Key facts (UK, 2026)
• Being in Google's search results and on Google Maps costs £0.
• Doing the groundwork yourself: £0 plus your time, or from about £7.49 a month for a website builder.
• Paying someone for one-off fixes: typically £150–£750. Ongoing local SEO: typically £300–£1,500 a month.
• Google Ads for home services and home improvement: roughly £3–£8 a click, plus management fees from £300 a month at small agencies to £3,000+ at large ones.
• £500 a month on ads works out at roughly £70–£170 per enquiry (worked example below).
• The difference: ads stop the day you stop paying. Pages, reviews and a good Business Profile keep working.
• One new trade website with £0 spent on ads was shown in Google 144,134 times in three months, and nearly 9 in 10 of its clicks went to pages answering customers' questions.
Is it free to get customers from Google?
Getting on Google is free. Google's own documentation says it “never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results”, and a Google Business Profile, which puts you on Google Maps, costs nothing to create or run. There's a full breakdown in how much does it cost to get on Google?
Getting customers from Google is a different question. Google shows the businesses it's most confident about: the ones whose website clearly says what they do and where, whose Business Profile is complete and matches the website, and who have reviews and useful information. None of that has a fee from Google. It costs either your time or someone else's.
What actually brings customers from Google without ads?
Six things, and they build on each other:
- A page for each service you want more of. “Extensions”, “boiler repairs”, “garden design”: one clear page each, not one long list. People search for the job, not the trade.
- The towns and villages you work in, by name. Someone types “roofer Alton”, not “roofer Hampshire”. If your website never says Alton, Google has little to match.
- A complete Google Business Profile. The right category, service area, services, opening hours and photos, matching your website exactly.
- Reviews, on Google and on your own site, answered when they come in.
- Answers to the questions people ask before they choose: costs, how long it takes, whether they need planning permission. This is how people find you before they're ready to call.
- A quick way to get in touch: a tap-to-call number and a short quote form that works on a phone.
A seventh is quietly becoming as important: making sure all of this is readable by AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot, which piece their answers together from the same sources.
How much does it cost to get customers from Google without paying for ads?
It depends on who does the work and how much is missing. These are typical UK figures for a small local business:
| Route | Typical cost | What it usually covers |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | £0 + your time (from about £7.49 a month for a website builder) | Business Profile, adding service and area pages, asking for reviews |
| One-off fixes by someone else | £150–£750 | Fixing what's holding an existing website back: missing pages, titles, contact routes, Business Profile set-up |
| Business Profile set-up only | £99–£225 one-off, or £50–£349 a month to manage | Someone else setting up or posting to your profile |
| Ongoing local SEO | £300–£1,500 a month (published by Wrise and Whitehat) | Monthly content, profile updates and links (quality varies a lot) |
| A new small website | £175–£1,200 (published UK prices), bespoke £2,500–£8,000+ | Only needed if the current site can't be fixed |
Why the range is so wide: the number of services and towns you want to be found for, the platform your website is on (some are hard to change), how much writing is needed, how competitive your trade is locally, and whether you own your domain and website. Most small websites don't need replacing. They need the missing pieces adding.
How much does Google Ads cost by comparison?
Google Ads charges each time someone clicks. For trades, published UK figures put a click at roughly £3–£8: Whito's UK compilation averages home services at £3.20 (range £1.50–£5.50), while Whitehat puts home improvement at £5.50–£7.85. Busy towns and urgent jobs, like emergency plumbers, cost more.
If someone runs the ads for you, management is on top. JW Digital lists UK retainers of £300–£2,500 a month, or 10–20% of spend, with set-up from a few hundred pounds to about £1,500. Larger agencies such as Whitehat quote £3,000–£5,000 a month. The money you spend on clicks goes to Google separately.
Worked example: £500 a month on Google Ads
At £3.20–£7 a click, £500 buys roughly 70–155 clicks. Whitehat reports about 4.2% of home-improvement clicks becoming an enquiry, roughly 1 in 24. That's about 3–7 enquiries a month, or £70–£170 per enquiry before any management fee. Not every enquiry becomes a job.
Ads work, and for a brand-new business they can be the quickest way to get the phone ringing. The catch is simple: the day you stop paying, the ads stop.
More detail on budgets, management fees and pay-per-lead ads: how much does Google Ads cost in the UK?
Ads or your own website: what's left after 12 months?
| Google Ads, £500 a month | Building your own presence | |
|---|---|---|
| Spend over a year | £6,000 in clicks, plus any management fee | Typically a one-off £150–£750, or your own time |
| How fast | Days | Weeks to months |
| When you stop paying | Enquiries from ads stop | The pages, reviews and profile stay and keep working |
| Shows up in AI answers | No: ads are separate from the answer | Yes: AI tools draw on your website and profile |
It isn't either/or. Plenty of businesses run a small ad budget while the free foundations grow, then turn it down. What's worth avoiding is paying for ads for years while the website underneath them never improves.
How long does it take to get customers from Google?
Honestly, it varies, and anyone promising a date is guessing. A Google Business Profile can start appearing within days of being verified. New pages usually take weeks to be picked up, and longer to climb. It's slower in busy trades and busy towns.
One example, from a website built from scratch for a Hampshire trade business that had relied on word of mouth: in the three months to September 2026 it was shown in Google search 144,134 times, AI tools used it as a source 8,184 times, and 645 of its 725 Google clicks went to its guides, the pages answering customers' questions. It spent £0 on advertising. That's one website, not a promise, but it shows where the clicks come from.
How to get more customers from Google Maps
The Maps results (the “map pack” of three businesses) come from Google Business Profiles. All of this is free:
- Choose the most specific main category (“roofing contractor”, not “contractor”).
- Set your service area to the towns you actually cover.
- List every service, with a sentence each.
- Add real photos of your work, regularly.
- Ask every happy customer for a review, and reply to each one.
- Make sure the name, phone number and area match your website exactly.
Step by step: how to set up a Google Business Profile.
Reviews are the part most businesses can start today: how to get more Google reviews.
Why a competitor might be above you, and what to check: how to rank higher on Google Maps.
How do you get customers from ChatGPT as well as Google?
Mostly by doing the same things. When someone asks ChatGPT or Copilot to recommend a plumber in a town, the answer is pieced together from websites, business profiles, review sites and directories. Copilot runs on Microsoft's Bing, so being properly set up on Bing matters as well as Google.
What helps: plain statements on your website of what you do and where, the same details everywhere, reviews, and pages that answer real questions. AI tools quote what a website says plainly. They can't use what isn't there.
ChatGPT started showing ads in the UK in June 2026. They appear labelled as sponsored, below the answer, and OpenAI says ads don't change what ChatGPT recommends. Being named in the answer still comes from the groundwork above. More: how to get your business on ChatGPT.
Can I do it myself?
Much of it, yes. Setting up your Business Profile, asking for reviews, and writing a page about each service and the towns you cover need time, not money. Where it's worth paying for help is the part you can't see: whether Google can actually read your pages, whether anything is blocking them, whether your contact form reaches you, and which few changes would make the biggest difference. That's usually a one-off job, not a monthly contract.
This is the kind of work Website Clarity does: pages for your services and towns, Google Business Profile set-up, making your website readable by Google and AI tools, and making it easy to get in touch. See website services.
Common questions
- Is it free to advertise on Google?
- No. Advertising on Google is paid, through Google Ads, and you pay each time someone clicks. Appearing in Google's ordinary search results and on Google Maps is free.
- How much does it cost to get listed on Google?
- Nothing. Creating, claiming and verifying a Google Business Profile is free, and Google doesn't charge to include a website in its search results. If someone is charging you for a “Google listing”, ask exactly what work it covers.
- How much does it cost to be sponsored on Google Maps?
- Sponsored results on Google Maps are part of Google Ads, so you pay per click like search ads. There's no fixed price. It depends on your trade and area. UK figures for trades are roughly £3–£8 a click.
- How much does SEO cost for a small business in the UK?
- Ongoing local SEO is typically £300–£1,500 a month. One-off fixes to an existing website are often £150–£750. Many small businesses need the one-off work more than a monthly contract.
- Do I need a new website to get more customers from Google?
- Usually not. Most websites can be improved: adding pages for services and towns, fixing titles, and making it easy to get in touch. A new website only makes sense if the current one can't be changed or you don't own it.