Top of funnel
Non-brand paid search judged on booked outcomes.
Non-brand paid search, managed to cost per booked outcome: call scoring that removes wrong numbers and vendor calls, search term hygiene that keeps budget out of broad queries, and location-level budget that matches actual capacity.
This page covers non-brand acquisition only — campaigns targeting people who have not searched your brand name. Defending your own brand terms from competitor conquesting, and deciding whether to bid on your own name at all, is a different page with different economics: you are usually paying for a click you would have earned for free. Non-brand campaigns compete for demand that does not yet know you exist; branded campaigns defend demand that already does. The budget, the keywords, and the measurement standard differ for each.
Non-brand paid search is judged against three numbers that all lean the same direction. Last-click attribution routes credit to whichever campaign happened to run last, which is usually a brand campaign catching someone who already knew you. Google Ads' own conversion count includes calls that never should have counted — wrong numbers, existing customers calling back, a vendor cold-calling the same tracking number your ads use. And Local Services Ads reports leads in a currency of its own that does not reconcile with your CRM, your call log, or anything else you can audit.
None of that is a reason to stop running non-brand search. It is a reason to measure it against a different number: cost per booked outcome, calculated at the location that produced it, using calls and forms that have actually been scored.
How the work differs
- Account structure
- Campaigns split by match type and location, with brand terms excluded via a negative keyword list reviewed monthly, not set once at launch.
- Search term hygiene
- Search query reports reviewed weekly against that standing negative list, so budget does not quietly drift toward broad, low-intent queries.
- Call scoring
- Every call from a Google Ads or LSA click scored against a fixed rubric before it counts as a qualified inquiry, removing wrong numbers, vendor calls, and existing customers.
- LSA reconciliation
- Local Services Ads lead charges matched against your own call log and CRM, since LSA's own dashboard cannot see whether a lead actually booked.
- Location-level budget
- Budget set and moved per location against its own cost per booked outcome, not a blended regional average, since a location already at capacity should not keep receiving the same spend as one with room to grow.
- Competitor exclusion
- Competitor and brand terms excluded from non-brand campaigns entirely, with bidding on either routed to its own budget and its own page.
How it is measured
The conversion counted is a call or form scored above the booking-intent threshold, matched back to the location and campaign that produced it, not the platform's own reported conversion count. Google Ads' offline conversion import receives that scored outcome on a schedule, so the platform's own bidding algorithm optimizes toward what the business actually booked rather than toward call volume. This is the same measurement layer applied consistently across every channel, not a rule invented for search alone.
What this channel cannot claim credit for: a booking that closes through a branded search, a direct visit, or a referral after a non-brand ad first introduced the business. That kind of multi-touch influence is real, but attributing all of it to the first non-brand click would double-count against every other channel making the same claim. Non-brand paid search is reported on what it can be shown to have produced directly, with assisted influence noted separately rather than folded into one inflated number.
What we need from you
Administrative access to the Google Ads and Local Services Ads accounts, since search term hygiene and offline conversion import both require write access to make changes directly. Read access or a call log export from whichever system logs inbound calls, so scored outcomes can be matched back to source. And confirmation of true capacity per location, since a location already near capacity should not receive the same budget increase as one with room to grow.
Who this is for
Built for operators running non-brand search as one of several top-of-funnel programs across more than one location, where a single account-level return number cannot show which sites are actually producing booked outcomes. It runs well alongside paid social prospecting in the same market, with the same measurement standard applied to both.
Multi-location healthcare groups run this exact combination most often. If you want the specifics before committing to anything, the four-stage process lays out what happens week by week, and client results show what the reporting actually looks like once it is running.
They get scored and excluded before they ever reach a report — a wrong number, an existing customer calling back, or a vendor cold call does not count as a qualified inquiry regardless of which campaign the tracking number was attached to. That scoring happens on every call, not a sample, so the exclusion is consistent month to month. Without it, a channel that happens to generate more incidental call volume would look artificially strong. The scored, qualified count is what budget decisions are based on, not the raw call total.
Yes, but only if both are matched back to the same call log and CRM records rather than trusted on their own reported numbers, since LSA and Google Ads each claim credit independently and neither knows about the other. We reconcile both platforms' claimed conversions against that same source of truth before either counts toward a budget decision. Where the two would otherwise claim the same booked outcome, we attribute it to whichever ad the customer's own path shows actually produced it. That reconciliation runs monthly, not once at setup.
Not within this program — competitor and brand terms are excluded from non-brand campaigns entirely, since bidding on either is a different economic decision with a different measurement standard than reaching people who do not know you yet. Competitor conquesting is a separate conversation and a separate budget line, evaluated on its own incrementality rather than folded into non-brand performance. Mixing the two would make it impossible to tell which spend produced which kind of demand. We keep them separate so each can be judged honestly.
Once location-level cost per booked outcome is reporting reliably, which typically takes the first full reporting cycle, budget can move between locations as fast as the ad platforms allow — usually days, not months. The constraint is rarely the platform; it is having enough matched, scored data at each location to know a move is justified rather than reactive to a short run of noise. We look for a sustained pattern across at least a few weeks before recommending a shift, not one strong or weak day. Once that pattern exists, moving the budget itself is fast.
You do. The Google Ads and Local Services Ads accounts are yours, set up under your own billing and access. If the engagement ends, the account, its structure, and its negative keyword lists all stay exactly as built. What ends is the ongoing call scoring, search term review, and location-level reporting — the account and the campaigns already running in it keep operating.
See what your non-brand campaigns are actually producing.
Two weeks, fixed scope: we score a sample of your calls and show you the gap between what Google reports and what actually booked.