Let's TalkLet's TalkCleaning searches mix people looking for a regular cleaner with people looking for cleaning jobs, cleaning products, how-to advice and commercial contracts. Google Ads for a cleaning company has to pay for the first group - and value a customer who stays far above one who books once.
We go through the search terms you paid for, the bookings they produced and how many became recurring customers, and show how much went on job, product, DIY and commercial searches, which campaigns produced customers who stayed and what to change first. You get a recorded walkthrough; there is no call to sit through.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
Cleaning is one of the most searched-for jobs. 'Cleaning jobs near me', 'house cleaner hiring' and 'part-time cleaning work' look a lot like customer searches to a loosely built campaign, and they can take a large share of the budget. Add 'best cleaning products', 'how to clean an oven' and searches for office cleaning contracts, and much of the spend never reaches a household wanting a cleaner.
A one-off clean bought on a discount and a fortnightly customer who stays for two years both count as one conversion. Bidding that cannot tell them apart chases whatever converts cheapest, which is often the one-off discount hunter rather than the regular customer the business depends on.
Recurring house cleaning, deep cleans, move-out cleans and rental turnovers are searched for differently and worth different amounts. Lumped together, the urgent move-out searches may win the budget one week and the cheap one-off searches the next, while the recurring searches that build the business are starved.
Accounts that keep spending when the schedule is full buy enquiries nobody can serve, creating waiting lists and disappointed customers. Budgets need to follow the team's real capacity, not a flat monthly figure.
Business outcomes rather than dashboard metrics. None of these is a guaranteed number - where we do guarantee something, it is written into the offer above.
The real deliverables, not a list written to make a proposal look thicker.
Not the general agency pitch. The reasons that only apply to this kind of business.
Cleaning keywords attract a huge volume of job searches, along with product and how-to searches. We build exclusion lists from the search terms you actually pay for, keep them current and send recruiting to separate campaigns where it belongs, so customer budgets reach households looking for a cleaner.
We import bookings with values that reflect what they become - a recurring customer valued well above a one-off clean - so bidding learns to find the people who stay. The account stops optimising for the cheapest first booking and starts optimising for the customers who build the business.
We pace budgets to the cleaners you have, pulling back when the schedule is full and pushing into the areas and days where there is room. You are not paying for enquiries that would wait weeks or be turned away.
Recent searches sorted into customers, jobs, products, DIY and commercial.
Negative lists built and reviewed monthly.
Recurring, deep, move-out and rental turnovers.
Recurring customers imported with higher values.
Spend matched to your team's schedule.
Cost per recurring customer and months retained.
The parts of this that come from having run it in this industry before rather than from running it well in general.
Google's current US list of Local Services Ads categories includes house cleaning services. Where available they charge per lead rather than per click and show a Google Verified badge for verified businesses. Compare them with search campaigns on cost per recurring customer.
People searching for move-out or end-of-lease cleaning need it done by a specific date. A dedicated campaign with fast booking and a clear checklist meets them, and some become regular customers in their next home.
Searches for a weekly or biweekly cleaner come from people ready to commit. Giving them their own campaign, with landing pages about the recurring plan and the team, protects the budget that builds the business.
Cleaning margins depend on travel time between homes. Targeting the areas your cleaners already cover, and building density there, keeps routes tight and makes each new customer more profitable.
None of our case studies is a cleaning company. The nearest Google Ads engagement is an auto dealership, where tightly targeted search campaigns produced 1.22M clicks at a 0.90% click-through rate, 627% ROAS and $617K in revenue. The transferable lesson is targeting discipline - paying only for searches from people ready to buy, which in cleaning means keeping job seekers and product searches out first.
Read the full case studyYes, when job, product, DIY and commercial searches are excluded, campaigns are split by type of clean and bidding values recurring customers above one-off bookings. Measured on customers who stay rather than first bookings, search ads can be one of the most dependable ways to grow a residential cleaning business.
Job and hiring searches, cleaning products and supplies, how-to and DIY searches, and commercial or office cleaning contracts if you only clean homes. Review the search terms report monthly, because job searches in particular keep producing new variations that slip past the lists you built.
Lead with the recurring plan rather than a one-off discount, and import bookings with values that reflect what they become, so a recurring customer counts for far more than a single clean. Bidding then learns to favour the searches that produce regulars rather than whatever converts cheapest.
Google's current US list includes house cleaning services, so many cleaning companies can, though availability varies by area. They charge per lead rather than per click, and invalid leads are not charged. Compare them with search campaigns on cost per recurring customer, not on lead price alone.
Prices or a quick quote by home size, what is included in each type of clean, who your cleaners are and how they are chosen, your guarantee and insurance, genuine reviews and an easy way to book online or by phone. Every question it answers removes a reason to keep searching.
Not at the same level. Pull back spend when the schedule is full, or switch it toward recruiting so you can take on more customers. Paying for enquiries you cannot serve wastes money and creates disappointed customers who may not try you again.
Yes. Move-out searches come with deadlines and a different checklist, and they are bought by tenants, landlords and real estate agents. A separate campaign with fast booking serves them properly and keeps their urgency from distorting the recurring campaign's results.
Enough to fill the capacity your team has, focused on the areas where you want more density. Start with recurring cleaning in your strongest areas, judge it on cost per recurring customer over a couple of months, then expand. A small, well-targeted account can do very well.
Record the source of each booking in your scheduling system, mark whether it became a recurring customer and import those outcomes as offline conversions with their values. That shows which campaigns produce regulars and lets bidding learn from them.
Excluding job and product searches can improve an account within weeks. Recurring customer results take longer to read, because a customer is only recurring after several cleans, so judge changes over a couple of months and track retention alongside new bookings.
Written for owners weighing this up, whether or not they work with us.
This is one part of a bigger service. Here is the whole of it, and the closest neighbours.
No pitch deck, no discovery call you have to sit through. Tell us the situation and we will tell you whether we can help.