These apply to us as much as to anyone you talk to this month. Ask them in this order, and write the answers down while you are on the call.
Everything is registered in your name
Six things: the Google Business Profile, the Google Ads account, the Local Services account, the domain registration, the website files, and the tracking numbers. Every one of them in the contractor's name and on the contractor's email, with the agency added as a manager user.
Ask what happens to each of the six if you cancel in March. When the ad account is registered to the agency, you start over with an empty account, and three years of conversion history that trained the bidding stays behind. When the domain is registered to the agency, they can hold the website hostage for as long as the transfer takes.
How the fee is built
A flat monthly fee, or a percentage of ad spend. A percentage pays the agency to spend more, which is why we charge a flat fee and say so on the how we work page. Then the second half: is the ad spend billed by Google straight to your card, or does it pass through the agency? Ask for the Google invoice and put it next to what you were charged.
Then ask what the monthly fee covers. Local Services disputes filed every week, the review flow, page updates, call recordings listened to by a person, a weekly call with whoever does the work. An agency that cannot list what the fee covers is charging you for a dashboard login.
What the report counts
One page, in your inbox, weekly. Cost per booked job by channel and by job type, with repair and replacement on separate lines and the call recordings linked, so any number on the page can be checked against the call it came from. Impressions, clicks, "leads" and a rising line labeled visibility are numbers that go up in a bad month too.
Ask to see a real report from another client with the name blacked out. An agency that has never produced that page will tell you the reporting is customized to each client.
Who does the work
Ask for the name of the person who listens to your call recordings. Then the name of the person who files the Local Services disputes. Then who answers on a Tuesday afternoon when the weekly Local Services budget is spent by noon and Thursday's forecast says 99.
Ask whether that person has run an HVAC account through a heat wave, or whether HVAC is one of eleven industries listed on the agency's home page. If the only name you get is an account manager who relays questions to a team you never speak to, the answer to the Tuesday question arrives on Thursday.
The contract
A fixed fee for the build, then month to month with a stated notice period. Get the notice period in writing and read what happens when it runs out: who keeps the landing pages, whether the campaigns stay in your account or get deleted, whether the tracking numbers port to you, and how long the call recordings stay available for download.
Twelve-month terms exist and some are priced fairly. Ask what the twelve months buy that a monthly agreement does not, and get the answer written into the contract.
Claims that end the call
"Guaranteed number one on Google." Nobody sells organic ranking, and an agency promising it is either ranking you for a phrase nobody searches or lying outright. "We have a relationship with Google." Any agency with enough spend under management gets assigned a Google rep, and that rep's job is to grow the spend. A package of reviews at any price, which since October 21, 2024 carries civil penalties per review under the FTC's rule. An "AI SEO" product that turns out to be the Business Profile work with a new name on the invoice.
And the one we have to say about ourselves. No agency can promise you a cost per booked job before it has listened to a month of your calls; anyone quoting that number on a first call is quoting someone else's account. It is why the build starts with an audit of the call recordings and the ad accounts, and why you get the audit findings whether or not you sign anything.