time small office at $200 to $500, and the work repeats on a schedule. The search intent is different enough that it needs its own campaign, which is the change we make most often.
No. We do not control your pricing, your add-on conversion, your route or who answers the phone, and all four decide whether a lead becomes a profitable job. What we commit to is the work: campaigns split by job type and by residential against commercial, call tracking, offline conversion import so the account optimizes toward booked revenue rather than form fills, and an audit you can read without us in the room.
It depends on whether your days are full. If you have open slots and your ticket clears break-even, the maths is straightforward at a $46.99 lead. If your ticket is at the bottom of the range, more leads will lose you more money, and we would rather say that on the first call than bill you for a year of it.
$445/mo for Local Services Ads management, from $695/mo for Google Ads, $995/mo for both. Flat fee, not a percentage of spend, month to month, no setup fee. Landing pages are included. Your ad spend goes to Google directly on your own card.
The research behind this page, and the tools we use when we run your numbers with you.
Same flat fee, same ownership terms, same refusal to charge a percentage of spend.
30 minutes. We open your account, work out your real average ticket, and tell you whether advertising is your problem. If it is not, you will get that answer instead.
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