Google Ads works for an IT company when it buys the searches of people who already have a project (an ERP to implement, software to build, a security test to run) rather than the words "software house" or "IT company". In the UK a click on "software development company" costs an average of $47.22 and on "penetration testing" $107.78, and a business that offers IT support can only advertise it if the support is for businesses: it is a Google Ads policy almost nobody mentions (DataForSEO and Google Ads Policies Help, 11 November 2026).
Three mistakes come up again and again:
- buying the category word, where page one also holds Wikipedia and job boards (people looking for a definition or a job);
- writing support ads that also speak to consumers, which is the category Google's policies restrict;
- counting form fills instead of contracts, when weeks pass between the click and the signature.
We run Google Ads for B2B companies where every enquiry is worth a lot. For Macropix, an Italian LED wall manufacturer, the campaigns have brought 2,906 quote requests since 2018; in 2025 there were 328 for €12,937 of spend, or €39.44 per request, the best figure in the series.
What do LED walls have to do with an IT company?
The mechanics are the same: few searches, expensive clicks, a long sale. What changes is the vocabulary and one policy rule. In this guide:
- CPCs for IT searches measured today, 19 in Italy and 4 in the UK;
- who owns page one on five Italian searches (vendors, directories, local providers);
- the tech support rule and the one on free downloadable software;
- structure, measurement and budget built on numbers, not on an industry average.
How much an IT click costs (from $1.33 in Italy to $107.78 in the UK)
The cost per click (CPC) of IT searches depends on the service far more than on the sector. These are average Google Ads CPCs read through DataForSEO on 11 November 2026, in US dollars as the tool returns them.
| Search | Market | Monthly searches | Average CPC |
|---|---|---|---|
| penetration testing | UK | 6,600 | $107.78 |
| bespoke software development | UK | 260 | $47.64 |
| software development company | UK | 1,000 | $47.22 |
| managed it services | UK | 1,600 | $46.94 |
| penetration test | Italy | 1,600 | $31.77 |
| sviluppo software su misura (bespoke software) | Italy | 70 | $14.56 |
| software gestionale aziendale (business management software) | Italy | 390 | $13.05 |
| software house | Italy | 2,900 | $11.16 |
| odoo partner | Italy | 390 | $8.21 |
| sap business one | Italy | 1,000 | $6.40 |
| assistenza informatica aziende (IT support for businesses) | Italy | 140 | $5.26 |
| nis2 | Italy | 8,100 | $5.07 |
| assistenza informatica (IT support) | Italy | 1,900 | $2.40 |
| consulenza sap (SAP consulting) | Italy | 70 | $1.33 |
In Italy the word "aziende" (businesses) more than doubles the price of IT support: $2.40 for "assistenza informatica", $5.26 for "assistenza informatica aziende".
NIS2 has 8,100 Italian searches a month but a CPC of $5.07: it is informational traffic, people trying to understand the directive.
UK clicks cost 3.4 to 4.2 times the Italian ones for the same services: $47.22 against $11.16 for the "software house / development company" search, $107.78 against $31.77 for penetration testing. The searches an agency would use to describe this article ("google ads for it companies", "ppc for it companies") have almost no volume: 10 a month in the UK. For the full cost picture, from click to management fee, see how much Google Ads costs.
Who owns page one when a business looks for an IT supplier (vendors and directories on 2 searches out of 5)
On Italian searches for business software and for "odoo partner", the organic page one belongs to software vendors and their directories: for an IT company that implements those products, an ad is one of the few ways to appear. We checked five searches on 11 November 2026, on mobile, in Italy.
- "software gestionale aziendale": 9 organic results out of 9 are vendors or comparison sites (Danea, Factorial, Buffetti, Odoo, Capterra, Wikipedia and others). No integrator, no consultant.
- "odoo partner": 6 results out of 9 are odoo.com pages. Two places are left for partners with their own site.
- "software house": local map pack, Wikipedia at the top, Indeed at the bottom, eight software houses in between.
- "assistenza informatica aziende": a map pack with four listings and ten organic results out of ten from local providers.
- "penetration test": a long AI Overview, a knowledge panel, IBM twice, NinjaOne and five Italian security firms.
The AI Overview appeared on all five. (A note on method: the tool we use to read results pages does not record paid ads; we checked it on "assicurazione auto", car insurance, where ads always run. So we count who holds the free results, not who advertises.)
The practical reading: where the free results belong to vendors, ads make more sense; where they already belong to local providers, the Google Business Profile listing matters more. The organic side is covered in SEO for IT companies and software houses.
Google's rule on IT support (yes to businesses, no to consumers)
Google Ads policies do not allow ads for third-party technical support for consumer technology products and online services; advertisers who provide tech support only to businesses can advertise. That is what the "Third-party consumer technical support" page of Google Ads Policies Help says, checked on 11 November 2026.
The examples Google lists are services many IT firms also sell to households: data recovery, virus removal, internet connectivity, account recovery, password resets, installations, maintenance, hardware repair.
But we only work with businesses.
Then the website has to say so. A landing page that mentions "home PC repair" or "password recovery" next to SME support contracts describes a mixed business. The same page states that a violation does not lead to immediate suspension: a warning comes at least 7 days before.
- One landing page for businesses only: support contracts, number of seats, servers, a named account manager. No prices for a one-off home visit.
- Keywords with "business", "office", "SME", even when they cost twice as much.
- Negative keywords for consumers: "home", "laptop", "personal", "repair cost".
There is a second rule for software producers. The free desktop software policy says that only accredited distribution sites that have completed an application can advertise desktop software at no cost. If you sell an ERP with a downloadable trial, the ad should lead to a demo or trial page, not to a direct download of a free program.
Do your support ads speak only to businesses?
One landing page that mentions password recovery or home repairs is enough to describe a consumer business to Google. Let's review campaigns, negative keywords and landing pages together, service by service.
Book a strategy callHow to structure an IT company's campaigns (one per service and platform, not one for the company)
An IT company's campaigns are split by service and platform: one for the ERP (Odoo, SAP Business One), one for bespoke development, one for security, one for business IT support in the local area. Each has its own CPC, budget and landing page.
In the same campaign, "penetration test" at $31.77 would eat the budget of "IT consulting" at $4.73 (Italian figures).
- ERP and business software: one page per platform, with your partnership tier.
- Development: few clicks, expensive ones; here one enquiry can be a whole project.
- Security: penetration testing, cyber security for businesses. On regulation searches such as NIS2, an organic guide beats an ad.
- Business IT support: a tight radius around the office, using Google Ads location options.
The negative keywords come from page one itself: job boards on "software house" ask you to exclude "jobs", "salary", "internship"; the "How to become an Odoo Partner" page asks you to exclude "become a partner"; then "course", "free", "download", "open source".
And Performance Max?
With ten enquiries a month the automation has little to learn from. Start on the Search network with keywords you choose, and consider Performance Max only once enough conversions are imported from the CRM. The same reasoning, with another B2B supply chain, is in Google Ads for manufacturers.
How to measure contracts, not just forms (Google remembers the click for 90 days)
For an IT company the conversion that matters is the signed contract, weeks after the form: it has to be imported into Google Ads from the CRM. The conversion window can be set up to 90 days, as Google Ads Help explains on conversion windows.
- enhanced conversions for leads: import outcomes from the CRM using the hashed email left in the form (Google Ads Help);
- Customer Match: upload your client list to exclude it from acquisition campaigns, or to offer an extra service to existing clients (Customer Match);
- lead form assets: the form inside the ad, fine for a call request, less so for a quote that needs attachments (lead form assets).
Without this step Google optimises towards anyone who fills in the form, including people trying to sell you something. Counting enquiries starts on the website: see the guide to the IT company website.
What budget you need to start (do the maths on the service CPC, not the sector)
The minimum budget of an IT campaign is the service CPC multiplied by the clicks needed to get a few enquiries a month: at an Italian CPC of $13, 100 clicks cost about $1,300; at a UK CPC of $47, the same 100 clicks cost about $4,700.
The ceiling per enquiry is yours to set: margin on a contract × share of enquiries that become contracts. If a project leaves you £8,000 of margin and you close one enquiry in ten, you can spend up to £800 per enquiry and break even. That is a worked example: margin and close rate are numbers only you have. Our real B2B reference is €39.44 per request for Macropix in 2025, €94.37 in 2024. For CPCs in other sectors see Google Ads for small businesses.
Google Ads and AI answers (ChatGPT gives budgets but not the support rule)
Ads do not get a company cited by ChatGPT or the AI Overview: AI answers draw on organic pages, directories and videos. On the five Italian IT searches the AI Overview was always there, and on "odoo partner" it cited the odoo.com partner directory and the Associazione Odoo Italia list.
We asked ChatGPT on 11 November 2026, in Italian, how a software house finds clients with Google Ads. It suggested budgets of €500 to €5,000 a month and CPCs of €2 to €10, citing agency blogs only (Marketing Hackers, Tready, Alessandro Scialotti, LeadMaps). The consumer tech support rule was not mentioned.
- your listing in the vendor's partner directory matters: it is the source the AI Overview uses when someone looks for a partner;
- service pages work twice: as ad landing pages and as pages an AI engine can read and cite.
What is live for ads inside Google's AI answers is in ads in AI Overviews; how we work on citations is our GEO service.
When Google Ads is not worth it for an IT company (and what to do instead)
Google Ads does not pay off for an IT company when nobody searches for its service in recognisable words, when the client is a consumer, or when the product belongs to a vendor bidding on the same words.
- Services with no search demand (a niche system integrator): LinkedIn Ads on the right job titles. Our test on 20 B2B niches shows where LinkedIn beats Google.
- Consumer support: the restricted category. The Business Profile listing stays.
- Vendor brand searches ("odoo", "sap"): people often want the product. Buy the combination with "partner", "consultant", "implementation".
General rules on when to switch campaigns on are in is Google Ads worth it, and B2B specifics in Google Ads for B2B. Enquiries from ads then need qualifying: that is covered in lead generation for IT companies.
Google Ads for IT companies: frequently asked questions
It depends: yes, if the support is for businesses only. Google Ads policies do not allow ads for third-party technical support to consumers (data recovery, virus removal, passwords, repairs), and they state that advertisers who provide tech support only to businesses can advertise. Ads and landing pages must therefore talk about business contracts.
It depends on the service. In November 2026 the average CPC in the UK was $47.22 for "software development company" and $107.78 for "penetration testing"; in Italy $11.16 for "software house" and $31.77 for "penetration test" (DataForSEO, US dollars).
No, not on its own. Page one for these words also holds Wikipedia and job boards, so part of the searchers want a definition or a job. It works better combined with a city or a service, with negatives such as "jobs", "salary" and "internship".
It depends on how many conversions you have. With few enquiries a month, start on the Search network with keywords you choose, and move to Performance Max only when you import enough contracts from the CRM for the automation to learn.
No. AI answers cite organic pages, directories and videos, not ads. For an IT company, service pages and the listing in the vendor partner directory matter, because the AI Overview uses that directory as a source.
It depends on what the page offers. Under Google Ads policies only accredited distribution sites can advertise desktop software at no cost: an ad for an ERP should lead to a demo or trial page, not to a direct download of a free program.
Google Ads for IT companies, in short (and the check to do today)
Buy the service, not the category.
An IT click costs $1.33 to $31.77 in Italy and up to $107.78 in the UK.
Support is advertised to businesses only.
Measure the contract, up to 90 days after the click.
Today's check takes five minutes: open the landing page of your ads and search for "home", "laptop", "password", "personal". If they are there, you have found the first part of the page to rewrite. If you want to do it with us, we start from our Google Ads services and the searches your clients actually make.
