Google Ads for HVAC: 1,274,600 searches a month, and every one is a shopper or a job hunter.
951,000 are shopping for a unit or a thermostat. Another 200,700 want a part or a filter. 122,900 want the job, not to hire you. One Google sign-in connects your Ads account, and AdPilot's agent sorts the repair calls from the browsing, then keeps the budget in step with the weather.
One Google sign-in to start · No PPC experience needed · Flat price, never a cut of your ad spend · Free 7 days
PPC for HVAC fails quietly, because the wasted clicks look exactly like repair calls.
Most HVAC Google Ads accounts are paying three crowds who were never going to phone anybody. The first is the shopping crowd: 450,000 searches a month for a portable air conditioner, 201,000 for a smart thermostat, 165,000 for a thermostat and 135,000 for a window unit. The second wants a part or a filter, from 74,000 searches for an HVAC supply house to 60,500 for an AC capacitor. The third wants the work itself: 40,500 searches a month for an HVAC apprenticeship and 33,100 for an HVAC school. Every one of those clicks is billed like any other.
The real money is a different list, and it moves with the weather. “AC repair near me” runs about 201,000 searches a month. “Furnace repair near me” was 246,000 in January and 27,100 in May. “Emergency AC repair” was 5,400 in February and 60,500 in July. Google's planner puts the low end of the top-of-page bid at about $28 for “AC repair near me” and about $102 for “emergency AC repair”. Those are bids to be seen at the top, not what an average click costs, but they say what the market thinks a call is worth. At that price the difference between a tight account and a loose one is a technician's wages.
AdPilot: fully automated Google Ads management for HVAC companies
AdPilot plugs into the account and goes through it the way a good consultant would in their first week. Searches that were never going to book. Seasons where the budget is still last year's. Ads that collect clicks and fill no slots on the schedule. Each finding comes back in plain English, written the way you would explain it to a customer at the door, with the change attached.
You stay in charge of every step of it:
- You approve every change. The AI proposes; you decide. Every budget, bid, keyword, or ad edit arrives as a plain-language card you approve or skip with one tap. Nothing is ever applied on its own.
- A snapshot before every change. AdPilot saves exactly how things looked before anything is touched, so you always have a clean “before.”
- One-click revert. Don’t like a change once it’s live? Undo it in a single click, straight back to that snapshot.
- A full audit log. Who, what, when, the old value and the new value, every change recorded. Nothing hidden.
- You keep the keys. You connect with one secure Google sign-in, and it only ever makes changes you approve. The account stays yours start to finish - you never transfer ownership, and you can disconnect anytime.
Where HVAC ad budgets actually leak
Real US search volumes from Google Keyword Planner, pulled October 2026. Every line contains a word HVAC companies bid on, and not one of them is a homeowner asking for a technician.
Split them and the shape of the problem is obvious. 951,000 searches a month are people choosing a unit or a thermostat to buy. 200,700 are buying a part, a filter or a cleaner. 122,900 want a career. You can check any row in about a minute, which is the point: this is evidence, not an opinion about your account.
One limit, stated early because it is in your interest. Google matches on meaning, not only on words, so a campaign on phrase or exact match for “AC repair” will not wander into “portable air conditioner”. The table is the proof of why the setup matters, not an invoice for your account. And Google groups close variants into one figure, so any row here can read higher than it would in another tool.
Google Ads bridge
The sorting happens in the search terms report, not on the roof.
HVAC search mixes three people who type nearly the same words: somebody whose house is 90 degrees, somebody comparing window units, and somebody buying the part you would have fitted.
Search term
portable air conditioner
Shopping for a unit
Block the phrase. This person is choosing a product, not a technician.
Search term
ac repair near me
No cooling, wallet open
Keep it, send it to the repair page, and answer the phone.
Search term
furnace filters
Buying a filter
Block the phrase, never the bare word - “furnace filter replacement service” is a booking.
Add “portable air conditioner” as a negative keyword.
It took 41 clicks last month and booked nothing. Blocking the phrase leaves “air conditioner repair near me” running, which shares two of the words and is a completely different person.
| What people search | Searches/mo | Why it is not a client |
|---|---|---|
| portable air conditioner | 450,000 | Shopping for a unit |
| smart thermostat | 201,000 | Shopping for a thermostat |
| thermostat | 165,000 | Shopping for a thermostat |
| window ac | 135,000 | Shopping for a unit |
| hvac supply near me | 74,000 | Parts at the supply house, not a technician |
| ac capacitor | 60,500 | Buying the part to fit themselves |
| hvac apprenticeship | 40,500 | Career research |
| hvac school | 33,100 | Career research |
| furnace filters | 33,100 | Buying a filter |
| ac coil cleaner | 33,100 | Buying a cleaner to do it themselves |
| hvac jobs | 27,100 | Looking for work |
| hvac training | 22,200 | Career research |
US monthly search volume, Google Keyword Planner, October 2026. Google groups close variants, so a row can read higher than in other tools. 1,274,600 searches a month, and not a repair call among them.
Negative keywords for HVAC companies. Free, no email, no form.
Take this and use it, whether or not you ever become a customer. It costs nothing, takes about ten minutes, and at HVAC click prices it will save you more this month than any bid change you could make. Every term below is safe to paste as it stands: where a word appears in both a shopping search and a paying one, the list blocks the phrase instead. Edit the last group to match what your company does not do. If you would rather build the next one yourself from your own search terms report, the method behind a negative keyword list is written up separately - it is the same job, done monthly.
- Doing it themselves
- how to fix, how to repair, how to clean, how to install, how to replace, how to reset, how to charge, how to test, how to wire, how do i, diy, do it yourself, youtube, tutorial, step by step, troubleshooting, troubleshooting guide, why is my ac, why is my furnace, why does my ac, why does my furnace, what causes, recharge kit
- Parts, filters and tools
- hvac parts, replacement parts, capacitor for sale, buy capacitor, capacitor kit, furnace filters, furnace filter sizes, air filter sizes, air filters for sale, buy air filters, merv rating, ac coil cleaner, coil cleaner spray, foaming coil cleaner, refrigerant for sale, freon for sale, hvac tools, manifold gauge, gauge set, vacuum pump, recovery machine
- Shopping for units and thermostats
- portable air conditioner, portable ac, window ac, window air conditioner, best thermostat, best smart thermostat, thermostat reviews, thermostat wiring, thermostat wiring diagram, thermostat batteries, nest thermostat, ecobee, for sale, buy, amazon, walmart, home depot, lowes, costco, wholesale, hvac supply, hvac supplies, hvac supply house, hvac distributor, johnstone supply
- Jobs, training and pay
- hvac jobs, hvac job, hvac jobs near me, hvac salary, hvac technician salary, hvac pay, hvac apprenticeship, hvac apprentice, hvac helper, hvac internship, hvac school, hvac schools near me, hvac training, hvac certification, hvac certification online, hvac license, hvac exam, epa 608, nate certification, hvac trade school, hvac course, hvac classes, hvac career, how to become an hvac, hiring hvac, now hiring, job openings, resume, indeed, ziprecruiter, glassdoor, hvac union
- Not your kind of work
- hvac software, hvac app, invoice template, estimate template, load calculator, manual j, manual d, hvac blueprint, hvac symbols, duct sizing, hvac franchise, business for sale, hvac business plan, start an hvac business, hvac contractor insurance, hvac bond, car ac, auto ac, automotive ac, car air conditioning, rv ac, refrigerator, freezer, walk-in cooler, ice machine
- Free, warranty and someone else's problem
- free advice, free repair, free parts, home warranty, warranty claim, manufacturer warranty, landlord responsibility, tenant rights, my landlord, who pays for, class action, recall
- Manuals, logins and definitions
- owners manual, owner's manual, installation manual, user manual, manual pdf, parts diagram, login, customer portal, customer service number, app download, what is a heat pump, what is seer, what is a furnace, what is hvac, hvac meaning, hvac stands for, how does a heat pump work, how does an ac work, hvac diagram, wikipedia, reddit, pictures, images, animation, simulator
Eight things not to block, because each one is a customer in disguise. Do not block “cost”, “price” or “quote”: somebody asking what a new furnace costs is a customer with a wallet open, and “furnace replacement cost” runs 14,800 searches a month. Do not block “install” or “installation”, which are your best-paid jobs. Do not block “rebate” or “financing”, because a homeowner pricing a replacement asks both. Do not blanket-block “near me”, even though “hvac supply near me” is in the table at 74,000 a month - “hvac repair near me” is 49,500 and “ac repair near me” about 201,000 - so add “hvac supply near me” as a phrase instead. Do not block “thermostat” on its own, because “thermostat installation” and “thermostat not working” both book a visit; the list blocks the shopping phrases around it. Do not block “mini split” or “heat pump” on their own if you install them: the shoppers are in the table, but so are the installs. Do not block “technician” or “repair” on their own - “hvac technician near me” is a buyer. And do not block “freon” or “recharge” as bare words, because “ac recharge near me” is a booking; the list blocks “freon for sale” and “recharge kit”. If you service window or portable units, take those phrases out of the shopping group.
Seasons, capacity, and six other things that matter more than your bids
- The budget should follow the weather, one month ahead. The planner's monthly figures for the year to August 2026 are blunt: “furnace repair near me” ran 27,100 in May and 246,000 in January, and “emergency AC repair” ran 5,400 in February and 60,500 in July. A budget that stays flat through that is wrong twice a year. Raise the heating budget before the first cold week and the cooling budget before the first hot one, not during it, and let the off-season campaign sit paused instead of spending to keep a number alive.
- Turn the ads down when the schedule is full. The worst week of July is also the week every technician is booked. A click on “emergency AC repair” that lands on a full calendar is paid for and wasted, at the highest price in the trade: the low end of Google's top-of-page range for that phrase is about $102. Decide in advance the day the emergency campaign gets cut back, and who has the login to do it. Capacity is a bidding decision.
- Three buyers, three campaigns. Someone with a dead system tonight, someone pricing a replacement over a week, and someone considering a maintenance plan are three different purchases. The emergency searcher needs a time. The replacement shopper needs a written price and a reason to call you rather than three other companies. The maintenance buyer needs to know what is included. Mixed into one campaign they share a budget and a bid, and the cheap, frequent repair search wins every time.
- A cheap big term is a warning, not a bargain. “HVAC near me” runs about 246,000 searches a month, and the low end of its top-of-page range is under 50 cents. “AC repair near me” runs about 201,000 and starts near $28. The difference is advertisers voting with money about which clicks turn into work. A term that costs nothing to buy is usually full of the people in the table above.
- Replacement is won on a number and a fast call back. A new system is the biggest ticket you sell, and the person searching “AC replacement cost” (9,900 a month) is comparing three companies at once. Lead with how you quote: a written price, same-week estimates, financing you actually offer. Only claim what is true, because the quote is where a homeowner checks.
- Manufacturer names need a rule of their own. Carrier, Trane, Lennox, Rheem, Goodman and Daikin each draw 40,000 to 110,000 searches a month. A search for a brand alone is usually someone with the unit or with the manufacturer, not a homeowner choosing who to call, and “carrier” is also a phone company and an airline. Bid on a brand only with a service word beside it, “trane repair” rather than “trane”, and only for brands you really service. Using a brand name in ad text you do not carry gets ads disapproved.
- Commercial is a different buyer entirely. “Commercial HVAC” runs about 14,800 searches a month, and the person searching it is a facilities manager with a contract to place, not a homeowner with a warm living room. Different ad, different page, different follow-up. Sharing a campaign with residential wastes both.
What a call is actually worth to you
Four numbers you already know, and the one figure most HVAC accounts are run without. The click price is a planning figure, not a promise: Google's planner puts the low end of the top-of-page bid for “AC repair near me” at about $28, and the average click in your account will differ, so replace it with the average cost per click from your own campaigns. The job value and the win rate are only a plausible middle for a company that sells repairs and the odd replacement, so those are the two to overwrite first. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is stored.
$540
What one call brings in
19
Clicks you can buy per call before the ads cost more than the work brings in
143
Clicks that budget buys in a month
7.4
Calls a month to cover the ad spend in revenue
So every 19 clicks has to produce one call just for the spend to come back as revenue. Worse than that and the ads cost more than the work they bring in, however good they look.
Two things this cannot do for you. It works on what the work brings IN, not what you keep, so your real break-even sits at your gross profit on the job rather than its price - at a 30 percent margin it is roughly a third of the number above. And the one figure nobody can guess for you is how many of those clicks actually pick up the phone or fill in the form. That is not a benchmark you read somewhere, it is a measurement, and it is the reason conversion tracking goes in before the budget goes up. A capacitor swap and a full system replacement arrive through the same kind of click, so use the average across a real month rather than your best job of the year. If most of your money is replacements, run the calculator twice.
The whole method, written out
This is the order AdPilot's agent works in, written out so you can do it by hand. We publish it because an HVAC owner who follows it will end up with a working account, and because a method you can check beats one you have to take on faith.
Give the build a weekend. Then an hour every other week after that, and a longer look at the account twice a year, when the season turns. The build is the easy half. The calendar is where small accounts quietly die.
Not an HVAC company? The same build for the other trades
- 1
Start with what buyers actually type
Twelve of the biggest HVAC searches in the US come from people who will never call a technician. Together that is about 1,274,600 a month: 951,000 shopping for a unit or a thermostat, 200,700 buying a part or a filter, 122,900 looking for the career. “Portable air conditioner” on its own is 450,000 a month. Those searchers are comparing fans and prices on a phone. Their clicks are cheap, and cheap is exactly why they drain a budget before a real repair gets a look in.
The buyers are a much shorter list, and they cost more per click for a reason. “AC repair near me” runs about 201,000 a month and the low end of its top-of-page range is about $28. “Furnace repair near me” runs about 90,500 and starts near $23. “Emergency AC repair” is a smaller pool, 14,800 a month on average, and costs the most in the trade, around $102 at the low end. Then the planned work: “AC installation near me”, 40,500 at about $20, “HVAC maintenance plan”, 3,600 at about $24, and “AC replacement cost”, 9,900 at about $12. You read intent straight off the words. A city name, “near me”, “emergency”, “cost”, “quote”, “same day” - that is someone with a wallet already open. “How to”, “DIY”, “salary”, “window unit” - that is someone who wants your knowledge, or a gadget, for free.
Then run one more test on every term before it goes near the account. Read it cold, with nobody explaining what you do, and ask whether it could match a search for something you do not sell. Bare “hvac” is 450,000 searches a month of schools, jobs, software and supply houses. “Thermostat” is 165,000 a month of shoppers. A one-word term is never the seed of a small campaign, and no match type will save it.
- Say it out loud for every term: who types this, and what do they want in the next hour?
- Buyer words: near me, repair, emergency, same day, your town, replacement cost, quote, installation, maintenance plan.
- Reader words: how to, DIY, window unit, portable, thermostat reviews, capacitor, filters, salary, jobs, school.
- Three words beats one. 40 searches a month with buy intent beats 40,000 without.
- Volume is what a word costs you. It is not what the word is worth.
Ten of the biggest HVAC searches: five buyers, five to block
- ac repair near me - ~201,000/mo, low end of top-of-page ~$28 - BUY. The core of the cooling season.
- furnace repair near me - ~90,500/mo, ~$23 - BUY. Your winter equivalent.
- emergency ac repair - ~14,800/mo, ~$102 - BUY. Best money in the trade if the schedule has room.
- ac installation near me - ~40,500/mo, ~$20 - BUY. The bridge to replacement work.
- ac replacement cost - ~9,900/mo, ~$12 - BUY. Someone comparing three quotes.
- portable air conditioner - 450,000/mo - SHOPPER. Block it.
- smart thermostat - 201,000/mo - SHOPPER. Block it.
- ac capacitor - 60,500/mo - buying the part to fit themselves. Block it.
- furnace filters - 33,100/mo - buying a filter. Block it.
- hvac school - 33,100/mo - someone deciding on a career. Block it.
- 2
Read your own site the way a stranger reads it
Every ad points at one page, and that page decides whether the click turns into a call. The homepage is the wrong page for almost everything. A homepage answers “who are you”; a house at 88 degrees asks “who is coming today”. Two honest exceptions: somebody searching your business name, and a one-service business whose homepage is the offer. If your reason is that there is no deeper page to send them to, that is not an exception, that is a missing page wearing a disguise.
So open the page the repair ads will point at, on a phone, and read it like someone standing in a hot hallway. Is the service and the town in the first heading? Can you tap the number without scrolling? Somewhere on that page it should say what a visit costs, or at least that you quote before you start. A local campaign landing on a page with no phone number above the fold is a finished diagnosis on its own, and it is common.
Replacement quotes need their own page, and it is the one most HVAC sites lack. A homeowner pricing a new system wants to know how you quote, how soon, what the financing looks like and what is included, in that order. A repair page with a “new systems” link at the bottom does not do that job. While you are in there, write down what you do not do: duct cleaning, boilers, refrigeration, commercial, window units. That list becomes your negative keywords in step five.
- The first big heading names the service and the town: AC Repair, Raleigh.
- A tap-to-call number in the first screenful on a phone. Not only in the footer.
- Your hours in plain words: answered 24/7, or the hours you really pick up.
- A price anchor: service call fee, diagnostic fee, or “price agreed before we start”.
- Proof with a number in it: years trading, systems installed, license number, two reviews.
- A separate replacement page with how you quote and what financing you actually offer.
- One thing to do. Not four.
- 3
Build the shape: three campaigns, five ad groups
A campaign is a budget plus a goal, and that is the only reason to open a new one. Not one per keyword, not one per match type, not one per device or zip code. For an HVAC company there is one more good reason, which is the calendar: cooling repair, heating repair and replacement quotes are three campaigns because they switch on and off at different times and want different budgets. An ad group is one theme: keywords close enough in meaning that a single ad answers all of them honestly. “Emergency AC repair”, “24 hour AC repair” and “AC out of order” are one group. “AC installation” is a different group, because it needs a different headline and a different page.
The monthly planner figures are the argument for the calendar. In the year to August 2026, “furnace repair near me” ran 90,500 in September, 110,000 in October and November, 165,000 in December, 246,000 in January, 201,000 in February, then 74,000, 49,500, 27,100 and 33,100 through March to June, 33,100 in July and 40,500 in August. “Emergency AC repair” ran 18,100 in September, then between 5,400 and 14,800 a month from October through June, 60,500 in July and 33,100 in August. “HVAC maintenance” stayed between 40,500 and 60,500 in eleven of twelve months, with 90,500 in July. A heating campaign that spends evenly all year pays most of its money in months with a fifth of the demand.
Now do the arithmetic out loud before you set the budget. “AC repair near me” starts near $28 a click at the low end of Google's top-of-page range, which is a planning figure and not what you will pay on average. At $150 a day that is about five clicks, which sits right at the line where a month of data starts to mean anything. “Emergency AC repair” starts near $102: $150 a day buys one or two clicks, and one or two clicks a day tells you nothing for weeks. Two honest ways out, and neither one is a wider keyword list. Fund the emergency terms properly, or put the first weeks into the standard repair terms and add the emergency group once the account has numbers. What kills the month is spreading the same money over six campaigns to “test” - one click a day each, and thirty days later you have nothing.
Match types: start everything as phrase match. Later, when a specific search has actually produced calls, add it again as exact so it gets its own ad and its own page. Leave broad match switched off. Broad only behaves itself when three things are true at once - a conversion-based bid strategy, tracking that counts real visits, and a maintained negative list - and under about 30 conversions a month it will spend your month proving it cannot tell a buyer from a reader.
Budget arithmetic, done before the campaign exists (planning figures)
- Cooling repair at $150/day = about 5 clicks a day at ~$28, a ceiling of about $4,560 a month. That is the floor for reading a month of data.
- Emergency terms at ~$102 a click on the same $150/day = one or two clicks a day. Either lift this budget or start with the standard repair terms.
- Heating repair at $120/day from October to March = a ceiling of about $3,650 a month, paused the rest of the year. A paused campaign keeps its history.
- Replacement quotes at $100/day on terms starting near $12 = about 8 clicks a day, a ceiling of about $3,040 a month.
- If one click in ten becomes a call (your rate will differ), 8 clicks a day is most of a call a day, enough to judge a replacement campaign inside a month.
- Google may spend up to double the daily budget on one day, but never more than 30.4x it in a month. $150/day is a $4,560 ceiling, not a promise of exactly $150.
- The same money across six campaigns = one click a day each. Thirty days later you have 30 clicks and no verdict.
None of this is difficult. It is a long run of small decisions, and each one quietly costs money when it goes the wrong way. The agent makes them for you and shows you every single one before it touches the account.
Start free - no credit cardFree for 7 days. No card, no call, cancel whenever.- 4
Write the ad, then read it cold
A responsive search ad takes 3 to 15 headlines at 30 characters each and 2 to 4 descriptions at 90 characters. Aim for 10 to 12 headlines and three or four descriptions, but only genuinely different ones - a near-duplicate is worse than an empty slot, because it burns a combination Google could have tested and teaches it nothing. Count the characters yourself, spaces included. Google bolds the words in your ad that match what the person typed, in whichever slot they land in, which is the real reason to put “AC repair” into a headline in the searcher's own words.
Almost nobody does what comes next. Google serves any three of your headlines together, in an order you do not choose. You are not shipping twelve headlines, you are shipping every trio they can form, and you pay full price for each one that serves. So before you save the ad, find the three headlines that name the job least, read those three together as one ad, and ask whether a stranger could say what is being sold. “Fast, Friendly, Reliable” and “Quality You Can Trust” and “Serving Your Family Since 2009” is a finished ad for a roofer, a florist or a car lot. It says nothing about air.
One job per headline, and the job never repeats even though the subject does. “Emergency AC Repair Raleigh”, “AC Repair Price Up Front” and “AC Tech At Your Door Today” all say AC and duplicate nothing, because one is the search term, one is price and one is speed. What kills a set is five headlines that all make the same trust claim with the words shuffled. Vary the length on purpose too: if every headline is 29 or 30 characters, Google often only ever fits two of them on the page.
Drafts, counted, with two that failed and their fixes
- Emergency AC Repair Raleigh (27) - the search term, spelled how they type it.
- AC Not Cooling? Call Now (24) - the problem in their words.
- AC Repair Price Up Front (24) - the risk claim, once.
- AC Tech At Your Door Today (26) - the speed claim, once.
- 4,800 AC Repairs Done (21) - proof, with a number in it.
- WEAK: Quality You Can Trust (21) - could be a roofer, a florist, anyone.
- FIXED: Cooling Back On Tonight (23)
- WEAK: We Keep You Comfortable (23) - comfortable how? Nothing in it says air.
- FIXED: Central AC Repair Raleigh (25)
- 5
The negative list you build before spending a cent
Negatives are not maintenance. They go in before the campaign serves its first impression, because an HVAC campaign without them buys window-unit reviews, thermostat shopping and apprenticeship pages from hour one. Put them at campaign level, and put the biggest one in first: every service you do not offer. That is the single largest source of waste in small trade accounts, and it is the one nobody can write for you.
Now the trap that makes owners say negatives do not work. A negative keyword does not stretch the way a normal keyword does. It will not match a plural and it will not match a synonym. “Filter” does not block “filters”. “Cheap” leaves “inexpensive” running all month. And “job” will not touch “jobs”, which is the one that gets everybody. So add both forms, every time, and read the list back asking which word you have only put in once.
Pick the narrowest form that stops the waste. Negative broad blocks any search containing all your words in any order, which is blunt: “free” as a negative broad also kills “free estimate”, and “free estimate” is a buyer. Negative phrase blocks those words in that order, which is usually what you want. And watch “hiring” - “hiring an hvac company” is somebody about to book you, so block “now hiring” and “hiring hvac” as phrases and leave the bare word alone.
The day-one list for a residential HVAC company
- how to fix, how to repair, how to clean, how do i, diy, do it yourself, youtube, tutorial, step by step, troubleshooting
- portable air conditioner, portable ac, window ac, window air conditioner, best thermostat, thermostat reviews, nest thermostat, ecobee
- hvac parts, capacitor for sale, furnace filters, air filters for sale, ac coil cleaner, refrigerant for sale, freon for sale, hvac tools, manifold gauge
- hvac supply, hvac supplies, hvac supply house, johnstone supply, wholesale, for sale, amazon, home depot, lowes, costco
- hvac jobs, hvac jobs near me, hvac salary, hvac apprenticeship, hvac school, hvac training, hvac certification, hvac license, epa 608, now hiring, job openings
- hvac software, invoice template, estimate template, load calculator, manual j, hvac franchise, business for sale
- Everything you do not do: car ac, auto ac, rv ac, refrigerator, freezer, walk-in cooler, boiler, duct cleaning, commercial
- Careful: never bare “free”, never bare “cheap”, never bare “thermostat”, never bare “freon”, never bare “technician”, never bare “install”. Every one of them has a paying customer behind it - “free estimate”, “cheap ac repair near me”, “thermostat not working”, “ac recharge near me”, “hvac technician near me”, “ac installation near me” are all bookings, and a one-word negative kills them whether you set it to phrase or broad.
Everything past this point is the work that never finishes: reading search terms, adding negatives, checking what the budget did overnight. That is exactly the part the agent takes off your hands.
Start free - no credit cardFree for 7 days. No card, no call, cancel whenever.- 6
Count booked visits, not clicks
Most HVAC accounts measure nothing, and then get judged on clicks, which tell you nothing about whether the schedule filled. If your work arrives as a phone call, Google Ads will build the call conversion for you: it shows a forwarding number in the ad and counts any call longer than a set length as a lead. The default is 60 seconds. That is a judgment, not a law - if your calls are “can you come this afternoon”, 30 seconds is the honest threshold. Ten minutes of setup, and the phone starts telling you which keyword paid for it.
If the work arrives as a form instead, which is how many replacement quotes arrive, you need a conversion on the page people land on after they hit send, which means pasting two bits of code Google gives you. Two things to check before you go anywhere near a developer. First, auto-tagging: if it is off, Analytics can never tie a booked job back to the click that made it, and perfectly good campaigns look dead and get paused. Second, look for conversions Google has already created from your Analytics and left switched off. That is a switch, not a project, and it is sitting there in a lot of accounts.
Then two numbers only you have. What is one lead worth - average job value times the share you close - because without it Google treats a $200 capacitor swap and a $12,000 system replacement as the same event, and will cheerfully buy you more of the first. Give a replacement quote request a higher value than a repair call. And when can you answer? Ads run 24 hours by default. If the report shows clicks at 3am and the phone rang out on all of them, you paid for every one of those people to call the next company on the page.
- Turn auto-tagging on if it is off. One switch, no downside.
- Look for conversions imported from Analytics but left disabled. Switch them on.
- Create a call conversion, with a call length that matches how your calls really go.
- Give a replacement quote request a higher value than a repair call.
- Put a value on a lead: average job x your close rate. Your numbers, not a benchmark.
- Set an ad schedule to the hours you answer, unless someone genuinely answers at 3am.
- Google counts from the day you switch it on and never backfills. The first booked job is the proof, not the setup.
- 7
The loop that keeps it alive, week by week and season by season
Day one and two, you check two things and nothing else: is it spending, and is the ad approved. Zero spend on day two is not a slow start, it is a fault - a disapproved ad, a target set too tight, a location that excludes the town you are sitting in. Find which one. An account that cannot serve looks exactly like an account that is still warming up, and the silence gets blamed on your keywords.
Day seven, open the search terms report and do one thing: add negatives. Do not touch bids, budgets or targets, do not harvest yet, and do not draw conclusions - week one is noise, and a bidding strategy that is still learning will punish you for fiddling. Day fourteen to thirty is the real read. Cost per call by ad group. Search terms again, this time for both waste and gold: any search that produced a call goes back in as an exact match keyword with its own ad. That harvest is the whole game, and it never stops being the whole game.
Then the part that is special to this trade: twice a year the account changes shape. Three weeks before the first cold week, switch the heating campaign on and read its negatives again, because the wording of winter searches is not the wording of summer ones. Three weeks before the first hot week, do the same for cooling. At the end of each season, pause what is finished, keep its history, and write down the date you will switch it back on. The searches keep arriving whether you read them or not, and in this trade they arrive faster than anywhere.
Two weeks of search terms, and what each row earns
- “emergency ac repair raleigh” - 6 clicks, 2 calls -> add as exact match.
- “ac not cooling raleigh nc” - 5 clicks, 1 call -> add as exact match.
- “hvac replacement quote raleigh” - 4 clicks, 1 form -> add as exact match on the replacement campaign.
- “why is my ac blowing warm air” - 9 clicks, 0 calls -> negative phrases “why is my ac” and “why does my ac”. Your day-one list blocked “how to fix”; it never saw this wording.
- “best smart thermostat for heat pump” - 3 clicks, 0 calls -> negative phrase “best smart thermostat”. Do not block the bare word “thermostat”: “thermostat installation” is a buyer.
- “window ac installation near me” - 4 clicks, 0 calls -> negative phrases “window ac” and “window air conditioner”, because you do not do them.
- “hvac apprenticeship raleigh” - 3 clicks, 0 calls -> add “apprenticeship” and “apprentice”. You blocked one form and not the other.
- Every one of those got past a list that was already blocking “how to fix”, “hvac jobs”, “portable air conditioner” and “capacitor for sale”. That is the point of the every-other-week read: the list is never finished.
- And these are only the terms Google shows you. Low-volume searches sit below a privacy threshold, so the rows never add up to the full spend - never claim you have accounted for every dollar.
One finished ad for an emergency cooling group
This is the ad for one ad group - emergency cooling repair in Raleigh - written for an HVAC company that does not exist. Twelve headlines, counted by hand, and one description. Google's floor is two descriptions and its ceiling is four, but it shows one or two of them depending on the space it has, so what you see below is the one written to work alone. Nobody ever sees the whole ad you wrote, and that is the part most people get wrong on their first try.
junipercomfort.exampleAC-Repair/Raleigh
Emergency AC Repair Raleigh|AC Not Cooling? Call Now|Same-Day AC Repair
No cooling? A licensed HVAC technician can be at your door today. Price agreed up front.
- AC Repair
- Heat Pump Repair
- New AC Quote
- Maintenance Plans
The other 9 headlines you wrote
Google picks three of the 12 for every auction and puts them in an order you don't choose. That is why each one has to make sense next to any other.
- AC Tech At Your Door Today
- AC Repair Price Up Front
- Licensed, Insured HVAC Techs
- 4,800 AC Repairs Done
- Evening AC Repairs, Weekends
- Central AC Repair Raleigh
- Heat Pump Repair, Same Day
- Cooling Back On Tonight
- Book AC Repair Online
- The search term goes in one or two headlines, not twelve.. Google bolds the words that match what somebody typed, wherever that headline lands, which is why “Emergency AC Repair Raleigh” is in there in exactly the words a hot homeowner uses. But Google's own guidance asks for at least three headlines without the keyword in them, so the rest say AC a different way instead of repeating the term.
- Every headline names the trade or the actual job, including the short ones.. Pick the weakest trio deliberately, because any three you happen to sample will pass. Here the three that name the subject least are “Cooling Back On Tonight”, “Same-Day AC Repair” and “Licensed, Insured HVAC Techs” - and every one of them still says cooling, AC or HVAC. Read those three together as one ad: a stranger still knows exactly what is for sale. That is the test. Any set whose weakest trio reads like “Full Control | Works For You | Start Today” is unfinished, however good the other nine are.
- Twelve headlines, twelve different jobs.. The search term itself, the problem in the customer's words, same-day, the speed claim, the price claim, the license, a proof number, evenings and weekends, central AC, heat pumps, the outcome and online booking. What is not in there is the same trust claim four times over. “Trusted”, “reliable”, “you're in safe hands” and “local family business” are one claim, and it gets one slot.
- The 4,800 in the ad is doing a negative keyword's job.. Specifics are the cheapest filter you own. People who were never going to pay for a technician read a price or a count and do not click, and you do not pay for them. Use a real number - the 4,800 here belongs to a company that does not exist, so write the figure your own records support. If you quote before starting, say that, which is what “AC Repair Price Up Front” is for.
- Two descriptions minimum, and it shows one or two depending on the space it has.. Google will not save the ad with fewer than two and will not take more than four, then it decides which one a searcher sees. The one above carries the problem, the license and the day. Write a second that carries the money - the price agreed before you start - and a third only if you have a claim the first two do not make. Paraphrasing the first in different words just hands Google a weaker twin to serve on your dollar.
- The lengths are deliberately uneven: 18 to 28 characters.. Google shows up to three headlines, but only when they fit the space. A set where everything is 29 or 30 characters often gets squeezed down to two, and you lose a third of your ad. Write a few genuinely short ones that still name the trade.
- Four sitelinks, and they are the thing everybody skips.. An ad without extensions takes up visibly less of the page than every competitor who has them, and it costs nothing to add. The sitelinks here catch the second question - do you do heat pumps, what does a new system cost - without touching the main landing page.
The shape an HVAC company on a real budget actually runs
Three campaigns, five ad groups, built around the calendar. Each ad group is narrow enough that a single ad answers every keyword in it and points at a single page - and no narrower than that, because on this budget five groups is already close to the point where each one sees too few calls to tell you anything. All keywords start as phrase match; exact match is earned later by the searches that produce calls.
Cooling repair - Raleigh
$150/day in the cooling season, a $4,560 monthly ceiling, paused in the cold months. The standard repair terms start near $28 a click at the low end of Google's top-of-page range and the emergency terms near $102, so expect somewhere between 2 and 5 clicks a day. If the blended price lands near the top, you are under the floor where a month of data can be read: lift the budget, or drop the emergency group until you can fund it.
Emergency cooling repair
emergency ac repair, 24 hour ac repair, ac out of order, ac not cooling, after hours ac repair, same day ac repair, ac stopped working
Standard AC repair
ac repair near me, air conditioning repair near me, central ac repair, heat pump repair, ac repair raleigh, hvac repair near me
Heating repair - Raleigh
$120/day from October to March, a $3,648 monthly ceiling, paused from spring to the first cold week. A paused campaign keeps its history, which is the point.
Furnace and heat repair
furnace repair near me, no heat, furnace not working, heating repair near me, emergency furnace repair, heat pump not heating
Replacement quotes - Raleigh
$100/day all year, a $3,040 monthly ceiling. These terms start nearer $12 a click, so the same money buys more clicks than repair does, and the job behind each one is the biggest you sell.
AC and heat pump replacement
ac replacement, ac replacement cost, new ac unit installation, hvac system replacement, central air installation, heat pump installation
Why it is shaped like this. Cooling and heating are split because they switch on at different times and need different budgets, not because the keywords look different. Emergency and standard repair are separate groups because the first needs a time promise and the second a price, but both sit in one campaign so they share a budget and the cheaper group cannot starve the dearer one. Replacement quotes live in their own campaign because the buyer, the page and the value of the job are all different. Three things are missing on purpose. Your own name belongs in a small brand campaign, but only once someone else is bidding on it; check first, because if you are top of the free results and nobody is bidding, you are mostly buying clicks you would get for nothing. Maintenance plans are a real business and a separate decision, worth their own group once repair is paying. Commercial HVAC is a different buyer with a longer sale and deserves its own campaign and budget once total spend is past roughly $2,000 a month. Adding any of the three now would just starve the campaigns that are working.
Two honest ways to do this
Nothing above needs a login you do not already have, a developer, or a retainer. An HVAC owner with a laptop and a stubborn streak can build every part of it over a weekend, and it will work.
What it really costs is attention, on a schedule that does not care what kind of week you had. The account does not know your lead technician is out or that the schedule has been full since Monday. It just keeps spending.
Doing it by hand
- A weekend for the build: the research, the structure, twelve counted headlines, the negative list, the tracking.
- An hour every other week after that, and a proper reset twice a year when the season turns. The week you are too busy is the week it starts wasting money, and the busy weeks are the ones you are in this for.
- The mistakes that cost the most make no noise: a disapproved ad that never serves, a heating budget still spending in July, emergency clicks arriving to a full schedule, brand and non-brand blended so the numbers look healthier than they are.
- One missed negative on the emergency terms costs roughly what Google's planner puts at $102 a click at the low end. A handful of those in a month and a good part of a repair job is gone for nothing.
- Nothing tells you it is wrong. Google will take the money for “portable air conditioner” all month and send you a tidy report about it.
What the agent does instead
- One Google sign-in connects your Ads account. No API keys, no developer, no onboarding call - and if your site needs a tracking snippet, the agent creates the conversion and hands you Google's code with a copy button.
- The agent reads the account itself, works through it the way a consultant would, and writes down each change in plain English: what it does, why, and what it costs.
- Every change is logged with a snapshot taken first, and every one has a one-click revert and a before and after view.
- It builds whole campaigns, writes the ads, adds negative keywords, changes budgets, bids and targeting. It will not delete a campaign and never touches shared budgets.
- It cannot answer your phone, cannot promise you a ranking, and cannot see what competitors bid. Anyone claiming otherwise is selling you something.
- Free for 7 days, no card. Growth $99/mo, Pro $249/mo. If you would rather never open it, Takeoff is $1,200 to set up plus $500/mo, with a money-back revenue guarantee.
What an HVAC marketing agency charges, and why the bill grows as you do.
Agencies that specialize in the trades bill a monthly retainer plus a percentage of your ad spend. Ten to twenty percent is the usual range. The more heat waves and cold snaps you chase, the larger their share, and the busiest weeks of your year are the ones where it grows the fastest.
Illustrative example. Agencies vary, so check your own contract. The arithmetic is on the page so you can run it against your own invoice.
What Google Ads management actually costs, in numbers
You spend $2,000/month on ads
HVAC marketing agency
$1,300/mo
$1,000 retainer + 15% of $2,000 ($300) - on top of the $2,000 Google already takes
AdPilot
$99/mo
Flat, whatever you spend
You spend $8,000/month on ads
HVAC marketing agency
$2,200/mo
$1,000 retainer + 15% of $8,000 ($1,200) - you grew, so their invoice grew
AdPilot
$99/mo
Flat, whatever you spend
You spend $25,000/month on ads
HVAC marketing agency
$4,750/mo
15% alone is $3,750/mo, with the retainer still on top - and it climbs every time you scale
AdPilot
$99/mo
Flat, whatever you spend
At $8,000 a month in ad spend, that agency takes more than $26,000 out of the business in a year, and the invoice grows every time you add a truck. AdPilot is one flat monthly price and it does not move when your spend does. That difference is a lot of service calls.
Google Ads management for HVAC companies, written the way a good consultant would hand it over.
What you actually pay an HVAC marketing agency for is the hands-on part. Building a campaign per buyer, switching heating and cooling on and off with the weather, digging through search terms for money leaks, matching the hours to who is on call, writing ads that produce booked visits rather than clicks. AdPilot's AI does that work and shows its reasoning every time.
Examples of what the cards look like - not results from your account
Builds your campaigns
Build a separate Replacement Quotes campaign: its own budget, its own landing page, 8 ads that lead with the quote rather than the repair, and 30 keywords chosen for people pricing a new system.
Proposed change
What it’s doing: Writing the whole campaign for you, ad text included, so nobody has to stare at an empty form. A system replacement and a capacitor swap are different sales and get different campaigns.
Finds wasted spend
You paid 38 times this month for searches containing “furnace filters.” Those people are buying a filter, not booking a technician. Add it as a negative keyword and the spending stops.
Proposed change
What it’s doing: Reading your search terms for money that never turns into a booked visit, then closing the leaks. (A “negative keyword” simply tells Google not to show your ad for that search.)
Follows the season
“Furnace repair near me” is about to go from 40,500 searches a month to 110,000. Your heating campaign has been paused since May and its budget is still last winter's. Time to switch it on.
Proposed change
What it’s doing: Watching the calendar and the account together, so the heating budget is live before the first cold snap and the cooling budget comes down when the heat does.
Drafts better ads
Your repair ads and your replacement ads say the same thing. Here are 4 headlines written for someone with a dead system and a quote to compare, built around the written price rather than years in business.
Proposed change
What it’s doing: Writing ads per buyer instead of per company, so the ad matches what the person typed while the house was getting hot.
Set up in minutes. No PPC background needed.
You don’t need to know what a “match type” or a “quality score” is. AdPilot does the analysis and explains everything in plain English.
- 1
Connect your Google Ads account
One secure Google sign-in - nothing to install, no API keys, no technical setup. AdPilot analyzes your account and never changes anything until you approve it, one tap at a time. Disconnect anytime.
- 2
Answer a few plain questions
Tell AdPilot your goal - more calls? more sales? a lower cost per customer? - and a couple of simple numbers about your business, like what one customer is worth to you. Plain words, no jargon.
- 3
Approve improvements with one tap
AdPilot reads your account - or builds you a brand-new campaign from scratch - and hands you concrete moves as plain-language cards, each explaining what it does and why. Tap Approve on the ones you like. Skip the rest.
Free 7 days · No credit card · You approve every change · Cancel anytime
A heat wave does not wait for the monthly report.
Agencies review on a schedule. The weather does not.
On a monthly reporting cycle you find out in week five that week two went badly. The budget has gone, the calls rang out, and the jobs went to whoever answered. AdPilot surfaces the problem while there is still money left to redirect.
Catching a wasted search term on the Tuesday it starts, instead of in next month's summary, is the whole thing. One is steering. The other is a post-mortem on a season you cannot run again until next year.
AdPilot vs an HVAC marketing agency
A fair comparison, without a straw man in sight.
What you pay
HVAC agency: A retainer, usually with a percentage of ad spend on top. Their cut rises in your busy season, which is exactly when your own margin is under pressure.
AdPilot: One flat monthly price. It does not move when your ad spend does, in a heat wave or a freeze.
How fast a problem gets fixed
HVAC agency: You raise it, it joins a queue, you hear back next week. Meanwhile the heating budget keeps running into spring.
AdPilot: The account is read every morning. A leak that starts today is in front of you tomorrow, while the month can still be saved.
Who holds the account
HVAC agency: You hand over access. Changes happen and you read about them in the report.
AdPilot: You keep the keys. Every change is logged, with a snapshot taken first and a one-click revert behind it.
Conflicts of interest
HVAC agency: Trades agencies routinely take several HVAC companies in the same metro. Your budget may be funding a competitor's learning curve, and you are bidding against their other client.
AdPilot: It is software. It works on your account only. Nobody is splitting their attention between you and the company across town, and no account manager is carrying your ideas to them.
Contract
HVAC agency: Six or twelve month minimum terms are common in home services marketing.
AdPilot: Month to month, cancel anytime. Free 7 days first, no card.
Free 7 days · No credit card · You approve every change · Cancel anytime
You keep the account, and nobody has to be phoned to change a budget.
Most HVAC owners never learn how their own Google Ads account works. Nobody explains it, and an agency has little reason to start. AdPilot runs the opposite way. Every change tells you:
- What it changes - for example, pause a keyword that spent $412 and booked no repairs.
- Why it helps - the argument behind it, not only the instruction.
- What it is based on - figures taken from your own account.
A snapshot is saved before anything is touched. Then a before and after view shows what happened to cost per booked visit, clicks and spend, in words that do not require a marketing course. After a season or two you know which levers actually fill the schedule, and which ones just filled the report.
Flat, predictable pricing. It never grows with your ad spend.
Start with a free 7-day trial. No card. Pick a plan at the end, or walk away. Every plan is flat, so whether the business spends $2,000 a month on ads or $30,000 in a January freeze, your AdPilot price is the same. We never take a percentage of your spend.
Full plan details on the pricing page.
AdPilot is new - and we’d rather earn your trust than fake it.
We could plaster this page with five-star quotes and a “trusted by 10,000 businesses” banner. We won’t - because AdPilot is new, and inventing proof would be lying to you. Instead, here’s what actually protects you:
- You risk nothing to try it. 7 days free, no credit card. If it isn’t useful, you walk away having spent nothing.
- Your account is never at risk. Nothing is ever applied without your one-tap approval, a snapshot is saved before every edit, every change has one-click revert, and a full audit log records it. The worst case is a suggestion you don’t like - so you just don’t approve it.
- Guardrails you can’t trip by accident. AdPilot never deletes campaigns and never touches shared budgets. Some doors simply don’t exist.
- Built by an operator, not a VC-funded black box. Software made to give small businesses the Google Ads work an agency charges a retainer for - without agency prices or the loss of control.
Judge us on the work, the math, and the safeguards - on your own numbers, not our adjectives.
Questions, answered straight
Should my HVAC ads run 24/7?
Only if somebody answers at 2am. Emergency AC repair starts near $102 a click at the low end of Google's top-of-page range, and an overnight click that reaches voicemail is the most expensive silence in the trade. If you have a genuine on-call rota, run the hours and lead the ad with it. If you do not, pull the overnight hours and put that money into the hours you can service. AdPilot flags hours where you are paying for clicks that produce no answered calls.
What does HVAC PPC mean, and is it different from Google Ads?
PPC means pay-per-click: you pay when someone clicks your ad. For HVAC companies Google Ads is the biggest PPC platform, so “HVAC PPC” and “Google Ads for HVAC” are almost always the same job. Local Services Ads are the exception inside Google: they charge per lead rather than per click, run from a separate product and sit above the regular results.
How should my budget change with the seasons?
Follow the calendar, one month ahead. In the year to August 2026 the planner shows “furnace repair near me” at 27,100 searches in May and 246,000 in January, and “emergency AC repair” at 5,400 in February and 60,500 in July. Raise heating before the first cold week, raise cooling before the first hot one, and pause the campaign that is out of season instead of letting it spend to keep a number alive. A paused campaign keeps its history, so it does not start from zero.
What should count as a conversion for an HVAC company?
An answered call of real length, a submitted quote request, and the booked job behind either one if your scheduling software can report it. Google counts every call by default, including the ones nobody picked up, so set a minimum call length that reflects a real booking conversation. Give a replacement quote request a higher value than a repair call, or Google will treat a capacitor swap and a new system as the same event.
How do I stop paying for people shopping for thermostats, filters and window units?
Negative keywords, and the list on this page is the starting point. The shopping searches are enormous - 450,000 a month for a portable air conditioner alone - and they slip in through broad match and through Performance Max search themes. Block the shopping phrases, not the bare words, because “thermostat installation” is a booking. AdPilot works through your actual search terms on its regular review of the account and writes the blocks up, so the list keeps growing with the phrasings your own account attracts.
Should repair, replacement and maintenance be separate campaigns?
Repair and replacement, yes. Someone with a dead system tonight and someone pricing a new one over a week are different buyers who want different pages and different budgets. Maintenance plans are worth their own ad group once repair is paying, because the searcher needs to know what is included, not how fast you can come.
Do you handle Local Services Ads and the Google Verified badge?
Local Services Ads sit in a separate Google product with their own screening and lead flow. In late 2025 Google replaced the separate Google Guaranteed badge with a single Google Verified badge. AdPilot works inside your Google Ads account: Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, keywords, budgets, bids, targeting and ad copy. Plenty of HVAC companies run both, and they do different jobs.
Should I bid on Carrier, Trane or Lennox?
Only for brands you really service, and only with a service word beside the name. A search for “carrier” alone draws about 110,000 searches a month and is also a phone company and an airline. “Trane repair” is a homeowner with a unit that needs fixing. Putting a manufacturer's name in your ad text when you do not carry the brand gets ads disapproved.
What about commercial HVAC?
Treat it as its own campaign. “Commercial HVAC” runs about 14,800 searches a month and the person searching is a facilities manager with a contract to place, not a homeowner. Different ad, different landing page, different follow-up. Sharing a campaign with residential wastes both.
Our spend triples in a heat wave. What happens to the price?
Nothing. Your plan price is flat no matter what you spend, which is the opposite of a percentage-of-spend agency, whose invoice peaks in exactly the month your crews are already stretched.
Do I need existing campaigns to start?
No. AdPilot can build the whole thing from nothing - campaign structure, keyword set, negative list and ads. If you already run campaigns, it works on those instead.
What if I don't like a change?
One-click revert. A snapshot is saved before every change, so it rolls straight back to how it was. The audit log shows exactly what happened, old value and new value.
Google Ads in other industries
Every trade wastes its budget differently. These pages take the same apart for businesses next to yours - each one with its own evidence table of the searches that never buy anything.
Plumbers and emergency call-outs
619,000 searches a month that are not customers.
Electricians and electrical contractors
159,400 searches a month that are not customers.
107,800 searches a month that are not customers.
886,000 searches a month that are not customers.
All industries we have researched - or, if you would rather not run any of it yourself, what Google Ads management actually involves.
Takeoff — our done-for-you plan
21–56% more revenue in 3 months — guaranteed, or your money back.
One 1-hour call, then we take it from there: tracking, campaigns, daily optimization — all set up and run for you. You still approve every change with one click. If your tracked revenue hasn’t grown by at least 21% after 3 months, we refund every monthly fee from those 3 months.
$1,200 one-time setup + $500 per month (USD)
*Money-back covers the monthly fees ($500 × up to 3 months), on request within 14 days after the 3-month period ends. The one-time setup fee is non-refundable. Growth is measured on the revenue tracked in your connected ad account — full conditions in the Terms.
See what your HVAC account is actually paying for.
Connect your account with a secure Google sign-in. Answer a few plain questions about the jobs you want, the hours you cover and how far the trucks will travel. Then watch each improvement land with a snapshot and a one-click undo behind it. One flat price. No retainer, no cut of your ad spend, no contract.
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