Straight answers for local service businesses
To block job seekers in Google Ads, add hiring-intent words as phrase match negative keywords in a shared account-level list: hiring, jobs, salary, wage, apprentice, resume, career, employment, "how to become," trainee, and "help wanted." Then check that your ad landing pages don't mention hiring at all, because a "Now Hiring" banner tells Google your page is relevant to job searches. Review your search terms report weekly for the first month and add anything new you see.
You run a plumbing ad. Somebody clicks it. They were searching "plumber jobs near me" because they want to work for you, not hire you. You just paid ten or fifteen bucks for that.
It happens more than most trades realize, and it's one of the easiest leaks to plug. Here's exactly how.
Because Google matches on topic, not intent. Your keyword is "plumber." Someone types "plumber apprentice pay." Google sees the word plumber, sees a local business page about plumbing, and decides that's close enough. With broad match keywords, it's very close enough.
Three groups eat your budget this way:
None of them will ever call you about a water heater. And here's the sneaky part: they often click at a higher rate than real customers, because your ad looks like a local company that might be hiring. High click rate, zero calls.
Start with this list. Add every one as a phrase match negative unless noted.
That last group matters. People type "plumber jobs indeed" all day long.
This is the one that bites people. If you add job as a phrase match negative, you also block:
Those are paying customers, and they're often the easy ones. Use the longer phrases instead: "job openings," "jobs near me," "jobs hiring." Same with apply, which can catch "how to apply caulk." And be careful with training if you're an HVAC company that trains commercial staff, or school if you actually service schools. In that case, use exact match negatives for the specific searches you see instead of blanket phrase matches.
Build one shared negative keyword list at the account level, not campaign by campaign. In Google Ads, go to Tools, then Shared Library, then Negative keyword lists. Name it something obvious like "Hiring Terms." Paste the whole list in. Then apply it to every campaign you run.
The reason: when you launch a new campaign next spring, you apply the list once and you're covered. Nobody remembers to retype forty negatives from scratch.
This is the part almost nobody checks. Google reads your landing page to decide what searches you're relevant for. If your homepage has a big "Now Hiring Experienced Techs" banner, or a Careers link in the main nav, or a paragraph about joining the team, you have literally told Google that your page answers hiring searches.
You can add every negative keyword on earth and still get matched more aggressively than you should, because your page is a topical match.
The fix is simple:
You lose nothing. People who want to work for you find the careers page through your homepage or through Indeed. Customers who click your ad see an ad about fixing their problem.
If you're running Performance Max, Display, or Video, negative keywords only do part of the work. Those campaigns place ads on websites and apps, and "plumbing career" blog posts and job boards are websites. Your ad ends up in front of people reading about apprenticeship pay.
Go into your placement report, sort by cost, and exclude anything that looks like a job site or a career blog. Do this once a month. In Performance Max you can add account-level placement exclusions, which is the cleanest way.
Open the search terms report. Set the date range to the last 30 days. Read every term that cost you money.
You're looking for two things: hiring terms that slipped through, and hiring terms you accidentally blocked that were actually customers. Add the slippers to your list. Remove the mistakes.
Do this weekly for the first month, then monthly. Search behavior shifts, and new phrasing shows up. A landscaper in a college town will see different junk than one in a retirement community.
Don't recruit through your service ads. Ever. They're two different jobs with two different audiences.
Blocking job seekers in Google Ads takes about twenty minutes. Cleaning the hiring language off your ad landing page takes another ten. That's a half hour of work that stops paying for clicks that were never going to call you.
If you're not sure which of your pages your ads are actually landing on, that's usually worth checking first. A lot of accounts are sending every ad to the homepage, and the homepage is where the hiring banner lives.
Yes, and that's the point. You'll see fewer impressions and fewer clicks, but your cost per call should drop because the clicks you do pay for come from people with a plumbing problem.
Phrase match for most hiring words like "hiring," "apprentice," and "salary," since they only appear in job searches. Use exact match for anything that overlaps with real customer language, like "job" or "training."
No. Smart Bidding will eventually learn that job seeker clicks don't convert, but only if you have conversion tracking set up properly, and it costs you money to learn. Negative keywords stop it immediately.
Weekly for the first month after any change, then monthly once things are stable. Five minutes of reading search terms catches leaks that would otherwise run for a full quarter.
No. Local Services Ads don't use keywords at all, so there's nothing to add. If you get job inquiries through LSA, mark them as unrelated in the lead dispute process so you're not charged.
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