Most landscaping companies keep a simple rhythm: crews out Monday through Saturday, office closed Sunday. Plenty of owners set their Google Ads to match, turning ads off on the day nobody answers the phone. For years that also saved money, because Google paced the budget across the days the ads actually ran.
That changed on June 1. Google now aims to spend the full month's budget even when a schedule switches whole days off, packing it into the days that are left. A Sunday shutoff still keeps the ads quiet on Sunday. It no longer makes the month cheaper. This chapter covers that change and the other settings we set on every new landscaping account before the first click: the schedule, the hours Google shows, the map, and the defaults Google switches on for you.
4 of the 6 Landscaping Sites That Post Hours Close on Sunday. Google's Default Ad Schedule Never Closes.
Of the 12 landscaping companies we profiled in the example market, around New York, six post their hours on their websites. Four of those six show no Sunday hours for new customers: two list Monday through Saturday, one lists weekdays plus Saturday morning, and a national lawn brand's new-customer line says closed on Sunday, though some of its branch pages list Sunday hours. The other two answer every day, one from 8 to 6 and one, a snow and ice firm, around the clock.
Google's schedule doesn't keep office hours unless you tell it to. Every new campaign runs "All day" by default, which means every hour of every day, including Sunday night.
That matters because of what happens after the click. Chapter 8 counted 66 low-star reviews in the example market about slow replies or no reply at all. An ad that runs at 9 p.m. Sunday, sending a homeowner to a phone nobody will pick up until Monday at 8, is paying to start one of those reviews. So we set the schedule to the hours someone actually answers, and keep a form on the landing page for the rest.
Sunday isn't always a lost day, though. Homeowners plan yard projects on weekends, walking the property and pricing patios on their phones. If your office can answer a form by Monday morning, a Sunday campaign that sends people to a quote form, with no call button and an honest line like "Quotes sent Monday," can work. If it can't, leave Sunday off. Either way, decide on purpose. The default makes the decision for you, and it decides yes to every hour.
A note before the next section: turning off hours within a day, say 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., works the way it always has. The June change is only about switching off whole days.
Since June 1, Turning Sunday Off Doesn't Lower the Month. Google Spreads the Same Total Over Six Days.
Here's the change in Google's terms. The monthly spending limit has always been 30.4 times your average daily budget. Before June 1, a campaign that ran only six days a week paced toward six days' worth of spend. Now Google's pacing aims for the full 30.4 days' worth regardless of the ad schedule. Two limits still hold: Google won't charge more than twice the daily budget on any day, or more than 30.4 times the daily budget in a month. A Sunday you've switched off stays dark.
Work it through for a landscaper, as an example. Say the budget is $50 a day and the ads run Monday through Saturday. In a 30-day month with four Sundays, that's 26 days of ads. Before June, the campaign paced toward about $1,300, which is $50 times 26. Now it paces toward $1,520, which is $50 times 30.4. Spread over 26 days, that's roughly $58 on each day the ads run, well under the $100 daily ceiling.
Nothing is wrong with spending $1,520 if the leads are worth it. But an owner who set $50 a day expecting $1,300 a month gets a bigger bill and no explanation. If $1,300 is the real number, divide it by 30.4 and set the daily budget near $43. Google's own help page suggests the same arithmetic, and it says no action is required, which is true only if you're happy with the larger total.
The same math applies any time the schedule changes. A campaign that runs only weekdays in winter, or only during the spring rush, now paces toward a full month's worth on fewer days, capped at double the daily budget each day. A weekday-only crew shows how big the jump can be. At $40 a day, Monday through Friday, a month with 22 weekdays used to pace near $880. Now it paces toward $1,216, about $55 on each weekday, because the two weekend days no longer take their share of the budget with them. Same ads, same days, about 38% more spend. Check the daily budget every time you change which days the ads run.
One Landscaper's Ad Card Said "Open 24 Hours." Its Website Didn't List Any.
Google shows hours in more places than your website. Some ad formats display business details beside the ad, and location assets, which pull from a linked Business Profile, can open a details page with hours, phone number, photos and directions.
In the card-style ads we collected for this guide, "Open 24 hours" appeared ten times. One was a landscaper whose website listed no hours, though it does offer around-the-clock commercial snow service. The other nine belonged to two roofing and chimney contractors running ads in the landscaper slot. For a crew that's out in the field by 7 and back by 5, a 24-hour label invites calls at hours nobody answers, and Chapter 8 showed what homeowners write when nobody calls back.
The fix is in the Business Profile, not the ads. Set real hours there, add holiday hours for the days you close, and set the service area. Google allows up to 20 service areas and says the whole area shouldn't stretch much past about two hours' drive from where the business is based. Then make the ad schedule match the hours the profile shows. A homeowner who sees "Open now" on the ad and gets voicemail on the phone has been told two different things by the same company.
Most Local Landscaping Ads Name a County or a Town. Draw the Campaign Map the Same Way, With Presence.
Landscapers already know their map. Of the 143 local ads we read in the example market, 79 named a place or used service-area words: "Serving Westchester County," "Suffolk Lawn Specialists," town names in the headline. The websites are just as specific. One New Jersey firm lists eight counties and has 16 town pages. Another lists 38 town and ZIP lines across five counties. Long Island firms name Suffolk and Nassau.
The campaign should use the same map, and one setting decides how strictly Google follows it. By default, Google targets people who are in your locations, are regularly there, or have shown interest in them. The other choice, Presence, keeps it to people who are in the area or are regularly there. A homeowner in your county needs a landscaper there. Someone two states away reading about your town usually doesn't, so we launch with Presence.
Draw the map around the routes, not the metro. A landscaper's map isn't a circle on a page; it's how far a truck and trailer can go between jobs and still make money. The reviews show what happens when the ads reach past that. In the example market, 13 low-star reviews describe a company that declined the job or dropped the customer, for being too far, too small or mowing only. Each of those homeowners clicked an ad, filled out a form or called, and the landscaper paid for that click before saying no. Target the towns your crews already drive through, and add a town only when the route can absorb it. Then use exclusions for the pockets inside that map you won't serve: the far side of a bridge with tolls each way, a dense neighborhood with no lawns, a town where the HOA already has a contract crew. Google lets you exclude locations as well as target them, and an excluded town stops costing you clicks the day you add it. Revisit the map each spring, when routes get rebuilt and a new crew can open a town the old schedule couldn't reach.
Search Partners and AI Max Come Switched On. Both Spend a New Landscaping Account's Money Past the Searches It Chose.
Three more settings need attention before launch, and two of them start in the wrong position for a new account.
Search partners are included by default in every new Search campaign. That puts your ads on sites outside Google Search, with far less control over where. We turn them off at launch, while every dollar should be going to people searching on Google for the jobs you sell.
AI Max is also on by default in new Search campaigns. Left on, it reaches searches your keyword list never named, writes new headline wording from what's on your site, and can route a patio click to whatever page Google thinks fits, the mowing page included. Turning off text customization also turns off the page-picking feature, final URL expansion. All of that runs against what Chapters 5 through 7 built: an exact-match campaign that buys only the searches you've chosen, with ads you wrote, landing on the page you chose. So AI Max goes off at launch. Chapter 13 is the place for it, after Search has months of booked jobs behind it, along with the pesticide wording rules it can trip over in a lawn treatment ad.
The third is a box, not a default. Google's campaign setup offers a Display Network option that extends a Search campaign onto other websites. Leave it unchecked. Reaching people beyond Search is a separate job with its own campaign, and Chapter 11 covers it with Demand Gen.
Two defaults stay on: auto-tagging, which links clicks to what happened next, and call reporting, which Chapter 1 depends on to count phone leads. Our Google Ads management checks every one of these settings, and the daily budget against the schedule, before a new landscaping account spends its first dollar.
Next: Lawn Mowing Searches Fall by Three-Quarters or More From July to December. Launch Performance Max in Spring, When Conversions Can Hold.
With the settings in place, the account can launch. Chapter 10 covers the first campaign type that goes beyond Search, Performance Max, and why the calendar matters as much as the conversion count.
Every chapter is on the guide's home page.
