Roofing Contractors Are Paying $228 A Lead On Google Ads. LSAs Charge $55. The Setup Takes 40 Minutes.

SearchLight Digital just dropped the largest Local Service Ads dataset ever published for contractors. 888 shops. $6.72 million in spend. 126,650 leads tracked through to booked jobs.

The blended number that fell out the bottom: $53 per lead on LSA. $104 per lead on standard Google Search ads. Same homeowners. Same intent. Same Google. Half the cost.

And the book rate on LSA leads — meaning the call actually turned into a scheduled job — sat at 43.9 percent. Closed ROAS across the dataset: 7.84x. That is not a marketing pitch. That is what 888 contractors actually did between October 2025 and February 2026.

Most shops still are not running this channel. The ones who are, ate the year.

The Roofing Number Is The Most Embarrassing One

LocaliQ pulled 16,446 home services campaigns for their 2025 benchmark. The number for roofing on standard Google Search ads: $228.15 per lead. That is what most roofers are paying right now to show up above the map pack.

The LSA cost per lead for roofers in the SearchLight dataset: $55 to $95, depending on metro.

That is a 60 to 76 percent cut in lead cost for the same job, same homeowner, same week. The roofer paying $228 a lead is paying it because nobody set up the LSA account. The setup takes about 40 minutes. The Google Guaranteed background check takes about 10 days.

That is the entire moat. Ten days of paperwork.

The Per-Trade Breakdown Nobody Publishes

Here is what 888 contractors actually paid per LSA lead in the most recent quarter:

• Electrical: $39 per lead
• Landscaping: $39 per lead
• Painting: $40 per lead
• HVAC: $51 per lead
• Roofing: $55 to $95 per lead
• Plumbing: $57 per lead
• Drain and sewer: $59 per lead
• Garage door: $49 per lead

HVAC posted the highest closed ROAS of any trade in the dataset: 9.55x at a $51 cost per lead. That means every dollar spent in LSA returned $9.55 in booked revenue. Average ticket across the dataset was $1,826. Average cost per paying customer was $233.

An HVAC shop spending $5,000 a month on LSA at those numbers is booking roughly $47,000 in jobs. The contractor down the road spending $5,000 on standard Google Search ads at $104 a lead is booking less than half of that.

The Phone Is The Whole Game

Here is the part the agencies do not tell you. Over 90 percent of LSA leads come in as phone calls, not form fills. The LSA bidding model penalizes you when calls go unanswered. Google Guaranteed flags shops with poor pickup rates and quietly lowers their position in the LSA carousel.

That 43.9 percent book rate? It is the average. The top quartile of shops in the SearchLight dataset hit 60 percent plus. The bottom quartile hit under 25 percent. Same leads. Same Google. The variable is the person answering the phone.

Speed-to-answer under 30 seconds, a CSR who can actually book the job on the call, and follow-up on every missed call within 5 minutes. That is the entire conversion stack. There is nothing else.

Shops paying $51 a lead and booking 25 percent are paying $204 per booked job. Shops paying $51 a lead and booking 60 percent are paying $85 per booked job. The CSR seat is the most leveraged hire in the shop right now.

Switch The Bidding Mode Or Burn Cash

Google rolled out "Maximize Leads" automated bidding for LSA in Q2 2026. Most shops are still on manual or default bidding. Brevard SEM's Q3 2026 paid advertising report flagged the gap: shops that switched to Maximize Leads bidding saw a 30-day learning period where cost per lead briefly spiked, then settled 20 to 35 percent below their manual bid baseline.

If you are running LSA and you are not on Maximize Leads, you are leaving money on the table every single day. The switch is one toggle inside the LSA dashboard.

What To Do Monday Morning

If you do not have a Google Local Services Ads account live with the Google Guaranteed badge, that is the only project that matters this week. Background check, license verification, insurance docs. About 10 days end-to-end.

If you have LSA running, pull the dashboard right now. Check three numbers: cost per lead, book rate, and bidding mode. If your CPL is more than 30 percent above the trade benchmarks above, your service area is mis-set or your business profile is weak. If your book rate is under 40 percent, the problem is not Google. It is the phone. If you are not on Maximize Leads bidding, flip it today.

The standard Google Search ads channel is not dead. It still has a role for branded terms and specific high-ticket campaigns. But for raw lead volume in a service area, LSA at $51 a lead against Search at $104 a lead is not a debate. It is math.

888 contractors already proved it. The only question left is whether you are one of them next quarter.