We searched "garage conversion raleigh" from our example market, Raleigh-Durham. Before a single ad, before a single contractor's website, Google's AI Overview answered the question a homeowner would be circling: a garage conversion there "typically costs between $16,600 and $27,700" for a basic bonus space. Run "remodeling companies near me" instead and you get a different page for a different person.
Same industry, same city. One searcher is pricing a dream. The other is about to pick up the phone.
Most contractors' ad accounts treat those two people the same, because "they both want a remodel." They don't want the same thing yet, and Google now answers the first one for free. This chapter maps the stages a homeowner moves through before hiring a general contractor or construction company, shows where Google already does the talking, and decides where your first dollar goes. The searches and prices come from Google's Keyword Planner for the whole US, plus 23 searches we ran in the example market. Your market's numbers will differ. The order won't.
A Homeowner Asks "Move or Renovate?" Long Before Typing "Remodeling Companies Near Me."
Every residential job starts as a feeling, usually that the house got smaller while the family got bigger. It ends with a signature. In between, homeowners pass through five stages, and each one has its own searches and its own job for your marketing.
Unaware and problem aware: the house stopped fitting. The project doesn't exist yet. What gets typed is a question about the family, not about construction. Nationally, "move or renovate" runs about 170 searches a month and "should i renovate or move" about 90. The marketing goal here is awareness, so that your name is in the room when the decision gets made.
Solution aware: what would it cost? Now there's a project, and the first question is money. "Bathroom remodel cost" draws about 33,100 searches a month, "kitchen remodel cost" 22,200, "home addition cost" 3,600 and "cost to finish basement" 3,600. The goal is interest: give them a reason to keep you in mind while they do the math.
Service aware: who does this kind of work? The homeowner is looking for the kind of company, not yet the company. "Kitchen remodeling contractor" draws about 60,500 searches a month, "home addition contractor" 22,200 and "design build firm" 4,400. Your job here is to shape the decision, since a homeowner at this stage is quietly writing down three names.
Most aware: who do I call? "Remodeling companies near me" gets about 12,100 searches a month, "best general contractor near me" about 3,600. Then there's the search for your company's own name, which belongs in a brand campaign of its own. The goal is action: a call, a form, a booked estimate.
Notice where the volume sits. The biggest searches are in the middle: people pricing a bathroom and people looking for a kitchen contractor. The life-question searches at the top are tiny by comparison. Nobody types "our house is too small" into Google and waits for an ad.
Google's AI Overviews Answer the Price Question Before an Ad Gets a Click.
Here is the change most contractors haven't priced in. Of the 23 residential searches we ran from the example market, 12 came back topped by an AI Overview, and 8 of those 12 put a dollar amount right in it. A whole-house renovation came back at "$80,000 and $300,000." A second-story addition came back at "$150 to $400" per square foot. A finished basement came back at "$60,000 and $150,000." These weren't national research questions, either. They were searches with the city in them, the kind a homeowner types when she's getting serious.
Under the AI Overview, the "People also ask" box showed up on 22 of the 23 searches, and 21 of those 22 asked about cost or whether a project was worth it. Things like "Is $10,000 enough for a kitchen remodel?" and "Can you renovate a whole house for 100k?"
So the price question is getting answered for free, at the top of the page, before your ad gets a look.
Can you buy your way into that answer box? Partly, and not the way a new account is built. Google's help page on ads in AI Overviews says they show up on complex, answer-seeking searches that advertisers are less likely to target. It points advertisers toward broad match or keywordless campaigns with Smart Bidding to reach them. You can't opt out of having your ads shown there. You also can't see those placements separately: they're reported as top-of-page ads, with no segment of their own.
One more thing the AI Overviews did in the example market: 11 of the 12 named local companies, and the most-named remodeler was also the one that showed up most in the map pack. The free answer at the top of the page isn't only a price. It's a short list, and your ad budget doesn't buy a place on it. Chapter 12 covers that side of the page.
That's not a problem for a contractor starting out. It's a filter. A homeowner reading a price range in an AI Overview is still doing the math, and your exact match keywords in month one aren't built to chase her. The searches you can win with confidence are the ones the AI Overview can't answer: who to call.
Advertisers Bid Up to $11 on "Kitchen Remodel Cost" and Up to $44 on "Kitchen Remodeling Contractor."
You don't have to guess where the money is. The auction already tells you.
Next to every search, Keyword Planner lists a range for what it has cost to land at the top: the low end is the 20th percentile of past top-of-page bids, the high end the 80th. Across the US:
- "Move or renovate": $0.03 to $6.07
- "Kitchen remodel cost": $2.33 to $11.06
- "Kitchen remodeling contractor": $5.33 to $44.05
- "Bathroom remodel cost": $3.85 to $20.00
- "Bathroom remodel contractors": $9.64 to $55.42
- "Remodeling companies near me": $5.76 to $35.00
The same kitchen draws a top bid four times higher once the word "contractor" shows up. That's other contractors, lead sites and franchises telling you, with their own money, where homeowners turn into jobs.
The same gap shows up inside one market. Locally, for the example market: "kitchen remodel cost" draws roughly 260 searches a month and tops out at $12.87, while "remodeling companies near me" draws roughly 90 and tops out at $41.34. Fewer searches, triple the top bid. That's what a hire search looks like in a real metro.
Run the same check for your own market before you build anything. Pick your most profitable project. Set Keyword Planner's location to your own metro, enter its price question and its hire question side by side ("basement finishing cost" next to "basement finishing contractor," for instance), and look at how far apart the ranges sit. Then do it for your second-best project. Ten minutes of that tells you more about where to start than a month of guessing, and it uses the bids of every company already paying to find out.
That's the backbone of every contractor account we build: the first dollars go to the searches nearest a signed job, and the account climbs toward the curious only once those searches are filling the estimate calendar. It feels backward, because the big volume sits higher up. But the bottom is where Google learns fastest what a real lead looks like, and every campaign added later stands on that lesson. A contractor with a large budget can open the upper stages sooner. The order stays the same.
Each Google Channel Fits One Stage, and Search Comes First.
Google sells more than search ads, and each of its channels fits a different stage of the homeowner's path. Here's how we line them up, and when each one joins the account.
Most aware and service aware, month one: Search. An Isolation campaign (our name for it) takes the hire searches, a project word paired with "contractor," "company" or "near me," and runs them as exact match keywords, grouped tightly by project, with bids you set yourself. A brand campaign of its own covers your company's name. Both launch together.
Solution aware, usually months 2-3: Exploration. An Exploration campaign (also our name) uses broad match and a target cost per conversion to find the searches Isolation can't predict, including some of the cost and comparison searches above. It waits for the account to log about 30 quality conversions a month, since that's what its target is built from. Months 2-3 is the usual pace, not the rule. A busier account gets there sooner.
Every stage, usually months 6-7: Performance Max. Performance Max bundles nearly all of Google's inventory into a single campaign, from search results and Maps to YouTube, Gmail, Discover and display sites. It joins only after Search has shown which projects sign, behind the same 30-conversion gate held steady.
Before a project exists: Demand Gen and YouTube. Demand Gen reaches homeowners on YouTube, Discover and Gmail before they've searched for anything. That's the homeowner still weighing move-or-renovate, and Chapter 11 covers how to reach her with your finished kitchens.
On the side, as a test: Local Services Ads. Google has a Local Services Ads category for general contractors, and Chapter 12 covers when it's worth testing alongside Search. It's never a launch default.
Last: AI Max. AI Max is effectively broad match with Google writing parts of the ad. It comes at the tail end, never in an exact-match account.
Chapter 1 set up the counting this order depends on: the booked estimate as the conversion Google bids toward. Without it, "start at the bottom" has nothing to learn from.
If you'd rather hand the whole rollout to someone, our Google Ads management builds contractor accounts in exactly this order.
Next: Remodelers Keep About 30 Cents of Each Contract Dollar. That Sets the Price of a Click.
Chapter 3 works out what a click can cost when the job is worth tens of thousands but the margin is thin: from cost per click, to booked estimate, to signed contract, to the gross profit that actually pays for the ads.
This chapter is part of Google Ads for Contractors, our sixteen-chapter guide for residential general contractors and construction companies anywhere in the US.
