A water heater starts dripping from the bottom of the tank. The homeowner who finds the puddle might type "water heater leaking." Her neighbor types "water leaking from the bottom of my hot water tank." Her brother-in-law, who swears he can fix anything, types "water heater prv leaking," because he knows what the pressure relief valve is. Three people, one puddle, three different searches.
Multiply that by every kind of leak a house can spring and you get the problem this chapter solves. A plumbing company can't write down every way a homeowner describes water where it shouldn't be. It doesn't have to. It needs to buy the searches it can name, in a campaign it controls tightly, and add a second campaign later to catch the rest. The order matters more than the keywords.
Keyword Planner Lists 821 Leak Searches. Google Reads Them as 252.
We asked Google's Keyword Planner for plumbing ideas across the US and pulled out every one containing the word "leak." It returned 823. Two weren't plumbing at all ("hot leaking," and a product name from a pump maker), which leaves 821 ways people search for a plumbing leak.
That looks like a keyword list nobody could build. Look closer and Keyword Planner has already done half the work. It gives many of those searches one shared number, because it treats them as the same request worded differently. Keyword Planner puts 14,800 next to "water heater leaking," and the identical 14,800, with an identical bid range, next to "water leaking from water heater" and "hot water leaking." Ten different phrasings of a water heater leaking from the bottom share another number. Counted that way, the 821 searches collapse into 252 distinct requests.
Exact match works on the same principle. In Google's definition, an exact keyword reaches searches with the same meaning or the same goal behind them. So the exact keyword "water heater leaking" doesn't need five siblings with the words shuffled around. One keyword covers the set, and the account manager writes down 252 ideas at most, not 821.
Ten Leak Searches Carry 71% of the Volume. They Go Live First, on Exact Match.
Line the 252 sets up by size and the shape is lopsided. The ten biggest account for 52,800 of the 74,460 monthly US leak searches, about 71%. The next ten add another 10%. Every other set, 232 of them, shares what's left.
Eight of those top ten are water heater leaks: leaking from the bottom, leaking from the top, the pressure relief valve dripping, the tank itself giving out. The other two are "leak detection companies near me" and "slab leak repair cost." These aren't idle questions. The top-of-page bid range for "water heater leaking" reaches $60, and for "leak detection companies near me" it reaches $81. Nobody pays that for curiosity.
In our example market, San Antonio, the leak searches that Keyword Planner pulled from 12 plumbing companies' websites show the local version of the same pattern. "Plumber for water leak" gets 320 searches a month. "Water heater leaking" gets 170. "Slab leaks repair" and "plumber for leaks" get 110 each, and "plumber for leak detection" gets 70. Five searches, all asking for a plumber to come and find or fix water.
Those are the searches a new account buys first. They go into the account's first campaign. We call it Isolation; Google has no setting by that name. It holds exact match keywords only, sorted into the job groups from Chapter 5, and a person on your side types in every bid. Nothing gets in that you didn't put there. Chapter 7 covers how to set those bids.
Isolation is a narrow pipe on purpose. It gives up reach in exchange for knowing exactly which search produced which call, and that knowledge is what the next campaign will be built on.
169 Leak Searches Get 50 or Fewer a Month Nationwide. No List Can Hold Them.
Now look at the other end of the line. 169 of the 252 sets, two in three, log 50 searches a month or fewer, and that's the national total, not one city's. Divide that among the country's metro areas and most of them round to nothing in any single city. Nobody can build an ad group around a search that turns up twice a year in San Antonio.
They still add up. And they're only the searches Keyword Planner knows about. Google wrote in 2017 that "15 percent of searches we see every day are new," never typed before. A homeowner staring at a wet patch on the garage ceiling doesn't consult a keyword list before describing it. She types what she sees.
Even after launch, some of that tail stays out of sight. Google's help page for the search terms report says searches without enough activity are left out of the report to protect privacy. You'll see the clicks and the cost but never read the exact words for some of them.
The words homeowners use in reviews point the same way. "Leak" turns up 128 times across the 794 Google reviews we read for plumbing companies in the example market. Only "plumber" turns up more. Leaks are what people call about, and they describe them in their own words, not the trade's: the stain on the ceiling, the hiss behind the wall, the letter from the water utility warning about constant usage. Some of those turn into searches no planner has listed yet.
That long tail is real money, and it belongs to a different tool.
Broad Match Waits Until Your Exact Keywords Book 30 Jobs a Month. Then It Gets Smart Bidding.
The tool is broad match, inside a second campaign we call Exploration. Broad match lets Google show your ad on searches related to your keyword, including wordings you never wrote down. That's exactly what the leak tail needs, and exactly why it can't go first.
Google is blunt about how broad match has to run. Its broad match guide says the two belong together: broad match keywords should run on Smart Bidding, Google's automated bidding that prices each search at the moment it happens. Automated bidding learns from conversions: the calls, forms and booked jobs your tracking reports back. A brand-new plumbing account doesn't have many of those yet. Turn broad match loose on day one and you're asking Google to bid on hundreds of odd leak searches with almost nothing to learn from.
So broad match waits for a gate. Our rule is 30 or more quality conversions a month coming out of Isolation. Most plumbing accounts get there in months 2-3, and a busy shop with strong call volume can get there sooner. Google points at the same number. Its target CPA help page says to measure results over a stretch that includes at least 30 conversions.
When the gate opens, Exploration launches with three settings:
- Broad match keywords, but only proven ones. Take the three to five exact keywords from Isolation that already book the most work, such as "plumber for water leak" or "water heater leaking," and add them to Exploration as broad match.
- Automated bids aimed at a cost per job. The bid strategy is Maximize Conversions with a target CPA, short for cost per acquisition. Newer accounts see it labeled just "Target CPA," Google's name for it since June 2026. Set the target from what a booked leak job actually costs in Isolation, not from a number you wish it cost. Google warns that a target set too low can mean passing up clicks that would have turned into conversions.
- Its own budget. Isolation keeps running exactly as it was. Exploration is added, not swapped in.
Running both at once doesn't mean they fight over the same leak. Google settles that itself: a search typed exactly like one of your exact keywords goes to the campaign holding that keyword, ahead of any broad or phrase keyword, according to its match types page. Someone who types "water heater leaking" word for word still lands on Isolation's hand-set bid. Broad match gets the 50th way of saying it, not the first.
Broad Match's First Month Is a Daily Leak Check on Your Search Terms
Exploration will find searches you never imagined. Some will be the best calls of the month. Some will be people asking what the water department owes them. For broad match's first 30 days, someone on your side opens the search terms report every morning, before the trucks roll, and decides where each new search goes.
Expect three kinds of strays in a plumbing account's first month on broad match: other plumbers' names, do-it-yourself questions, and searches about the water bill rather than the pipe. All three were on Chapter 5's cut list. Broad match simply finds wordings of them nobody thought to block.
There are only three places a search can go:
- Block it. Add it to the negative keyword list. "High water bill due to leak am i responsible" is a homeowner arguing with a utility, not booking a plumber. Chapter 5's negative list is the starting point; Exploration is where it grows.
- Keep it. Leave it in Exploration and let Smart Bidding price it. "High water bill no visible leak" is a homeowner with a hidden leak somewhere and no idea where. Advertisers bid up to about $19 for it, and it's exactly the kind of call a leak detection crew wants.
- Move it into Isolation. When broad match keeps finding a search that books jobs, copy it into Isolation as an exact keyword so you control its bid by hand. That's how the Isolation list grows over time, from evidence instead of guesses.
After the first month, the daily check can slow to weekly. It never stops. New searches keep arriving, and every block, keep and move makes both campaigns sharper.
Plumbing companies that would rather not read search terms over breakfast can hand that job to our Google Ads management team.
Next: An Exact Match Bid Is a Number You Set. Chapter 7 Shows Where It Comes From.
Isolation runs on bids set by hand. Chapter 7 covers where those numbers come from, which columns tell you a bid is too low or too high, and when to walk away from an auction that's gotten too expensive.
This chapter is part of Google Ads for Plumbers, our sixteen-chapter guide for plumbing companies anywhere in the US.
