Total LSA Spend
2025 full year + Q1 2026
Total Leads
all active accounts
Blended CPL
across full dataset
Clients Analyzed
with verified review data
Most contractors have a theory about why their Google Local Services Ads are not performing the way they should.
Their budget is not high enough. Their market is too competitive. LSA leads are just expensive right now. The algorithm changed again.
Sometimes those things are true. But after managing over $1.8 million in LSA ad spend and 18,125 total leads generated across our full client portfolio — roofing companies, plumbers, HVAC contractors, solar installers, and general contractors operating in markets all across the United States — we kept coming back to one variable that predicted the results more reliably than any other.
Not budget. Not market size. Not seasonality. Not how long the account had been running.
Google reviews.
And the gap between contractors who have them and contractors who do not is not small. It is 1,046%.
Here is everything the data shows.
This is not a general guide to Google Local Services Ads for contractors. This is a data study built from real campaign performance across real accounts that Contractor Marketing Pros manages every month.
The dataset covers two periods: the full year 2025 from our annual client reporting, and Q1 2026 (January through March) from our monthly tracking. We split every client into one of three groups based on how many Google reviews they had: under 100, between 100 and 299, and 300 or more. Then we looked at how many leads each group generated and what they paid per lead.
Here is what the data showed, plain and simple: contractors with more Google reviews got more LSA leads. Every time. Across all 97 accounts. It did not matter what market they were in or how big their budget was — the review count kept predicting the outcome. More reviews meant more leads. Fewer reviews meant fewer leads. It was the most reliable pattern in the entire dataset.
2025 full year · 97 clients · 300+ review clients generated 1,046% more leads than those with under 100
Clients with fewer than 100 Google reviews — 53 accounts, averaging 47 reviews each — generated an average of 4.9 leads per month, or 58.8 leads per year.
That is the reality of running Google Local Services Ads at the bottom of the review ladder. Not zero leads, but close to the floor. Many of these accounts had real budgets, were actively managed by our team, and were live in competitive markets. The issue was never the campaign. It was what the Google Business Profile communicated before a homeowner ever saw the ad.
As of July 2025, all LSA reviews are managed entirely through your Google Business Profile — the separate LSA review system no longer exists. That means your GBP review count, rating, and review recency are now the direct inputs into your LSA ranking. Not having enough reviews does not just hurt you in Google’s regular search results. It quietly kills your LSA results at the same time, even when you are paying for ads.
Clients with 100 to 299 reviews — 34 accounts, averaging 171 reviews — generated an average of 11.6 leads per month, or 139.1 leads per year.
That is a 136% improvement over the sub-100 group. Crossing 100 reviews is a meaningful turning point in LSA performance for contractors. The campaign starts to breathe. Impressions climb. Google begins trusting the business enough to surface its ads consistently, and that consistency is what turns an LSA account from a trickle into a real lead channel.
Clients with 300 or more reviews — 10 accounts, averaging 781 reviews — generated an average of 56.2 leads per month, or 674.2 leads per year.
That is a 1,046% increase over contractors with fewer than 100 reviews. At comparable ad spend and comparable cost per lead, the 300+ review tier is generating more than ten times the monthly lead volume of the sub-100 group. These contractors are not chasing leads. They are managing pipelines, forecasting revenue, and building businesses around a predictable inbound flow that most of their competitors simply cannot reach.
Same 2025 data, broken into monthly averages — what contractors actually experience each month
Every number in this table comes from real LSA accounts managed by Contractor Marketing Pros
| Review tier | Clients | Avg reviews | Leads / month | Leads / year | Avg CPL | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 100 reviews | 53 | 47 | 4.9 | 58.8 | $90.49 | Underperforming |
| 100 to 299 reviews | 34 | 171 | 11.6 | 139.1 | $99.41 | Good |
| 300+ reviews | 10 | 781 | 56.2 | 674.2 | $104.93 | Excellent |
Average cost per lead across the three tiers was $90.49 for under-100 accounts, $99.41 for the 100 to 299 group, and $104.93 for the 300+ tier.
Here is what that actually means, because it is easy to read those numbers the wrong way.
Google reviews do not lower your LSA cost per lead. They unlock dramatically more leads at a competitive market rate.
The sub-100 group appears cheapest per lead, but they are generating fewer than 5 leads a month. Their cost per lead looks low because Google is not showing their ads very often, not because their campaign is working well. And no matter how much they increase their budget, the leads do not come. Google will not send them more until the reviews are there.
The 300+ tier generates over 56 leads per month at $104.93 each. The sub-100 tier generates under 5 leads per month at $90.49 each. If you could choose between paying $90 for 5 leads or $105 for 56 leads — which business would you rather own?
That is the actual choice contractors are making when they decide whether or not to prioritize Google review generation alongside their LSA campaigns.
CPL stays competitive across all tiers — the real advantage is volume, not a lower cost per lead
One client in our portfolio puts the clearest face on what this data represents.
Adam Quenneville Roofing and Siding, based in South Hadley, Massachusetts, has built 1,299 Google reviews with a 5.0 star rating. Over the full year 2025, their Local Services Ads campaign — managed entirely by Contractor Marketing Pros — generated 2,324 leads at an average cost per lead of $105.00 on $244,022 in total LSA spend.
That is approximately 194 qualified LSA leads every single month, for twelve consecutive months.
1,299 Google Reviews · 5.0 Star Rating · South Hadley, MA · 300+ Review Tier
Their cost per lead sits right at the 300+ tier average. What separates them from the 53 contractors in the sub-100 tier is not what they pay per lead — it is how many leads the campaign is able to deliver at that price. Nearly 200 inbound calls and messages per month, consistently, creates a different kind of business. You can staff around that volume. You can build a sales process around it. You can forecast revenue with confidence. None of that is possible when you are averaging 5 leads a month.
That result did not come from a superior LSA campaign setup or an outsized budget. It came from 1,299 people trusting that business enough to leave a public review on Google — and Google responding by making their ads the most visible roofing company in their market.
Google Local Services Ads do not work like traditional Google Ads or pay-per-click campaigns. You are not bidding on keywords. You are not paying per click. LSAs appear at the very top of Google search results — above traditional paid ads and above the local map pack — and you only pay when a customer calls or messages you directly through the ad.
The ranking system that determines who shows up at the top of those LSA results weighs multiple factors. But your Google Business Profile review count, your star rating, and how recently you have been getting new reviews are among the heaviest. Think of it this way: Google uses your reviews as its best guess at whether your business is worth sending customers to. The more reviews you have, the more Google trusts you. And that trust builds over time in a way that simply writing a bigger check to Google cannot buy.
This is what makes review count such a powerful and lasting variable in our client data. It is not a hack or a loophole. It is the signal Google trusts most — and it is one you can build deliberately, one job at a time.
Here is how the review-to-lead relationship plays out in real calendar time.
A contractor in the sub-100 review tier averages 4.9 LSA leads per month. Based on what we hear from our clients, most are closing around 30% of their LSA leads. At that rate, that is roughly 1 to 2 new jobs per month from your ads.
A contractor in the 300+ review tier averages 56.2 LSA leads per month. At that same 30% close rate, that is roughly 17 new jobs per month.
Same platform. Same cost per lead. Same close rate. The only variable that changes is the review count — and the output is more than 10 times the monthly job volume.
That gap does not stay static. A contractor generating 17 jobs a month has 17 opportunities to collect a new review. Their competitor generating 1 to 2 jobs per month has 1 to 2 opportunities. The contractor who is ahead keeps pulling further ahead every single month, while the contractor stuck at 5 leads a month stays exactly where they are — no matter how much they increase their LSA budget.
This is the compounding effect that separates contractors who dominate their local market from those who feel like LSA is always underperforming.
If you are currently running Google Local Services Ads and generating fewer leads than you expect, the question before any conversation about budget is: which review tier are you in?
If you have fewer than 100 reviews — this is your only priority right now.
Build a simple, consistent habit for collecting Google reviews after every job you complete. A text message at job completion with a direct Google review link. A follow-up text or email 48 hours later. A verbal ask from your crew at the end of every call. The mechanics are not complicated — the discipline is. Make it part of how your business runs, not something you remember to do occasionally.
Once you hit 100, push toward 300.
That is the tier where our data shows the most dramatic jump in monthly LSA lead volume for contractors. Getting to 300 should be a named goal on your business calendar, not a background idea.
Keep reviews coming in every week, not in occasional bursts.
Google tracks how recently you have been getting reviews, not just how many you have total. A contractor with 300 old reviews and nothing new in three months will often lose LSA visibility to a competitor who has 150 reviews but is getting new ones every week. Build the habit permanently, not as a one-time push.
Respond to every review you receive.
Good ones, bad ones — respond to all of them. Google watches whether business owners are engaged and active. It takes five minutes per response. Most of your competitors will not do it consistently, which means doing it gives you a real edge that shows up directly in your LSA ranking.
One important note: Google Local Services Ads for contractors are a paid channel that generates immediate, high-intent leads — but they work best as one layer in a complete local marketing system, not a standalone strategy.
Contractors who combine LSAs with active local SEO generate significantly more total leads than those who use either channel alone. The two reinforce each other — strong organic search rankings build the brand authority that makes your LSA profile more trusted when homeowners see it. Your Google Business Profile sits at the center of both.
The contractors in our portfolio who perform at the highest level treat their Google Business Profile — and the steady flow of new reviews that keeps it strong — as one of the most important parts of their business, not an afterthought. Their LSA campaigns benefit. Their organic rankings benefit. Their overall cost per lead across every channel goes down as their authority goes up.
Across $1.8 million in managed LSA spend and 18,125 leads generated over 15 months of real contractor campaign data, one thing predicted performance more reliably than budget, market, or account setup: Google reviews.
Contractors with 300 or more Google reviews generate 1,046% more LSA leads per year than those with fewer than 100. Month by month, that is the difference between 4.9 leads and 56.2 leads — at a comparable cost per lead.
Reviews do not make each individual lead cheaper. They make your Google Local Services Ads campaign capable of delivering at a volume that changes what your business can do, how you can staff it, how you can forecast it, and how fast you can grow.
If you want to know which review tier you are in, what your LSA campaign is actually capable of right now, and what a realistic path to more leads looks like in your market — that is the conversation we have with contractors every day at Contractor Marketing Pros.
Data sourced from LSA accounts actively managed by Contractor Marketing Pros. Full year 2025 annual data plus Q1 2026 monthly data. 97 clients included in tier analysis. Individual client names not disclosed except where permission has been granted. Campaign performance varies by market, vertical, budget, and account history. Statistical correlation calculated across 97 client accounts using annual lead volume and Google Business Profile review count.
We will look at your review count, your current LSA performance, and show you exactly what is possible in your market.
