Type "navien tankless water heater" into Google and the person on the other end could be a plumber pricing parts, a homeowner reading reviews before a remodel, or someone about to add one to a cart. Type "navien tankless water heater repair" and there is one kind of person left: a homeowner with a Navien that has stopped working.
Advertisers already know the difference. In Google's Keyword Planner, the top-of-page bid range for the first search tops out at $13.72. Add the word "repair" and it climbs to $55.00. Same brand, same water heater, a fourfold jump in what the market will pay, all because of one word that turns a shopper into a customer.
That one word is the whole job of keyword research for a plumbing company: separating searches that end in a service call from the thousands that only look like they might. This chapter walks through building the list the way we build every plumbing account, from the competitors' websites down to a handful of tight groups ready for launch.
Twelve Plumbing Sites Handed Keyword Planner 14,946 Search Ideas. 6,485 Weren't Service Searches.
Start by finding out who is already bidding in your area. Open Google's Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool, type "drain cleaning" or "water heater repair," set the location to your service area, and write down every plumbing company whose ad comes up. Google built the tool so you can check "without affecting your impression data." Don't tap a rival plumber's ad on your phone to read it instead. Every tap bills their account, and the preview tool already shows the ad for free.
Next, feed their websites to Keyword Planner. The option labeled "Start with a website" reads a site and returns search ideas tied to what's on it. Paste in each rival plumber's address, set the location to the counties your trucks actually cover, and the volumes and bids come back for that territory. Then run your own site. The list it sends back is Google's reading of your business, and a shop whose site leans on its HVAC side will see that reading lean the same way.
We did exactly this with 12 plumbing companies running Search ads in our example market, San Antonio. Keyword Planner sent back 14,946 unique search ideas. Before sorting a single one, we counted what clearly wasn't a plumbing service search:
- 5,318 about heating and air conditioning
- 421 about buying products or shopping at retailers
- 330 built on other plumbing companies' names
- 326 about septic tanks and pumping
- 53 how-to and do-it-yourself searches
- 15 about plumbing jobs and careers
That is 6,485 ideas, more than four in ten, that a plumbing campaign shouldn't buy. Most of the heating and cooling noise came from the three multi-trade companies in the sample, whose home pages Keyword Planner read as HVAC sites. If you don't sell HVAC, every one of those comes off the list.
A Search for a Water Heater Brand Is a Shopper. Add "Repair" and It's a Customer.
Water heaters are the biggest service line in plumbing reviews (Chapter 15 covers them in depth), and they're where Keyword Planner's list gets trickiest. Brand names pour in, and a brand name on its own tells you almost nothing about whether the person needs a plumber.
The US numbers make the split obvious:
- "Navien tankless water heater": 40,500 searches a month, top-of-page bids $0.60 to $13.72. With "repair" added: 14,800 a month, $10.54 to $55.00.
- "Rinnai tankless water heater": 40,500 a month, $0.55 to $13.49. "Repair rinnai tankless water heater": 14,800 a month, $14.15 to $80.73.
- "Rheem tankless water heater": 22,200 a month, $0.52 to $11.30. With "repair": 12,100 a month, $9.96 to $52.87.
Across the US list we pulled, 863 ideas paired a brand with a product word and nothing else, against 413 that paired a brand with a service word like repair, install, replacement or plumber. Another 125 named a retailer outright: Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards.
A word about those bid numbers. Keyword Planner builds the ranges from past auctions. Our working rule is to allow about 30% either way, so read them for direction, not as a quote. The direction here is not subtle. When the high end of the range quadruples, the advertisers bidding on that search have learned something you can use for free.
The pattern holds well beyond those three brands. "AO Smith water heater repair" draws 5,400 searches a month with bids up to $53.76. "Bradford White water heater repair" draws 4,400, up to $64.47. "Noritz tankless water heater repair" draws 5,400, up to $82.99. Water treatment follows the same split: "culligan water softener" (14,800 a month) tops out at $10.25, a price that says shopping, not service.
So the rule for a new plumbing account is simple. Product searches stay out. Brand-plus-repair searches come in, but only for brands you actually service and stock parts for. If your trucks don't carry Navien parts, a Navien repair click is a call you'll have to turn down.
Roto-Rooter Gets 135,000 Searches a Month. A New Plumbing Account Blocks Every One of Them.
The 330 ideas built on other plumbers' names are the next cut. "Roto rooter" on its own draws 135,000 US searches a month. "Benjamin franklin plumbing" draws 27,100. Those are people who already know which company they want. Buying those clicks means paying to argue with a decision the searcher has already made.
So rival plumbers' names go on the negative keyword list: words that stop your ad from showing whenever a search contains them. Google's own description: "Negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns." Running a separate campaign aimed at a competitor's name is a different decision, made deliberately and rarely, not something a first account does by accident.
Your own company name is the opposite case. Searches for your shop's name get a small campaign of their own: those people already picked you, and the clicks usually cost little.
The rest of the cuts follow the same logic: if the search doesn't end in a paid plumbing job for your shop, it goes.
- How-to searches. "How to fix a leaky faucet" draws 12,100 searches a month in the US, and its top-of-page bid tops out at $2.80. "How to replace a toilet" tops out at 47 cents. The market is telling you what those clicks are worth.
- Retailer and product searches. Home Depot, Lowe's, "price of a water heater" with no service attached.
- Jobs. "Plumber jobs" (14,800 a month) and "plumbing apprenticeship" (27,100) carry top-of-page bids under $8. They bring you applicants, not customers.
- Septic and HVAC, if you don't do them. If you do, they get their own campaigns, not a corner of the plumbing one.
Two modifiers deserve a closer look before you cut them: "cheap" and "free." Our default is to leave them out at launch, and the US numbers show why it's a real decision rather than a reflex. "Cheap plumber near me" gets 14,800 searches a month with bids up to $57.19, and "free plumbing estimate" 2,400 with bids up to $70.45. Those are hiring searches, and advertisers pay for them. The question is whether they're your customers. A shop that wins on price can test them later, once the account knows its own cost per job. And if you already advertise free estimates, "free plumbing estimate" is simply your offer, typed back to you; keep it.
One more category is a judgment call rather than an automatic cut: searches about home warranties and insurance claims. Some plumbing shops do steady work through home warranty companies and insurance-driven water damage jobs; others refuse it. Keep or cut those searches based on the work you actually want, not on a rule.
A Plumbing Ad Group Should Be Small Enough to Name in Three Words
What drains through the strainer gets sorted by job. Each ad group holds one plumbing job and the handful of ways people search for it, five or six at most:
- Drain cleaning: drain cleaning, drain cleaning near me, clogged drain, drain cleaning service, kitchen drain cleaning
- Water heater repair: water heater repair, water heater repair near me, no hot water, water heater not working
- Water heater replacement: water heater replacement, water heater installation, new water heater
- Tankless repair: tankless water heater repair, plus brand-plus-repair searches such as "navien tankless water heater repair," only for the brands you service
- Slab leak: slab leak repair, slab leak detection
- Sewer line: sewer line repair, sewer line replacement, sewer camera inspection
- Emergency: emergency plumber, emergency plumber near me, 24 hour plumber
If you can't name an ad group in three words, it's holding too many jobs. A group called "general plumbing" will end up with one ad trying to speak to a burst pipe and a garbage disposal at the same time, and Chapter 4 explained what that does to Ad Rank.
At launch, every one of these runs on exact match in the account's first campaign. We call that campaign Isolation; the name is ours, not a Google setting. It holds only the plumbing searches you can already name as paying work, and someone on your side sets each bid by hand. Chapter 7 covers the bids.
Blocking "Plumber Job" Doesn't Block "Plumber Jobs." Plumbing Negatives Need Every Form.
Negative keywords are literal. Google's help page says "you'll need to add synonyms and singular or plural versions if you want to exclude them," so "plumber job" and "plumber jobs" both go on the list, and so do "plumbing job" and "plumbing jobs." Misspellings and capital letters it handles on its own. Put the cuts that never change, like rival plumbers' names and job searches, on an account-level negative list, which applies to every eligible campaign at once.
The list you build now is a starting list, not a finished one. On exact match, few surprises get through. The real test comes when the account adds broad match in its second campaign, which we call Exploration, and Google starts matching your ads to searches no one wrote down in advance. That is when rival names, odd product searches and do-it-yourself questions show up in volume, each in forms you never typed, and the search terms report needs reading every day for the first month.
Building the first list carefully is what keeps that month manageable, and it's a good share of what our Google Ads management team does before a plumbing account spends its first dollar.
Next: There Are 821 Ways to Search for a Leak, and Exact Match Can Hold Only a Few
Exact match holds the searches you can name. Chapter 6 covers the ones you can't, the long tail of plumbing problems typed a hundred different ways, and when broad match earns a place in the account.
This chapter is part of Google Ads for Plumbers, our sixteen-chapter guide for plumbing companies anywhere in the US.
