No borrowed click price
Plumbers, electricians and roofers have named searches in SoNick Marketing’s September 2026 Keyword Planner table. Cleaners do not. Whito’s page, updated 15 November 2026, says local trades pay £1.50 to £3.00 a click and, in the same breath, that published averages are not a measured UK market figure. Putting £2.25 in a cleaning proposal because it sits in the middle of that band would be a fiction. Write “not in the sources checked on 15 November 2026” and open Keyword Planner.
What to pull, for the towns you cover:
- The searches you would say yes to, such as a domestic deep clean, an end-of-tenancy clean, or a commercial contract. Use your words, not a competitor’s list copied from London if you work in a market town.
- The top-of-page bid range, with the month of the export written on it.
- Searches you will exclude: jobs, training, products, and cleaning types you do not offer.
One-off and recurring, on purpose
The cleaners page says to separate one-off deep cleans from recurring home or office cleaning, and to measure initial cleans and recurring agreements apart. Here is the money version.
| One-off deep clean | New recurring agreement | |
|---|---|---|
| What you count as won | The clean happened and was paid. | The first visit of an agreement that started, not a quote. |
| Value to compare with the ads | Gross profit on that visit. | Gross profit you can fairly expect if the agreement lasts. Say the number of weeks you are assuming, or you will credit the ads with a year that has not happened. |
| Spend | Only the campaign that asked for one-off work. | Only the campaign that asked for regular work. |
| Cost per won result | That spend, plus a fair share of the management fee, divided by paid cleans. | The same, divided by agreements that started. |
Illustration. You spend £200 on one-off searches and £200 on recurring searches, and the management fee is £149 plus VAT because you are on the Starter plan (£178.80). Suppose the fee is split in half. Three paid deep cleans would be about £96 each all-in. One new weekly agreement would be about £289 to acquire. If that agreement leaves £30 a week after labour and travel, you need it to last about ten weeks before the ads are covered, and you should say “ten weeks assumed” on the report. If it ends after a fortnight, the channel did not pay, even though the click looked cheap.
End-of-tenancy cleans are usually one-off, with a date that cannot slip. They belong on their own line even when the fee is higher, because a checkout day is not a weekly agreement you can spread over ten weeks. A commercial contract belongs in the recurring campaign even when the first clean is also a deep clean. The form on the landing page should ask property type, frequency and preferred time, so the person who answers can put the row on the right line of the lead sheet.
| Search | Campaign | Ask |
|---|---|---|
| End of tenancy, move-out clean | One-off, with a date. Price this row on its own. | The address, the date, and whether the property is furnished. |
| Deep clean | One-off, if they want a single visit. | Property type, and whether they mean once or the start of a regular clean. |
| Weekly cleaner, regular cleaner | Agreements. | How often, which day, and the postcode. Write the weeks you are assuming before you call the cost a win. |
| Office cleaners, commercial contract | None, if you only do homes. | Exclude them. |
The end-of-tenancy ad should say you need the date and the area. The weekly ad should ask for the day and the postcode. A deep clean that might become a regular clean needs the form to ask which one they mean, which the table above already does. A price in the ad has to be a price you will honour.
Exclude “cleaning jobs”, cleaner salaries, “end of tenancy cleaning checklist” and “how to clean” when they show in the search terms report. Those people want work, or a list, not a booking. Exclude office and commercial searches if you only do homes. The report does not show every quiet query, so a call that was obviously a jobseeker still gets a row and a negative. The steps are on the lead sheet guide.
Travel is the quiet cost
Cleaning margins are often the hour plus materials. A cross-city gap between two £40 jobs can erase both. Target the postcodes you can chain together, using Presence, and review the towns on the sheet monthly. The service-area guide is written for this. A cleaner covering Edinburgh tenements and a cleaner covering villages in Norfolk should not share a radius from a template.
Carpet cleaning is the neighbouring trade, with its own page at carpet and upholstery cleaners. Do not merge the accounts in your head. A machine, drying time and a higher ticket are a different break-even, and this study does not claim their click price either.
House cleaning is on Google’s August 2026 list for the United States move of Local Services Ads into pay-per-lead campaigns. UK accounts are in the 2027 phase, with no month published. The detail is in Local Services Ads or Google Search ads. Until a UK cleaner can see a lead price in their own account, Search plus this worksheet is the costing that does not invent a number.
Write the weeks down before you call it a win
A new weekly agreement is not worth a year’s gross profit on the day it starts. The illustration above needs about ten weeks at £30 a week to cover roughly £289 to acquire it. If you assume a year and the client cancels in a fortnight, the report will say the ads paid and the bank will say they did not.
On the monthly report, the recurring line should carry the number of weeks you assumed, and a later month should say how many of those agreements were still going. One-off deep cleans do not need that sentence. They were either paid or they were not.
Once a week, read the towns on the sheet against the route you actually drove. A postcode that produced quotes and no paid cleans, or that sat an hour from the other Friday jobs, comes off the campaign even if the click was inside a cheap range you have not published a national figure for. The route is the product. The click is only how someone found it.
Questions from owners
How much do Google Ads cost for a cleaning company in the UK?
We are not publishing a national cost per click for cleaners. The trade table we checked for September 2026 does not include cleaning searches, and Whito’s £1.50 to £3.00 local-trades band is explicitly not a measured account sample. Export Keyword Planner for your towns and your services, then divide spend by one-off jobs and by new recurring agreements.
Should a deep clean and a weekly clean be one campaign?
No. The cleaners page splits one-off deep cleans from recurring home or office cleaning, and it asks you to measure initial cleans and recurring agreements separately. A £120 deep clean and a £40-a-week contract that lasts six months are not the same return, even if the click price matches.
What counts as a won job for a cleaner?
For one-off work, the clean that was done and paid for. For contracts, the agreement that actually started, not the enquiry. Report them on two lines. A campaign that “books” ten deep cleans and no contracts is a different business from one that starts three weekly contracts.
How far should cleaning ads reach?
As far as the team can travel between jobs without the fuel and the gaps wiping out the fee. A city cleaner may work in a few postcodes. A rural cleaner in Wales or the Highlands may cover a wide map and still only a handful of booked slots. Set Presence targeting from the diary, using the service-area guide.
Is carpet cleaning included here?
No. Carpet and upholstery cleaning has its own industry page. The economics, with a machine and a drying time, are not a weekly domestic clean. Do not paste this method onto that page and call the click price shared.
Can cleaners use Local Services Ads in the UK in 2026?
House cleaning appears in Google’s August 2026 list for selected United States advertisers. The help page puts non-US accounts in 2027 and does not give a UK price. Check whether your category is offered. If it is not, Search is the route, and this page is the way to cost it.
What about commercial contracts and domestic homes in one account?
Keep them in separate campaigns. The form should ask property type, how often, and the preferred time, which is already the instruction on the cleaners page. A facilities manager and a homeowner do not convert at the same rate, and a blended cost per lead will look oddly fine while one of them loses money.
When would you publish a cleaning average?
When ten booked cleaning jobs, labelled one-off or recurring, sit in a dated pool from accounts we run. Until then the honest page is this one: your export, your gross profit, your sheet.
How long should I assume a new weekly clean will last?
Write the number of weeks on the report before you compare it with the ads. The illustration on this page uses ten weeks at £30 gross profit to cover about £289 to acquire the agreement. If you silently assume a year, a fortnight-long client looks like a profit. If the agreement ends sooner than the weeks you wrote down, the channel did not pay for that client.
Is an end-of-tenancy clean the same as a weekly agreement?
No. A move-out clean has a date and should be priced as a one-off. A weekly clean is an agreement, and the report should say how many weeks of gross profit you are assuming. Office and commercial searches should be excluded if you only clean homes.
Where the figures come from
Checked on 15 November 2026 unless a source prints its own date.
- Google Ads for plumbers and trades. SoNick Marketing, September 2026 Keyword Planner extract. No cleaning searches in the table we cite.
- Google Ads cost UK 2026. Whito, updated 15 November 2026. Local trades £1.50 to £3.00, not a measured sample, and not a cleaning-specific figure.
- Supported verticals for pay-per-lead campaigns. House cleaning is named in Google’s August 2026 United States migration phase, not as a UK price.