People ask Google for a local business in two main ways. Some type the service and "near me." Others type the service and the name of their city. A plumber in St. Louis hears from both: "plumber near me" and "plumber st louis."
The city name looks like the more local of the two. The numbers say otherwise. In every pair we compared, the "near me" version was searched at least as often as the city version, and usually several times as often. This chapter covers what that means for the keywords a local business buys first, how to make sure both wordings are covered, and when to let Google reach beyond the list.
Chapter 5 built the list and grouped it by service. This chapter decides which of those keywords go live on day one, and in what form.
"Near Me" Matched or Beat the City Name in All 11 Local Searches We Compared in St. Louis.
We pulled both wordings for 11 kinds of local business in Keyword Planner, set to the St. Louis market, using 12-month averages:
- Dentist: about 14,800 a month for "dentist near me," against about 1,900 for "dentist st louis."
- Plumber: about 9,900 against about 1,300.
- Gym: about 9,900 against about 1,000.
- Auto repair: about 4,400 against about 320.
- Electrician: about 3,600 against about 590.
- Pest control: about 2,400 against about 1,600.
- Roofing companies: about 2,400 against about 1,600.
- AC repair: about 1,900 against about 480.
- Med spa: about 1,000 against about 480.
- Cleaning services: about 1,000 each.
- Landscaping: about 720 each.
The gap is widest for businesses people visit, like dentists, gyms and auto repair shops, where the customer wants the closest one. It narrows for planned projects and recurring services. Our reading is that people shopping for a roofer or a cleaning service are more willing to look across the whole city before they call. In none of the 11 pairs did the city name come out ahead. One shorter wording did trail: "roofing near me," at about 1,300, against about 1,600 for "roofing st louis," which fits the same pattern for planned projects. Compare the same wording on both sides before deciding which one matters.
Keyword Planner counts some wordings together. Its figure for "plumber st louis" also covers "st louis plumber" and "plumbers st louis," so the city side isn't undercounted by word order.
A Local Plumber Needs Separate Exact Match Keywords for "Plumber," "Plumber Near Me" and "Plumber St. Louis."
An exact match keyword is the tightest setting Google offers. In Google's definition, an exact keyword enters an auction only when the search shares its meaning or its intent. It also publishes the small changes it treats as the same meaning, which it calls close variants: words in a different order, small connecting words like "for" or "in" added or dropped, words that are implied, misspellings and plurals, and searches Google judges to have the same intent.
Neither page says whether adding "near me" or a town name counts. A plumber with the exact match keyword "plumber" can't know from Google's documentation whether that keyword will also enter the auction for "plumber near me" or "plumber st louis."
So we don't leave it to chance. A local account's first keyword list names each wording outright: the plain service, the service with "near me," and, for the towns that earn it, the service with the town. "Emergency plumber," "emergency plumber near me" and "emergency plumber st louis" are three keywords, not one.
That fits with what Chapter 5 said about town names. Location targeting already decides who sees the ad, so a town name adds no reach. Under exact match, though, the wording a person types still needs a keyword that matches it.
For a Local Plumber, Roofer or Exterminator, 10 Searches Held About Two-Thirds of the Volume in Keyword Planner.
A local market has fewer searches than people expect, and they bunch up. We took the plumber's, the roofer's and the pest control company's keyword lists from Chapter 5 and added up the monthly searches, counting each group of close variants once.
For the plumber, the 10 biggest searches made up about 70% of all the volume on the list. For the pest control company it was 66%, and for the roofer 62%. At the other end, the plumber's list had 82 searches at 50 a month or less, and together they added up to only about 6% of the volume. The pest control list's small searches came to about 15%, and the roofer's about 8%.
One caution: Keyword Planner leaves out searches too small to report. The real long tail, the thousands of one-off ways people describe a problem, is bigger than any list shows. It just isn't where a new local account should start. The first budget goes further on the ten biggest searches than on a hundred searches almost nobody types. Some of those ten will be rival company names, which Chapter 5 cut; removing them barely moves the shares.
In Month One, the Only Keywords Worth Paying For Are Exact Match Searches That Book Jobs.
We call the first stage Isolation. The account buys only the searches it knows, in exact match, so every dollar goes to a search someone chose on purpose:
- The ready-to-hire searches from [Chapter 2](/resources/local-marketing-strategy-google-ads-near-me-searches), a short list per service, in every wording that matters.
- One ad group per service, as Chapter 5 laid out, each with its own ad and page.
- Manual bidding, so the account controls what it pays while it learns. Chapter 7 explains why we keep it longer than most.
Here is what that looks like for a plumber in our St. Louis example, three ad groups to start, with each search's monthly volume in that market:
- General plumbing: "plumber near me" (about 9,900), "plumber" (about 4,400), "plumber st louis" (about 1,300).
- Emergency: "emergency plumber near me" (about 1,300), "emergency plumber" (about 480), "emergency plumber st louis" (about 140).
- Water heaters: "water heater repair" (about 720), "water heater replacement" (about 390), "water heater repair st louis" (about 170).
That's nine keywords in three ad groups, and between them they cover the biggest residential ready-to-hire searches. "Plumber" and "water heater replacement" come from the market-wide pull rather than the plumber's own site list. Commercial work, drain cleaning and sewer lines get their own groups the same way, built from the competitor sites in Chapter 5. Nothing on the list is a guess about what a customer might mean.
Then the account gets read every week. The search terms report shows what people actually typed before they clicked. A real search that keeps showing up and doesn't have its own keyword gets one. A search that has nothing to do with the business goes on the negative list. Over a few months, the exact match list grows from what customers actually typed, not from what a tool guessed.
Broad Match Belongs in a Local Account Only After About 30 Conversions a Month. Before That, It Buys Searches You Never Chose.
The second stage is Exploration, and it's where broad match comes in. Broad match is Google's widest setting. Google's help page is plain that broad match reaches related searches, including ones without the keyword's direct meaning. Applied to a plumber, a broad keyword for "water heater repair" could enter auctions for searches merely related to water heaters, even ones that never ask for a repair. It's how an account reaches the long tail that Keyword Planner never lists.
Google is also clear that broad match isn't meant to run alone: "It's critical to use Smart Bidding with broad match." Smart Bidding is Google's automated bidding. It sets a bid for each search from signals at the time of the search, and it learns what works from the conversions the account has recorded. Without enough of them, it has little to go on, and broad match spends on searches nobody chose.
Our gate is about 30 quality conversions a month: real calls, booked appointments and form leads, counted the way Chapter 1 set up. Most local accounts take months to get there, and some small-town accounts never do, which is fine. They stay in Isolation and keep growing the exact list by hand.
Broad match doesn't read the keyword alone. Google says it may also take into account the landing page and assets, the ad group's other keywords, and the searcher's recent searches. That's one more reason the earlier chapters come first. Broad match on a clean ad group that points to a matching service page has far better signals than broad match on a mixed list pointing to a home page.
Our electricians guide shows the same idea in one trade, with broad match reaching the long tail after the exact list is working. AI Max, which widens matching further, comes last in this guide, in Chapter 13.
Many City-Name Searches Come From People Outside the City. Presence-Only Targeting Decides Whether They See You.
The city name has one more quirk. For most services we checked, Keyword Planner shows more searches for "[service] st louis" across the US than inside the St. Louis market (plumber was the exception, at about 1,300 in both):
- "Electrician st louis": about 590 a month in the St. Louis market, about 1,300 nationally.
- "Roofing st louis": about 1,600 against about 2,400.
- "Gym st louis": about 1,000 against about 1,600.
- "Dentist st louis": about 1,900 against about 2,400.
- "Auto repair st louis": about 320 against about 590.
The national figure includes the local one, so the difference is the searches coming from outside the market: for the electrician, about half.
Our guess is that some of those people are moving to town and some are hiring help for a parent who lives there. A "near me" search, by contrast, is about where the person is when they search.
Whether those out-of-town searchers see your ad depends on a location setting. For a plumber or a dentist, we set the campaign to reach people who live in the service area or are standing in it. Chapter 9 walks through that setting and the cases where we change it.
Next: Manual Bidding Isn't Training Wheels for a Local Account.
Isolation runs on manual bidding, and most advice says to switch to automated bidding as soon as possible. Chapter 7 explains why a local account keeps manual bidding until it reaches about 30 conversions a month, and what changes when it does.
Every chapter is on the guide's home page. If you'd rather have someone build the list, our Google Ads management starts every local account in exact match on the searches that book jobs.
