HVAC Demand Trends: Google LSA Revenue Performance - December 2025
👋 Hey, Jon here! First off, Happy New Year :) 2026 is going to be an exciting year for home services, I can feel it.
Before jumping into this week’s benchmark, I want to say thank you.
I’m humbled by how many of you read these articles, ask thoughtful questions, share them internally, and pass them along to peers. Over the break, several of you reached out privately and even publicly with kind words about how you’re using this work. That feedback is fuel, and it raises the bar for the analysis we aim to deliver in 2026!
We also love hearing real-world outcomes like the one below, because this is exactly why we do what we do:
With that said, I am always open to feedback on content you’d like to see in this newsletter, so don’t ever hesitate to e-mail me Jon@searchlightdigital.io.
Now, back to the topic at hand, GLSAs!
Note: To obtain year-over-year analysis, brands in this sample needed to be on the SearchLight platform for at least 1 year. In practice, having attribution data for this length of time tends to increase confidence in scaling digital spend.
As a result, this subset naturally skews toward higher-performing brands with higher budgets.
That context matters when interpreting the results below.
In this sample, the average spend per business on GLSA was $11,705 per month with a 10.8x ROAS closed (I know, I spoiled the best part, but this is an important distinction!).
If you aren’t as concerned by year-over-year data, and want to look at a much larger sample set with medians and top/bottom quartile performers, you can read this Q4 2025 Google Local Service Ads Analysis.
With that, let’s dive in!
Unique Leads from GLSA Increased by 29% Year-over-Year
December 2025 GLSA spend was up 25% year-over-year, and unique leads were up 29% year-over-year, which drove a:
48% increase in booked customers year-over-year (raw book rate increased from 39% to 44% from December 2024 to December 2025)
49% more run jobs year-over-year
49% more paying customers year-over-year
$58,472 in more closed revenue in December 2025 than December 2024 (+85%) per business
These are substantial YoY increases and may be due to the context stated above of higher performing brands, but we have seen GLSAs stabilize in 2025 with notable YoY growth over 2024.
We did not see this same type of YoY growth in November, but December is also a month-to-month stronger performer with a 13% increase in unique leads, and a 26% increase in closed revenue, so seasonality is likely at play here.
Cost per unique lead has remained steady on GLSAs despite spend and demand swings, dropping from $55.72 in December 2024 to $54.05 in December 2025:
And for the first time since summer, month-over-month unique lead volume (per business) uptrended back to August levels:
It Cost $218.19 to Acquire a Paying Customer from Google LSAs in December 2025
Customer Acquisition Cost from GLSA dropped $41.56 YoY, which is pretty substantial given the volume of this sample (it cost $222,969 LESS to acquire this volume than it would have at 2024 CACs), but it’s also worth noting the improvement in funnel efficiency metrics of this group:
Raw Book Rate increased 12% YoY
Run Rate increased 13% YoY
Paying Customer Rate increased 13% YoY
While CAC slightly rose month-over-month, it cost less to acquire a paying customer from September through December 2025 than it did in the same time period for 2024:
56% of GLSA Conversions Were Bookable
As I wrote about in a previous newsletter, we developed our own AI models to assess the bookability of leads from various digital marketing tools across CSRs, and it’s crucial to incorporate this data to understand the entire lead-to-revenue funnel.
GLSAs have also been very consistent in bookability, with over half of conversions (phone calls and messages) bookable.
But, 44% of GLSA conversions were unbookable, and these were the top 6 reasons why:
Another 5% of unbookable conversions from LSAs weren’t homeowners, 3.5% were seeking employment, 2% were wrong number conversions, and the rest were a smaller longer tail list of reasons those conversions were not bookable.
48% of Bookable Conversions from GLSA Did Not Book
If I could give one piece of advice to immediately improve ROAS on Google Local Service Ads (or any other digital channel), it would be to remove friction to booking an appointment.
Nearly half of bookable conversions did not book.
That adds another 27% to the 44% of conversions that didn’t book.
Of the conversions that were bookable, but didn’t book at the time of the conversion, the big three reasons primarily responsible for that were planned follow-up, price concerns, and scheduling/availability misalignment:
Note, we do have two new categories: (1) Requested Human and (2) AI to Human Transfer Required.
With the rapid rise of AI CSRs, we are now grading the performance of those agents, but our models are identifying when they introduce friction that leaks revenue.
5% of bookable conversions hung up after learning they were speaking with an AI CSR, but the majority were emergency furnace service requests and likely sought immediate help (if they called back and booked, our system would see it, so unless they booked in January, this crop remains unbooked).
But, another 4% required AI to human transfer to book the appointment and is worth verifying if you are using AI CSRs.
This is a small percentage and may not be worth the risk (yet) of letting an AI CSR directly book the appointment. Still, these lost opportunities cost each business $7,000 in revenue potential or another 0.59x in closed ROAS, based on average ticket value.
Google LSAs Drove a 21.0x Return on Ad Spend Potential in December
For every $1 spent on GLSA in December ‘25, $21 of revenue opportunity was generated (up from $16.20 in December ‘24).
Revenue opportunity comprises estimates, sold jobs, and closed jobs of leads that originated from GLSA (note that we only take one estimate per customer, and a customer can exist in just one of those buckets at a given time period to avoid double-counting).
To make this more tangible, in December 2025, across this sample of businesses, $245,741 in revenue opportunity from GLSA was generated per business, on average.
Google LSAs Drove a 10.8x Return on Ad Spend (Closed Revenue) in December
GLSAs drove $10.80 in closed revenue for every $1 spent in December ‘25, up from $7.30 in December ‘24.
That equated to $126,940 in closed revenue per business for December ‘25, converted by GLSA.
Of the total closed revenue in November generated by Google Local Service Ads, 66% came from new customers (up from 55% in November ‘25).
Until next time…
-Jon