Ask a plumbing contractor what a truck roll costs and you'll get an answer down to the dollar. Ask what a booked job from Google costs and the room goes quiet. Contractors care plenty about numbers. The problem is the measurement layer that should answer the question, which on most contractor websites simply isn't there.

This August we graded 1,000 home service contractor websites, 250 each in plumbing, HVAC, electrical and roofing, because nobody had published data on a basic question: how many contractors can tell whether their advertising works or not? About 3 in 10, it turns out. Everyone else is spending on marketing with the receipts turned off.

How the Scan Worked

A word on method first, because numbers are only worth reading if you can trust how they were gathered. We pulled contractor websites from public business listings nationwide and capped franchises at one site per brand, so the results reflect independent shops. It took 1,402 attempts to land 250 readable sites in each of the four trades, 1,000 in all. The rest were dead sites, timeouts and pages that blocked automated visits, and we set those aside rather than counting them against the industry.

We then graded each site's public homepage code for specific measurement signals: analytics installs like Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager, the dead Universal Analytics tag, Google Ads conversion tags, the Meta pixel, and call tracking scripts from CallRail and WhatConverts. All of that boils down to two questions. First, does anything on this site count visitors at all? And second, can anything connect an ad click to an outcome (meaning a call or a booked job)? Keep in mind a homepage scan only sees what's publicly visible. Every number here is a floor, and the real gaps are probably wider.

An Industry Split into Thirds

The trades split almost evenly into thirds: 29% of contractor websites have nothing measuring them at all, not even a visitor counter. Another 42% count visits but not outcomes, so the owner can learn that 800 people looked at the site last month but has no idea whether a single one of them called. That leaves 29% wired well enough that "which ad produced that job" is even an answerable question.

Plumbing sits a little behind the pack: 29% of plumbing sites carry no measurement of any kind, and only 28% can connect an ad to an outcome. HVAC does modestly better at 33%. Whichever trade you run, the odds are better than two to one that the shop across town can't see what its marketing produces. Of course, the odds say the same thing about yours.

The Phone Problem

One number in the data should bother anyone spending real money on ads. Among the sites that are set up to track Google Ads results, only 26% also track phone calls. Plumbing and mechanical are phone businesses. For most shops the jobs that matter start with a ring, not a web form, which means even the contractors who measure are mostly counting form fills, the smaller share of their leads, and missing the calls.

That's worse than a bookkeeping gap, because Google and Meta automatically steer budget toward whatever outcome they can see. Show them nothing and they spend your money blind. Show them only form fills and they'll happily chase form fills all year, while the calls that fill your board go uncounted and unbought.

The Tag That Died in 2023

The strangest number in the data: 10% of contractor websites still carry the old Universal Analytics tag, which Google shut off in July 2023. For half of them it's the only measurement on the site. Their tracking has been reporting zeroes for three years, and nothing on the website suggests anyone noticed. Tags tend to outlive whoever installed them. If your analytics was set up before 2023 and nobody has touched it since, this finding may be about you.

The scan also lines up with what owners say about themselves. A survey commissioned by Scorpion and published in February found 67% of home services leaders can't connect marketing spend to revenue. They asked the owners, we read the websites. Both methods land on roughly the same answer: about 7 in 10 contractors can't see what their marketing produces.

Three Questions to Ask This Week

Fixing this doesn't require becoming a tracking expert. It requires asking whoever runs your website and advertising three questions and insisting on plain answers.

First, is our analytics the current Google Analytics, or the old version that died in 2023? Of the sites we graded, 1 in 10 still carries the dead one.

Second, when a customer calls from an ad, does anything record which ad the call came from? If the honest answer is "we ask people how they heard about us," the answer is no.

Third, can anyone show me last month's cost per booked job? Not cost per click, not cost per lead, cost per booked job. A field management platform such as ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro or Jobber showed up on 13% of the sites we graded, and those systems already know the revenue on every closed job. In most shops the information needed to answer this question already exists. It's just never been connected to the advertising.

The Upside of a Blind Market

There's a competitive angle to this study. Measurement is rare in the trades, and that rarity is an edge for whoever has it. A shop that knows its cost per booked job can put more money on what works and cut what doesn't, while 7 in 10 rivals bid blind against it. The contractors who measure end up buying the same clicks at better prices, in an auction where most of the bidders can't see the scoreboard.

The full study, with per-trade tables and complete methodology, is free to cite at getsuperiormarketing.com/guides/state-of-conversion-tracking-home-services.

Mike S is the founder of Superior Marketing, an agency that builds ad measurement and paid advertising programs for home service contractors. Their research includes The State of Conversion Tracking in Home Services 2026, a scan of 1,000 contractor websites across the mechanical trades measuring which sites can connect an ad click to a booked job.