04 The Results.
HVAC Google Ads case study: results at a glance
−64%Paid cost per leadQ2 vs. Q3 2026, like-for-like
+29%Ad spend, same quartersCost per lead fell as spend rose
+47%Profile call-button clicksQ3 2025 vs. Q3 2026
+64%Profile impressionsQ3 2025 vs. Q3 2026
+25%Completed jobsSeven comparable months, YoY
+3.7%Job revenueSame seven months, YoY
How we measuredCost per lead counts calls from ads plus Local Services Ads phone and message leads, the only call-based actions counted in both quarters. It compares April to June 2026, the first full calendar quarter of the engagement, with July to September 2026, the most recent complete quarter. These are calls and leads counted by Google, not booked jobs.
Google Ads' own cost-per-conversion figure shows the opposite trend, because two conversion actions removed partway through the engagement added several hundred conversions to the earlier quarter's count. We don't use it.
Revenue and jobs come from the client's own job management report and compare February to May and July to September in 2026 with the same months in 2025. January is left out because the engagement began late that month. One month, June, came in far outside this business's normal range and hasn't been confirmed with the client, so we've excluded it from both years rather than include a number we can't trust. Leaving it in would only have made the result look better.
Google Ads & Local Services Ads cost per lead · Q2 vs. Q3 2026
Like-for-like cost per lead fell from $469.19 to $169.92, a 64% drop, while total ad spend rose 29%. Local Services Ads only started charging again in June, so part of the third quarter's improvement is that channel switching back on, not optimization alone. The gain came from Performance Max and Local Services Ads; the core Search campaign is covered in the box below.
Profile call-button clicks · Q3
Profile impressions · Q3
Comparing the third quarter of 2026 with the same quarter of 2025, call-button clicks on the Google Business Profile listing rose 47%, profile impressions 64%, website clicks 16.5%, and direction requests 11%. Direction requests were down from the second quarter of 2026, even though they were up year over year. We haven't confirmed whether these profile counts leave out ad-driven interactions, so some of this growth may overlap with the paid work running in the same window.
Completed jobs · seven comparable months
During the engagement, job revenue across the seven comparable months was up 3.7% on the same months a year earlier, on 25% more completed jobs (1,088 versus 871). Month by month the picture is mixed: February, March and April ran well ahead of 2025, July was roughly flat, and May, August and September ran behind. We can't link these jobs back to specific ads or listing calls, so we aren't crediting the revenue to our work.
What didn't move, or moved the wrong wayClicks to the website itself fell. Leaving out clicks that come through the Google Business Profile link, Search Console clicks to the site's own pages fell about 42% per day, comparing the stretch just before the engagement (November 2025 to January 2026) with the third quarter of 2026. Search Console impressions fell every month from January to September 2026. The search growth we can see sits on the Google listing, not the website.
The core Search campaign produced no calls from ads and no form leads in the third quarter. It spent $4,282.74 in that quarter, after logging calls from ads in the second. The cost-per-lead gain came from Performance Max and Local Services Ads.
Local Services Ads cost per lead rose slightly, about 6%, from June, the first month that channel charged again, to the third quarter, and that channel's lead volume dropped sharply in September.
Revenue per completed job fell about 17% across the seven comparable months: more jobs, smaller on average.
No lead counts and no map-pack claim. The lead definitions in analytics and in Google Ads changed more than once during the engagement, and there's no usable pre-engagement baseline, so we aren't publishing lead counts. There's also no local map-pack ranking data for this account to report on.
05 What This Meant for the Business.
Paid spend now buys calls and Local Services Ads leads at a little over a third of what they cost in the first full quarter, on a bigger budget, and the Google Business Profile listing is drawing more call-button clicks than it did a year ago. Revenue during the engagement was up slightly on noticeably more, smaller jobs.
We aren't claiming the paid and listing work explains the revenue. Clicks to the website itself and the core Search campaign both went the wrong way, and the other gaps are listed above.
