Concrete contractors running Google Ads: what their websites get wrong

The short version

A Google Ads click for concrete work is not cheap, and every one is paid for whether the homeowner calls or not. So we took the concrete contractor websites from our 2026 audit, picked out the ones with a Google Ads tag installed, and asked a simple question: when someone clicks the ad, is the website ready?

Mostly, no. The advertisers were better than everyone else at one thing, putting the phone number on the first screen. They were no better, or worse, at almost everything else that decides whether a paid click turns into a job. And most of them could not see which calls their ads produced.

Five findings

Advertisers against everyone else

Here are the 21 sites with a Google Ads tag next to the 82 without one, on the things that decide what happens after a click.

The advertisers have clearly had someone set up analytics. Nearly all run Google Analytics 4 and most run Tag Manager, far more than the rest of the field. That is the part an agency or a Google rep sets up on day one. The parts that take ongoing care, the phone tracking, the form and the speed of the page, are where they look like everyone else, or worse. The overall score tells the same story: 54 out of 100 for the advertisers against 56 for the rest.

The four leaks

We checked every advertiser for four things that let a paid click go to waste:

1. No call tracking. Calls from the website cannot be tied back to the ads.
2. No quote form on the homepage. The visitor who will not call at 9 p.m. has nowhere to go.
3. No phone number on the first phone screen. The caller has to hunt.
4. A slow page. The main content takes more than 4 seconds to appear on a phone.

91% of the advertisers had two or more of the four. Only 1 had none. The most common pair was the one that hurts most: a slow page and no way to see which calls the ads produced.

Why call tracking matters most

Concrete is a phone trade. A homeowner who wants a driveway replaced will usually call, and often more than one company. If the calls are not tracked, the ad account only sees clicks and form fills. It cannot tell the call that booked a $14,000 driveway from the one asking if you sell bags of mix.

That matters twice. First, you cannot judge the ads: a campaign that looks dead in the ad account may be producing most of your calls, and one that looks busy may be producing none. Second, Google’s automatic bidding learns from the conversions it is told about. Tell it only about forms, and it learns to find people who fill in forms.

The fix does not have to cost anything. Google Ads can put its own forwarding numbers, which are available in Canada, on your website at no charge, so calls from ad visitors are counted as conversions. Paid call tracking tools go further, with recordings, a number for each source and reports that include calls from your Google profile and other marketing. Only 19% of the concrete advertisers we checked had either that we could detect.

The page the click lands on

How relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad.

Google Ads Help, About Quality Score for Search campaigns

That is how Google describes landing page experience, one of the three parts of Quality Score. The other two are how likely your ad is to be clicked and how well it matches the search. A concrete homepage that takes ten seconds to show anything, with no form and a general list of services, is not what someone who searched “driveway replacement” was hoping for.

The better pattern is a page for each job you advertise: the driveway ad goes to a driveway page, the foundation ad to a foundation page. The phone number and a short quote form sit on the first phone screen. Your own photos of that kind of job, your reviews, and a straight answer on typical price. And it loads in under three seconds, which on most concrete sites means fixing the first photo. Our speed study explains how.

Fix this before you spend more

If you run Google Ads for your concrete company, check these in order. The first three cost nothing but an afternoon.

Then trim the searches you should never pay for. A long negative keyword list keeps out the do-it-yourself searches, the job seekers and the people looking for a bag of concrete mix. Our Google Ads guide has a starter list.

This is also why the 60-Day Booked Jobs Program spends its first two to three weeks on tracking, landing pages and the Google profile before any campaign goes live. A guarantee on signed jobs only works if every lead can be seen.

How we measured this

The sample

These are the 103 sites from our State of Concrete Contractor Websites 2026 report, across ten Canadian cities, with directories, lead platforms, suppliers, companies outside Canada and our own clients removed. We split them into the 21 with a Google Ads tag and the 82 without.

What counts as a Google Ads tag

We loaded each homepage in Chromium, let it finish loading, and searched the rendered page for a Google Ads account ID, the “AW-” code every Google Ads tag carries. Because we read the page after it loaded, this also catches most tags added through Google Tag Manager. A Google Ads tag is installed for conversion tracking or remarketing. Most companies install one because they run ads, but a tag can outlive a paused account, so this is a count of sites set up for Google Ads rather than a count of active campaigns.

Call tracking

A second pass loaded each homepage and looked for the scripts of the common call tracking services, and for Google Ads website call tracking with forwarding numbers. Some setups only load after a visitor interacts with the page, and we would miss those, so the true share may be a little higher. It would take a large miss to change the pattern.

Speed and the rest

Speed is Largest Contentful Paint from Google Lighthouse 13.5.0 on default mobile settings, one site at a time. The phone number, button and form checks were made on a 390 by 844 phone screen, counting only what was really visible before scrolling.

Limits

21 sites is a small group, so a single site moves a percentage by about 5 points. Treat the exact figures as a guide and the pattern as the finding. We measured homepages, and some advertisers send their ads to separate landing pages we did not see. That is the better practice, and if more of them do it than we could tell, good.

Citing this study

Concrete Marketing (2026). Concrete Contractors Running Google Ads: What Their Websites Get Wrong. 21 Canadian advertisers compared with 82 non-advertisers. https://concretemarketing.ca/blog/concrete-contractors-google-ads-website-leaks/

Glossary

Google Ads tag

A small piece of code from Google Ads that records conversions or builds remarketing lists. Its presence usually means the company advertises on Google.

Call tracking

Showing a trackable phone number to website visitors so each call can be tied to the marketing that produced it.

Google forwarding number

A number Google Ads shows in place of yours on your site, which forwards to your phone and records the call as a conversion.

Quality Score

Google’s rating of an ad’s quality, built from expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience.

Landing page

The page someone arrives on after clicking an ad.

Negative keyword

A word you tell Google Ads never to show your ad for, such as “DIY” or “jobs”.