Should You Pay for Google Ads, or Fix Your Profile First?

A guy from an ad agency calls while you're on a roof. He says your competitors are "showing up above you on Google" and he can fix that for a monthly fee plus ad spend.

The question is whether ads are the fix, or whether you'd be paying to send customers to a profile that sends them away.

The short answer: fix the profile first

For most local trades, the order is profile first, ads second.

Here's why. Google says there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking in its free results.¹ Ads buy you a separate, labeled spot. And the ads Google built for local trades lean on the same things a good profile has: reviews, photos and a phone that gets answered.²

So if your profile is half-empty, ads don't fix that. They just put more people in front of it.

What you're buying with Google Ads

Regular Google Ads search campaigns charge by the click. Google says you pay for each click on your ads, and you set the most you're willing to pay for one.³

A click isn't a call. Some people who tap your ad call. Some look around and leave. Two things owners don't expect:

• Your daily budget is an average, not a cap. Google says a campaign can spend up to twice its average daily budget on a given day, and no more than 30.4 times that daily budget over the month.⁴
• The ad stops when the money stops. Every click is rented. Nothing you pay for builds up.

Local Services Ads: paying per lead instead

Google also has Local Services Ads, which Google says are shown prominently in search results when people search for the services you offer.⁵ Here you pay for leads instead of clicks: calls and messages that come through your ad.⁵

Google says you're charged for each valid lead, and that lead prices vary by your location, the job type, the type of lead and how you bid.⁶ Leads it decides are invalid or low quality aren't charged, and charged leads can get credited later if they turn out poor.⁶

Read the next part twice. Google counts it as a valid lead when you miss a call during your business hours and the customer stays on the line for more than 20 seconds.⁶ And if the call goes to voicemail during business hours, it's charged if they stay on past 20 seconds, whether or not they leave a message.⁶

So the call that rang out while you were under a sink? You may have paid for that one.

Why the profile decides what the ads cost

Local Services Ads aren't sold to whoever pays the most. Google ranks them in an auction that takes in your bid and your overall profile quality.²

What does Google count as profile quality? It names your rating, number of reviews, average response time, high-quality images and the verification checks you've completed.² Google says higher-quality profiles may rank higher and may also pay lower costs per lead.²

It also says missed calls may hurt your responsiveness, which is part of how likely your ad is to get a lead.²

Put that together. Nine reviews, no photos and a phone that goes to voicemail at 2pm means you can pay more to show up lower. The difference is stuff you can fix for free.

The free side of the map

The free local results don't take money at all. Google says they're mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence.¹

You can't move your shop closer to every customer. But you can work on the other two:

• Relevance: Google says to give it complete and detailed business info so it can match you to the right searches.¹ That's your category, your services list and your service area.
• Prominence: Google says this is based partly on how many reviews you have, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking.¹

And customers read those reviews before they call anyone, ad or no ad. In BrightLocal's 2025 survey, just 4% of consumers said they never read online business reviews.⁷

If you haven't been through your profile field by field, start with our Google Business Profile setup checklist. It's about an hour.

When paying for ads makes sense

We're not against ads. They earn their keep when:

• The profile is already in good shape and someone answers every call during your hours.
• You need work faster than reviews can build. New business, new town, or a slow month coming.
• Your jobs are worth it. A roof replacement can absorb a lot of ad cost. A $150 service call can't.
• You'll track jobs, not clicks. If you can't say how many jobs last month's spend booked, you can't say if it worked.

They lose money when calls go to voicemail, when nobody checks jobs booked against spend, or when ads are covering for a missing foundation. Turn them off and the phone goes quiet, the same trap we wrote about in are paid leads worth it.

A simple order to do it in

1. Finish the profile. Category, services, service area, hours, photos.
2. Ask every customer for a review. Same text, every job, from the driveway.
3. Fix the missed calls. If you can't pick up on a roof, make sure a missed call still gets an answer. Here's what happens when you miss a call from a new customer.
4. Then test ads with a small budget. Track every booked job. Keep what books jobs, cut what doesn't.

The bottom line

Ads can rent you a spot. Your profile is the spot you own. Google won't sell you a better place in the free results, and its local ads charge more and rank lower when the profile is thin and the phone rings out.

Fix the free stuff first. Then, if you still want ads, you'll be paying to send customers somewhere worth landing.