Enquiries are down and nobody can tell you why. That is the position most removals owners are in when they start looking at their marketing.
This is the full answer to the most searched question in the industry: where removals leads come from online, which sources you can grow, and what good looks like in numbers. Written for movers with vans, not marketers.
{ THE SHORT VERSION }
Removals leads come from five places: Google search, the map pack, comparison sites, Google Ads, and repeat and referral. Only the first four can be grown on purpose.
Comparison sites send you the same lead they send four competitors. They fill a diary, they never build a business.
The searches worth winning name a town or a service. Someone typing removals plus a place name is moving in the next few weeks.
Ads work from week one and stop when the budget stops. SEO takes months and compounds. Most movers need both, in that order.
Track enquiries, not clicks. A two-van mover with a working site should see 20 to 40 tracked enquiries a month in season.
Where do removals leads actually come from?
Ask a removals owner where last month's jobs came from and most will say word of mouth. Look at the enquiry data across the 60+ movers we work with and the picture is different. Word of mouth is real, but it is the part you cannot turn up. Everything else sits in five buckets.
Google search. Someone types removals and a town name, or a service like office removals or house clearance, and clicks a website in the results.
The map pack. The three businesses Google shows on the map at the top of a local search, driven by your Google Business Profile and your reviews.
Comparison sites. Compare My Move, reallymoving and the rest. The customer fills in one form and it is sold to several movers at once.
Google Ads. The paid results above the map. You pay per click and the enquiries start the day the campaign does.
Repeat and referral. Previous customers, estate agents, letting agents, and the neighbour who watched your crew work.
The first four can be grown on purpose. The fifth grows as a result of the other four, because you cannot be recommended by customers you never had. So when enquiries are down, the question is not which of the five is broken. It is which of the first four you actually own.
Why do comparison sites cap your growth?
Comparison sites are the easiest lead source to switch on and the hardest to build a business on. The lead you are sent is the same lead four or five other movers were sent, at the same moment. Everyone quotes, the customer picks the cheapest or the fastest to call, and you have paid for the lead whether you win it or not.
That has three effects. Your close rate is low because you are one of five. Your margin is squeezed because you are competing on price with people you cannot see. And your diary is never yours, because the moment you stop paying the leads stop, and nothing you did last year is still working for you.
More Than Movers in Folkestone started exactly there: one van, two crew, and a diary that depended on comparison sites. Twelve months after building their own website and switching on their own lead sources, the site records around 40 enquiries a month that belong to them, and the business runs multiple vans. The More Than Movers case study has the numbers.
None of this means cancel your comparison site accounts tomorrow. It means treat them as a top-up, not the foundation. The foundation is a customer who searches, finds you directly, and only speaks to you. We wrote about the switch in how removal companies win back their leads from comparison sites.
What does buyer-intent search look like for a mover?
Not every search is worth winning. Someone searching how much does a removal cost is researching. Someone searching removals Bristol is moving. The difference is intent, and in this industry intent is easy to read because it is written in the query.
The searches that turn into booked surveys almost always contain one of three things.
A place. Removals Nottingham, removal company Kent, movers in Basildon. The person is moving to or from that town in the next few weeks.
A service. Office removals, piano movers, house clearance, removals and storage. They have a specific job and want a specialist.
A route. Removals from Bristol to Spain, moving from London to Manchester. Higher value, less price shopped, and most movers have no page for it at all.
Every one of those needs its own page on your website that answers that exact search. A single services page that lists twenty towns and eight services in one paragraph ranks for none of them. That is the single most common thing we find when we audit a removals site, and the fix is covered in location pages for removal companies.
Why is Google Maps where most local enquiries start?
For a search with a town name in it, Google shows three businesses on a map before it shows a single website. On a phone, which is where most removals searches happen, that map fills the screen. If you are not in those three, a large share of local customers never scroll far enough to find you.
Three things decide who gets those spots: whether your Google Business Profile is set up properly as a removals business serving the right area, how many recent reviews you have and how quickly they arrive, and whether your website backs up what the profile claims. Most profiles in this industry are half finished. It is the cheapest fix on this list and we have a full guide to it in Google Business Profile for removal companies.
SEO or Google Ads: what is the honest split?
Every agency answers this with whatever they sell. The honest answer depends on how soon you need the work.
Google Ads is immediate. A properly built campaign produces enquiries in the first week, and you control exactly which towns and services it runs for. It also stops the day you stop paying, and your cost per enquiry only ever goes one way as more movers bid on the same searches.
SEO is slow. The first thing to move is impressions, then positions, then clicks, then the phone. On a site with some history that takes three to six months. On a new site it takes longer. But every page you build keeps working, and the enquiries it brings in cost nothing per click, so the economics get better every month rather than worse.
Essex House Removals ran both. Google Ads was fixed first because that was where money was being wasted week to week, and enquiries improved before the website changed at all. The SEO came behind it. Twelve months on, the site tracks paid at roughly 45% of enquiries and organic at 35%, and the fleet went from six vans to twelve. The Essex House case study has the detail. The full comparison, including when Ads alone is the right call, is in SEO vs Google Ads for removal companies.
What does good look like as a number?
Movers rarely know what a good month is because nobody has ever shown them a benchmark. So here is what we see across the sites we track, with the caveat that fleet size, area and season move every one of these.
A one or two van mover with a working website, a finished Google Business Profile and no Ads should see 20 to 40 tracked enquiries a month in season, and roughly half that in winter.
Add a properly managed Google Ads campaign and that typically doubles, with the paid share arriving faster than the organic share.
A six to twelve van mover with all three channels working should be tracking over a hundred enquiries a month. Essex House recorded 1,352 in twelve months across forms and calls.
The word tracked matters. Most movers count clicks, or count nothing, and then judge their marketing on gut feel in the quiet months. Every quote form, phone call and WhatsApp message needs to be counted and attributed to the channel it came from. Until that is true, no number on this page can be checked against your own, and no agency's claims can be checked either.
Is AI search a real channel yet?
It is starting to be. Customers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI answers who the best removal company in a town is, and the engines name two or three. Those names come mostly from third-party sources: review platforms, industry directories, comparison sites and trade body listings, far more than from the mover's own website.
We measure this for clients as a score out of thirty across five engines. Pask's Removals in London is named by all five for international removals and has won a confirmed customer from a ChatGPT search. That is one result, not a trend, and nobody has this fully solved. But it is worth knowing that the same things that win the map pack, reviews and accurate directory listings, are the things AI engines lean on too. The full picture is in getting your removals company into ChatGPT and AI search.
What should a mover do first?
In order, and without spending on an agency for any of the first three.
Finish your Google Business Profile and start asking every customer for a review on the day of the move.
Get enquiry tracking working so forms and calls are counted by source.
Check what you already rank for. Most movers are on page two for a handful of towns and do not know it. Lifting those is far cheaper than starting from nothing.
If you need work in the next month, run Google Ads on your best towns and services while the pages get built.
Build a page for every town you actually send a van to and every service you actually sell, and link them from your homepage.
That is the whole method. Everything we do for clients through SEO for removal companies and Google Ads for removal companies is a version of that list, done properly and measured.
Frequently asked questions
How do removal companies get more leads online?
By owning their lead sources instead of renting them: a website with a page for every town and service, a finished Google Business Profile with regular reviews, Google Ads for the towns that need work now, and tracking so every enquiry is counted. Comparison sites top that up but never replace it.
What is a good number of enquiries a month for a removals company?
A one or two van mover with a working site and profile should see 20 to 40 tracked enquiries a month in season. A six to twelve van mover with SEO, Ads and Maps all working should be over a hundred. Winter typically halves both.
Are comparison sites worth it for removals?
As a top-up, yes. As the main source, no. The lead is sold to several movers at once, so close rates are low, margins are squeezed and the enquiries stop the day you stop paying.
Should a removals company use SEO or Google Ads?
If you need work next month, Ads. If you want enquiries that do not stop when the budget does, SEO. Most movers that grow run both, with Ads covering the months before the organic pages start ranking.
Where do most local removals enquiries start?
On a phone, with a search that includes a town name, and the first thing that customer sees is the three-business map pack. Your Google Business Profile and reviews decide whether you are in it.
Related reading
SEO vs Google Ads for removal companies
Google Business Profile for removal companies
How removal companies win back their leads from comparison sites
