Google Ads for tradies.
Paid search puts you at the top of the page the day you switch it on. Two things nobody mentions: Australian tradies cannot get the Google Guaranteed badge that American and British ones can, and from this month Google decides more of where your money goes than you do. Which means the ad is only ever as good as the page it lands on.
What Google Ads actually does for a trade business
When a hot water service dies or a fence comes down, people search and they ring the first business that looks safe to ring. Google Ads buys you the top of that screen in your suburbs, on the searches you choose, for as long as you keep paying. Turn it off and you disappear the same afternoon.
That is the honest shape of it. It is rented attention, and it is the fastest thing in marketing. SEO and your Google Business Profile are the parts you own, and they take months. Most tradies we speak to need both, in that order — but the order that actually matters is the one below.
What a paid click actually lands on
Every ad platform sells you the click. Nobody sells you the thing the click arrives at. So in September 2026 we measured it ourselves, because we could not find anyone who had.
We took a seeded sample of 500 Australian trade businesses that Google lists with a website, and opened every one on a real mobile phone screen — a 390 × 844 viewport with a genuine Android user agent and touch enabled. Not a desktop browser pretending. We checked one thing on each: could a customer tap a phone number without scrolling.
Where the 500 addresses went
The 500 break down like this: 391 loaded a working homepage, 72 did not load one at all, 32 pointed at somebody else’s platform page rather than the business’s own site — a Facebook page, a directory profile — and 5 could not be classified, either because a bot check blocked the read or the address was never resolved. The 32 are excluded from the tap-to-call count because a Facebook page’s call button is Facebook’s design decision, not the tradie’s, and counting it would flatter the result.
The second number is the one that should worry anyone about to spend money on ads. 72 of the 463 real business addresses — 16%, about one in six — did not load a working homepage at all. Google is still listing them as that business’s website.
The failures were not random. Nine were expired site-builder accounts: seven served the identical “Reconnect Your Domain” page from Wix, two served “Squarespace — Website Expired”. Five separate businesses all landed on an identical blank page at the same /lander address, which is one broken redirect tool used by all five. And three had been taken over outright — one now redirects to a review-spam site, one to an online casino, one to a software vendor’s demo page. Those are real trade businesses whose customers are being sent there today.
We are not naming any of them. They are working tradies who almost certainly do not know. The point is the rate, not the roll call.
What this has to do with your ad budget. An ad does not create a customer. It buys one visit and delivers that person to a page, and the page has to do the rest. On roughly half of Australian tradie websites that page asks them to scroll before it will let them ring, and on one in six the page is not there at all.
The fair counter-argument, and we will make it for you: a scroll is not proof that a site cannot convert, and a good advertiser can send paid traffic to one purpose-built landing page while the rest of the site stays average. That is a legitimate way to run ads and we do it. What it is not is free — somebody still has to build and test that page, and the 16% that do not load are past the point where a landing page saves them. Our position is narrower than “fix everything first”: something the click can land on has to work, and on a lot of tradie sites nothing does yet. Why your website gets visitors but no calls ›
Australia does not get the Google Guaranteed badge
A lot of tradie marketing advice tells you to chase Local Services Ads and the green Google Guaranteed tick. If you are in Australia you cannot have it, and it is worth knowing before you pay someone to get it for you.
Google’s own Local Services Ads getting-started page carries a country selector. It lists eleven countries — Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Australia is not one of them. Ask Google for that page with an Australian locale and it serves you the United States one, word for word, with a category list that runs from “Acai Shop” to “Yoga studio” and applies to none of us. We checked this on 4 September 2026 and you can check it yourself in about thirty seconds.
Honest limitation: an absent help-centre page is strong evidence, not a formal announcement. Google has not published a statement saying Local Services Ads will never come to Australia, and if it launches here we will say so on this page. What we can tell you is that as of today there is no Australian product to sign up to.
So for an Australian tradie, “Google Ads” means ordinary paid search: a text ad, in the auction, above or below the map. The trust signals other countries buy with a badge, you earn here with reviews on your Google Business Profile and a website that does not look like a stranger built it in 2014.
Source, opened and read on 4 September 2026: Google, “Getting started with Local Services Ads” — eleven countries in the page’s own country selector, and the same page requested with an Australian locale returns the United States edition.
What changed this month, and why it matters on a small budget
This is not a general point about AI. It is a dated change that is happening to live accounts right now.
On its own advertising blog, Google announced that from September 2026 campaigns using automatically created assets and the campaign-level broad match setting are being automatically upgraded to AI Max for Search. Dynamic Search Ads were going the same way and got a stay of execution — that migration now begins in February 2027. The post is dated 15 April 2026 and was updated on 11 June 2026 with the new timeline.
The part that matters for a tradie is a setting called final URL expansion. In Google’s own words it is “enabled by default when you opt-in to AI Max for Search campaigns”, and it exists to “send traffic to the most relevant URLs on your domain”. Read that again with our numbers in mind. Left on, it means Google picks which page of your website the paid click lands on. If your site has a broken page, a page with no phone number, or a page that never finished being built, that is a page Google is allowed to spend your money sending people to.
Being straight about the limit of that claim: it is a default, not a lock. Final URL expansion can be turned off, and you can exclude specific web addresses or feed Google a list of the only pages it may use. Almost nobody switching over this month will know that, which is the actual problem.
None of that is a reason to avoid Google Ads. It is a reason to fix the website first and to run the campaign with the controls on rather than leaving every default where Google set it. When we manage a campaign we review the expansion settings and the exclusions rather than accepting the upgrade blind.
Sources, opened and read: Google, “We’re upgrading Dynamic Search Ads to AI Max” (15 April 2026, updated 11 June 2026) · Google Ads Help, “About final URL expansion in Search”.
How a tradie campaign is actually built
Most “Google Ads for tradies” pages stop at “we get you to the top”. Here is the part that decides whether the money comes back, in plain English.
Emergency work and planned work are two different businesses
A burst pipe and a new deck do not behave the same way and should never sit in the same campaign. Emergency searches convert on the first phone call, in minutes, and the person will ring whoever answers — so the whole job is to be visible right now with a number that can be tapped. Planned work is the opposite: a landscaping or full repaint enquiry is compared against two or three other quotes over a fortnight, so the click is worth more, the wait is longer, and photographs of finished jobs do more work than speed does. Splitting those apart is usually the single biggest improvement we make to an account we inherit.
Suburbs, not “Melbourne”
The default setting will happily show your ad to somebody in Werribee when you work in Ringwood, and charge you for the click. We set the targeting to the suburbs you will actually drive to, and we set it to people in that area rather than people merely showing an interest in it, which is a separate setting and a common way to waste a budget quietly.
The search terms report is where the money leaks
Your keywords are what you asked for. The search terms report is what Google actually matched you to, and it is rarely the same list. It is where you find that a painting campaign paid for “painting courses” and “how to paint a fence yourself”. Every one of those becomes a negative keyword so it never costs you twice. With the broad match and AI Max changes described above, this job gets more important, not less.
Count calls, not clicks
Clicks are a bill, not a result. A campaign is only measurable if a phone call is recorded as a conversion, which means call tracking on the ad and on the landing page. Without it you are guessing, and so is anyone reporting to you. If somebody manages your ads and cannot tell you how many phone calls came from them last month, that is the question to ask.
Then, and only then, the landing page
Everything above delivers a person to a page. The 51% we measured is the reason we check that page on a real phone before a campaign goes live, not after the first invoice.
Ads or SEO first? The honest answer
We get asked this every week and the answer is not “both, obviously”. It depends on one thing: whether you need work this month or next year.
| Google Ads | SEO & Google Business Profile | |
|---|---|---|
| How fast | Same day | Months |
| What happens if you stop paying | You vanish that afternoon | You stay put and drift slowly |
| Do you own it | No, you rent it | Yes |
| Cost shape | Ongoing spend plus management | Front-loaded work, low upkeep |
| Best for | Quiet weeks, a new suburb, a new service | Being the name people already know |
| Needs a decent website | Badly — you are paying per visit | Yes, but a slow leak, not a fast one |
If your diary is empty next week, ads. If your diary is fine and you want it to still be fine in a year, SEO. If your website is not finished, neither — start there, because both of the other two end at the same front door.
What we do when we run your Google Ads
- Google Search campaigns built around your suburbsThe searches you actually want, not everything with your trade in it
- Call-first ad setupCall extensions and call tracking, because tradies get hired on the phone
- Landing page checked before a dollar is spentTappable number above the fold, on a phone, verified
- Negative keywords and expansion controls reviewedIncluding the AI Max defaults now being switched on
- Budget you set, reported plainlyWhat went out, what came back, in a language that is not agency
- An honest no when ads are the wrong moveWe will tell you to fix the site or the profile first if that is the truth
What about Facebook and Instagram?
Meta ads do a different job. Google catches somebody who already has a problem and is looking for a tradie right now. Facebook and Instagram put you in front of people who are not looking yet, so that when the problem turns up they already know your name.
We run them, and for some trades they work well — anything visual, anything people plan for months, anything where seeing the finished job is the sell. Landscaping and painting sit squarely in that bracket. For emergency work they are usually the wrong tool. We would rather put a small budget on Google properly than split a small budget across two platforms badly. If you want the awareness side handled steadily rather than paid for, look at social media management instead.
Google Ads questions.
Who controls the ad budget?
You do. You set the monthly number, we manage the campaign inside it, and you get a plain report of what went out and what came back. We never move your budget without asking you first.
How much should a tradie spend on Google Ads to start?
There is no honest single figure, because it depends on your trade and how many other people are bidding in your suburbs. What we can tell you is the failure mode: a budget too small to gather data spends itself learning and tells you nothing. We would rather look at your numbers and tell you it is not enough yet than take a management fee for a campaign that was never going to work.
Can Australian tradies get the Google Guaranteed badge?
No. Local Services Ads, which is where that green tick comes from, runs in eleven countries and Australia is not one of them. Google publishes a country edition of the sign-up guide for each market it operates in and there is no Australian one — ask for it with an Australian locale and you are served the United States page. Checked 4 September 2026. If anyone offers to get you Google Guaranteed in Australia, ask them to show you the sign-up page.
Do Google Ads still work if my website is not finished?
They work in the sense that people will click. They do not work in the sense that people will ring. We checked 500 Australian tradie website addresses in September 2026: one in six did not load a working homepage, and of the ones that did, 51% would not let a phone user tap a number without scrolling first. Paid traffic to a page like that is the fastest way to spend a budget on nothing.
What is changing in Google Ads in September 2026?
Google is automatically upgrading campaigns that use automatically created assets or the campaign-level broad match setting to AI Max for Search. Dynamic Search Ads follow in February 2027. The practical effect is that Google takes more of the decisions, including which page on your site a click lands on, unless you go in and set the controls yourself.
Why is there no price listed for ad management?
Because the two numbers are different and lumping them together would be dishonest. Your ad spend goes to Google and depends on your area. Our management fee depends on how much campaign there is to manage. Website and Google Business Profile work does have a fixed price — Essential is $199/month and Growth is $299/month in Australian dollars, both with no lock-in — and for most tradies that is the better first spend. See the plans ›
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