Cost Per Click (CPC)
Cost Per Click is the price you pay each time a person clicks one of your paid ads. It is the most quoted metric in paid marketing and one of the easiest to misread, because cheap clicks often produce expensive customers and expensive clicks sometimes produce the cheapest.
How CPC is set
On Google Ads your CPC is set by a live auction. Google compares your bid, your Quality Score, and the expected impact of your ad extensions against every other advertiser bidding on the same keyword. You usually pay the minimum needed to beat the next advertiser, not your max bid.
Higher Quality Score lowers your CPC for the same position. That is why building a relevant landing page and a tight ad group beats raising bids almost every time.
What a fair CPC looks like
For home service searches in Phoenix or Denver, expect $4 to $25 per click on common services and $30 to $90 on emergency or high-margin services. Legal and medical can run $50 to $200. These are typical not absolute. The right CPC is the one that produces a profitable cost per booked job, not the lowest number on a report.
If your CPC is climbing month over month without conversion lift, the cause is usually poor keyword discipline or a landing page Google rates low. Both fixable in 30 days.
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