Key Takeaways Not every Google Ads click is from a real lead. Some are competitors. Some are bots. And some come from click farms designed to drain your budget before a real prospect ever sees your ad.
For home services businesses (HVAC companies, plumbers, electricians, and similar trades), click fraud rarely makes headlines. But it exists in the industry, quietly siphoning budgets and derailing campaigns that should perform better.
To understand the scale of the problem, Fraud Blocker analyzed data from Q1 2026 across 100+ home services Google Ads campaigns, representing over $3 million in ad spend.
We found home services advertisers face a 12.5% invalid click rate, versus the 8.6% Google reports for the same accounts. Here’s the breakdown.
We found a consistent gap between what Google reports and actual invalid click rates. Here’s the breakdown.
When a homeowner searches for “emergency plumber” or “24-hour AC repair”, they need a solution immediately. That makes these searches high-intent and valuable, driving up competition and CPC in Google Ad auctions.
The resulting competition creates a clear incentive for rival businesses to drain your daily budget by clicking your ads and knocking your campaign out of auction for the rest of the day.
Home services advertisers are also targets for bots and click farms, particularly during peak seasons when demand and bids are at their highest. A prime example is HVAC companies in summer: higher bids mean each fraudulent click is more profitable for bad actors, and more damaging for your campaigns.
We analyzed a sample of home services Google Ads accounts to measure the industry’s invalid click rate. Advertisers in our dataset saw a 12.5% invalid click rate compared to 8.6% reported by Google for the same accounts.
Expand to view chart data | METRIC | INVALID CLICK RATE |
|---|---|
| Google's reported invalid click rate (home services accounts) | 8.6% |
| Fraud Blocker's detected invalid click rate (same accounts) | 12.5% |
| Difference | 3.9% (45% more than Google reported) |
Source: Fraud Blocker internal data. Sample: 100+ home services Google Ads accounts.
The invalid clicks Google caught were refunded, but the 3.9% gap represents clicks Google missed entirely. These were clicks from bots and bad actors that would never have converted.
Put another way, Google missed 1 in every 3 invalid clicks in home services ads.
Read more: Google Ads invalid click benchmarks
The average CPC in our sample of US home services Search campaigns are $4.00. With 3.9% of clicks unrefunded in Google ads, advertisers here are losing roughly 15 cents per click to invalid clicks.
Expand to view chart data | METRIC | VALUE |
|---|---|
| Average CPC | $4.00 (US) |
| Clicks analyzed | 86,000+ |
| Total ad spend analyzed | $344k+ |
| Channels covered | Search |
| Account type | Home Services Advertisers, US |
Source: Fraud Blocker internal data, April 2025 - March 2026.
That might sound small, but not all clicks convert, and invalid clicks still consume budget that could have reached a real prospect. For home services where a single conversion can mean a $5,000 roofing contract, every wasted click is a missed opportunity.
Here’s a table illustrating how much a home services advertiser loses to invalid clicks, based on estimated monthly budget.
| Monthly Budget | Annual Spend | Annual Clicks @ $4.00 CPC | Unrefunded Invalid Clicks | Annual Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $1,000 / mo | $12,000 | 3,000 | ~117 | $468 |
| $5,000 / mo | $60,000 | 15,000 | ~585 | $2,340 |
| $10,000 / mo | $120,000 | 30,000 | ~1,170 | $4,680 |
| $25,000 / mo | $300,000 | 75,000 | ~2,925 | $11,700 |
| $100,000 / mo | $1,200,000 | 300,000 | ~11,700 | $46,800 |
Based on avg. CPC of $4.00 and an unrefunded invalid click rate of 3.9% of spend. Invalid click rate derived from Fraud Blocker dataset analysis.
The estimated loss here is based on a modest business’ Google Ads budget. But the same numbers work whether you’re a local roofing contractor with a modest $500 monthly budget or a multi-location HVAC company spending $30k/month.
Click fraud in home services isn’t as complicated as we find it in industries like finance or legal. However, Google’s filters still miss 45% of these clicks, and left unchecked, they can derail your campaigns. Here’s how:
A rival who clicks your ads repeatedly in the early morning can exhaust your daily budget before high-intent prospects even start searching. By 9am, your ads are gone from auction, and your competitors are the only ones visible.
And because these searchers are ready to act, visibility in this window is critical. A user who clicks through to a competitor’s landing page may convert, and you lose the lead.
Read more: What are competitor clicks?
Home services lead volume can increase by 2-5x, sometimes 10x during the busy season (summer and winter peaks for HVAC companies and storm season for roofing contractors).
Maximizing budget and opportunities during this window is critical in home services, and runaway invalid clicks can derail your campaigns more than some other sectors.
When a bot or bad actor clicks your ad, they land on your site and bounce immediately; but Google still bills you for the click. There was never any chance of a conversion, and you pay in full regardless.
The damage is double: a high-value lead goes to a competitor, and the budget that could have reached a real prospect is gone. Our data shows 3.9% of clicks in home services fall into the category of traffic Google’s own filters miss entirely.
For a business spending $2,500 a month on Google Ads, that’s over $1,100 a year on traffic that will never become a job.
Read more: The hidden costs of Google Ads for advertisers.
For agencies managing Google Ads across multiple home services clients, a 3.9% loss at the account level can look insignificant. But it builds quickly across a portfolio. An agency managing 10 clients at $5,000/month ($600,000 in annual spend) is losing roughly $23,400 a year to unrefunded invalid clicks. That’s budget clients paid for, which no amount of campaign optimization can recover.
There’s also a cost that doesn’t show up in spend reports. When campaigns underperform and click fraud has never been part of the conversation, your agency’s performance gets questioned. That’s a harder conversation than just budget.
For small business owners spending about $1,000 monthly, $468 a year in lost spend is easy to dismiss until you consider what it actually represents: real clicks your business couldn’t buy that likely went to a competitor instead.
Businesses lost $84 billion to ad fraud in 2023, with projected losses reaching $170 billion by 2028. In home services alone, our data shows advertisers are losing 15 cents on every click to invalid traffic Google never refunds.
Google’s filters are the first line of defense for your ads and catch most invalid clicks. But they still miss 1 in every 3, which means wasted spend for your campaigns. Catching what Google misses requires a second layer of fraud protection.
Fraud Blocker works alongside your Google Ads campaigns to catch what Google misses and block bad actors in real time, so your budget reaches prospects that can actually convert.
If you’re running Google Ads in home services, you’re likely already losing budget to invalid clicks. Start a 7-day free trial and see how much budget you’re losing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brandon is the co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Fraud Blocker with 15+ years of performance marketing experience and $100M in direct ad spend management. He specializes in driving growth and maximizing ROAS across B2B SaaS, fintech, marketplaces and more.
Brandon is the co-founder and CGO at Fraud Blocker with 15+ years of performance marketing experience. He specializes in driving growth and maximizing ROAS across B2B SaaS, fintech, marketplaces and more.
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Fraud Blocker
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Methodology:
Data is based on an analysis of more than 48 million Google Ads clicks across 23,000+ campaigns in 60+ countries during Q1 2026, representing $42.5 million in monitored ad spend ($170 million annualized).
The home services subset analyzed in this report covers 100+ Google Ads campaigns across 700+ advertisers, with Google Search clicks and $3M in ad spend during the same period. All data is anonymized and aggregated at the campaign level.
