Google Ads does not burn money. Unmanaged accounts do.

Yes, and the honest version of the answer is that the platform works and most of the accounts contractors have seen were run badly. When we open an account on a live audit the search terms report is nearly always the problem: job seekers, do-it-yourself searches, price shoppers, competitor names and out-of-area traffic, all clicking ads because the account was left on defaults. Three published accounts run properly produced 39 leads at $150, 130 leads at $53 with spend cut a third, and 26 leads at $239 in a month, every number pulled from the account.

Because for them it was, and the reason is the same each time: Google's defaults are built for reach, not for a business that sends a truck. Broad match is the default match type, search partners are included by default, location targeting defaults to people interested in your area as well as people in it, and a call of a chosen length counts as a conversion. Run on those settings, the account spends on searches that can never book a job and reports them as clicks and leads.

Yes, if you will read the search terms report every week, keep the negative list current, set match types on purpose, wire call tracking so the account knows which calls booked, and build a page per service. The cost is your time and the learning happens on your own ad spend. Most owners who try it are not short of ability, they are short of hours, and the account shows it within a month.

Open the Change History inside your Google Ads account and set the date range to 90 days. Google keeps it and it cannot be edited. It lists every change and who made it. An account that is being managed shows negatives, bid changes and search-term exclusions most weeks. One that is being billed but not managed shows a setup date and very little after it.

Calls through a tracking number, with duration, start time and caller number, which Google's own call reporting provides for calls over 15 seconds. Call recording, so somebody can hear which calls were customers. Text messages and forms. And then the piece most accounts never get to: booked jobs marked in the call tracking and imported back into Google Ads, so the bidding learns to buy jobs rather than phone rings. With that in place you can measure return on ad spend instead of guessing at it.

On the published accounts, weeks rather than months, but the first weeks are the most expensive. The waterproofing account cost $296 a lead in its first full week and $148 in its second. The roofing account spent a whole month at $570 a lead because of a tracking mistake, then $239 the month after. Judging an account on its first seven days is the most common way to switch off one that was about to work.

Often it runs alongside rather than instead. Local Services Ads charge per lead, sit above the search results and need no keywords, which removes the search-terms problem entirely. But not every trade has a category, chimney work for one, and the ads only show for the job types Google lists, so the services outside the list still need Google Ads. Most of our accounts run both.

From $695 a month for Google Ads management, $445 for Local Services Ads and $995 for both, with no setup fee and no contract. Ad spend is billed by Google directly to you and we never take a percentage of it. The account, landing pages, tracking numbers and conversion history are in your name from the first day.