MAJOR Changes To Google Local Services

What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Coburger here, the blue collar nerd. Well, it's happened. Google Local Services has introduced bidding. So if you are a home services contractor participating in Google Local Services, you've probably recently received this email. It says starting on October 8th, you can bid for leads to get more customers. And just as before, you only pay when you get a lead. So when you sign into Google Local Services now, specifically on the desktop, by the way, they said that this hasn't yet hit the mobile app. You should see this yellow banner asking you to choose your bidding preferences. Then in your budget section, you'll have this new section called Bidding Mode, where you can select your max bid per lead. So the maximum amount that you're willing to pay for a lead from Google Local Services, by default, your max bid is set to whatever you used to pay for a lead under the old system. So under the old system, the cost per lead was flat rate and it did vary by vertical. But I'll put the average costs by vertical up on the screen here. By vertical I mean like what sort of business it is. H vac, plumbing, electrical, you know, a maid service, whatever it is. So my industry is H vac. And as you can see, the average cost per lead was $26. What gets me is the wording of this email. It says you can bid for leads to get more customers. Yeah, only if I'm willing to outspend the competition. So basically everything about Google Local Services still works exactly the same, except that this maximum bid that companies have set is now factored into the algorithm when it's deciding which ads it's going to be showing to people. So proximity is still a factor. If you're closer to the person who is searching, you're still more likely to show up. Reviews are still a factor. You want as many good reviews as possible. Supposedly, Google is tracking how often you're answering the phone when people call off of your Google Local Services ads. So make sure you're not missing any calls. And of course, now maximum bid. So if you're willing to spend more for this lead than the other guys, you're more likely to show up at the top of the list. And of course also whatever else goes into Google's algorithm, right, it's a bit of a black box box. They're not super transparent about what goes into that algorithm and how exactly it decides what it's going to show. But we do know at least those things are factored in. And yeah, this, this kind of sucks. Because it's inevitably going to raise the average cost per lead. Now this is still a beta feature, so they're, they're not setting it in stone just yet. And they do have a feedback form. So I'll put that in the description below. If you're not happy with this change, you can let them know about it and you should, you should let them know about it. But at the same time I wouldn't get your hopes up too high. Ultimately, Google has a crazy amount of leverage here. It's Google. What are you going to do? You're going to not use it? It's Google. I think it's possible that this was kind of the plan all along. I think maybe it was flat rate during the rollout to get as many contractors as possible onboarded. But now the service is saturated. There's tons and tons of companies on Google Local services now and Google Local Services only shows three main results. By default you have to click show more to see the rest of the results. It's really only showing three. So now that it's so saturated there's all these companies on it, they do need some sort of way to determine who's going to be in that top three and they're going to pick a way that makes them more money. Ultimately, Google Local Services, it's still a lot easier to self manage. It's certainly a lot less complex than say ppc and you still only pay for a lead that you actually get. So it's not like pay per click where anybody who clicks the lead, well, that costs you some amount of money. So in my opinion it's still better than PPC pay per click. But it's arguably not as good as it once was. Although I will say there is at least an argument to be made that this is a good improvement for some people because now if you were pushed really far down on that list in the algorithm, you were never showing up in the top three results and there was just no nothing you could do to get up there. Well, at least now there's something in your control that you can do to maybe push yourself up on that list, even if it is going to cost you potentially a lot of money. Anyways, that's all I got for today. Again, link in the description down below for that feedback form where you can let Google Local Services know what you think about this change and let me know what you think about this change as well. In the comment section down below, be sure to hit like if you liked this video and subscribe to this YouTube channel. If you haven't done that already, appreciate it. Peace.