Playbook · Paid Media
Google Ads for manufacturers: the platforms mostly buy each other's names, and job shop searches are thinly bid
Protolabs puts about 92% of its estimated $173,000 a month in Google search ads into rival platforms' names, mostly "xometry". Process and service searches get about 8%, and 16 of the 22 shops we checked showed no search ads. A 60-person machine shop or molder can buy narrow certification, process and local searches cheaply, if it tracks every click to a quote.
The online manufacturing platforms spend most of their Google search ad money on each other’s names. Ahrefs’ Batch Analysis puts Protolabs’ US search ad spend at about $173,000 a month, and its paid pages report, pulled Oct. 26, 2026, shows 92% of that buying searches for rival platforms, mostly “xometry”. Searches for a process or service, such as “injection molding services”, get about 8%. Of the 22 contract shops, molders and fabricators we checked, 16 showed no search ads.
That leaves the searches a job shop wants thinly bid, which is why Google Ads for manufacturers can pay at a 60-person shop. Buy narrow searches (process plus material, certification or place), land each click on a page that accepts a drawing package, and teach the campaign from the outcomes in your quote log.
What do the manufacturing platforms buy on Google?
On Oct. 26, 2026 we pulled Ahrefs’ paid search estimates (US) for 32 sites: nine online manufacturing platforms, the Thomasnet directory and 22 shops, molders and fabricators. Sixteen of the shops appeared on the results pages for three searches in our set (“injection molding services”, “sheet metal fabrication services” and “as9100 machine shop”); the other six came up in our launch research on search rankings and quoting.
| Site | Est. paid visits a month | Est. paid spend a month | Share of search visits from ads |
|---|---|---|---|
| protolabs.com | 27,872 | $173,349 | 32.2% |
| sendcutsend.com | 1,956 | $3,704 | 6.0% |
| xometry.com | 1,679 | $3,202 | 1.3% |
| pcbway.com | 1,442 | $2,783 | 4.5% |
| fictiv.com | 684 | $709 | 4.9% |
| hubs.com (Protolabs Network) | 216 | $548 | 1.2% |
| thomasnet.com | 161 | $340 | 0.2% |
| jlccnc.com | 6 | $63 | 0.1% |
| emachineshop.com | None recorded | None recorded | 0% |
| jiga.io | None recorded | None recorded | 0% |
Ahrefs estimates across every US search each site advertised on, whatever the keyword. Share is paid visits divided by paid plus organic visits. Source: Ahrefs Batch Analysis, US, pulled Oct. 26, 2026; our arithmetic.
Those totals count every search a site advertises on. To see which searches, we filtered Ahrefs’ paid pages report for Protolabs and Xometry, 96% of the estimated spend in the table, two ways: rival platform names (Xometry, Protolabs, Fictiv, SendCutSend, PCBWay, Thomasnet, OSHCut, RapidDirect and eight more), and process and service terms (any search with machining, CNC, molding, fabrication, sheet metal, 3D printing, prototyping or a similar word, brand names excluded).
| Kind of keyword | Protolabs visits a month | Protolabs spend a month | Xometry visits a month | Xometry spend a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rival platforms' names | 20,900 (75.0%) | $159,757 (92.2%) | 360 (21.4%) | $975 (30.5%) |
| Process and service terms | 6,494 (23.3%) | $13,629 (7.9%) | 894 (53.2%) | $1,454 (45.4%) |
| Own name and other terms | 478 (1.7%) | $0 (0%) | 425 (25.3%) | $773 (24.1%) |
| All paid search | 27,872 | $173,349 | 1,679 | $3,202 |
Ahrefs recorded no paid traffic on Protolabs' own name, so its last row is other terms only; for Xometry the last row is its own name and other terms together. Protolabs' class figures sum to $37 more than its site total, so its remainder shows as $0. Shares are of each site's total. Source: Ahrefs Site Explorer paid pages, filtered by keyword, and Batch Analysis, US, pulled Oct. 26, 2026; our classification.
Protolabs spends about $159,800 a month, 92% of its total, on rival names. On every page that draws those visits, five in all, the top keyword is “xometry”; the homepage alone takes 18,798 a month. Process and service searches, led by “3d printing service”, “injection molding services” and “prototyping services”, bring it about 6,500 visits for about $13,600, or 8% of the spend. Ahrefs recorded no paid traffic on Protolabs’ own name. A click on a rival’s name costs it about $7.64 by Ahrefs’ arithmetic, against $2.10 for a process term.
Xometry spends about $3,200 a month in all, on 1,700 paid visits, 1.3% of its search traffic. Process and service terms take 53% of the visits and 45% of the spend, led by its 3D printing service page at 516 visits a month. Rival names take 21% and 30%, mostly “oshcut” on its sheet cutting page and “rapid direct” on its CNC landing page; the rest is its own name and terms our filters missed. Xometry pays to reach people who want to upload a file and buy, or who are comparing platforms.
We did not split the other five platforms or Thomasnet, which spend about $8,100 a month between them. Even if every dollar went on process terms, rival names would still take at least 87% of the platforms’ estimated search ad spend, and process and service terms at most 13%.
In organic results, the platforms win without paying. Protolabs and Xometry held positions 3 and 4 for “sheet metal fabrication services” in Ahrefs’ Oct. 22 crawl, and PCBWay, Protolabs and Xometry held 2 through 4 for “injection molding services” on Oct. 25, a pattern our manufacturing SEO study documents for “cnc machining services”. Our comparison of Thomasnet and the RFQ marketplaces covers what selling through them costs.
Who buys the job shop searches?
Among the shops, six of the 22 showed any ads in Ahrefs’ index: three molders (rodongroup.com, rcoeng.com and bmpmedical.com) and three metal fabricators (cut2sizemetals.com, awimfg.com and tfgusa.com). Together they draw about 176 paid visits a month, worth an estimated $558, on searches of every kind. Cut2Size Metals and The Rodon Group showed the most, 17 and 16 paid keywords, worth an estimated $23 and $166 a month. None of the machining shops showed any, including JD Machine and HEI Precision, both on Modern Machine Shop’s 2026 Top Shops roster.
The clearest overlap with our cost table below is Protolabs on “injection molding services”, where Ahrefs’ keyword data credits it with about 500 paid visits a month. Ahrefs recorded ads on that page and two others in the table; we could not see who placed those two. The platforms also dip into local machine shop searches at a trickle. Protolabs pages top on “denver machine shops” and “machine shops in pa”, and Xometry’s CNC landing page tops on “machining services near me”, at 35 visits a month.
Read every zero as “none recorded”. Ahrefs logs ads on the searches it crawls, one location at a time, and a shop that limits its ads to the region it serves may never cross its path. The order of magnitude still holds: the platforms mostly buy each other’s names, and these shops spend almost nothing on search ads Ahrefs can see.
What do job shop searches cost?
On Oct. 26, 2026 we pulled 20 searches a machine shop or molder would want to win from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer (US). The table shows Ahrefs’ monthly volume, its cost-per-click estimate, and whether its most recent crawl of each results page (crawls dated Sept. 15 to Oct. 25, 2026) recorded any ads.
| Search | US searches a month | Est. CPC | Ads in last crawl |
|---|---|---|---|
| machine shop near me | 15,000 | $1.70 | None recorded |
| cnc machining services | 3,200 | $0.60 | None recorded |
| custom injection molding | 1,600 | $3.00 | None recorded |
| sheet metal fabrication services | 1,100 | $3.50 | Yes, bottom |
| aerospace machining | 1,000 | $3.00 | None recorded |
| custom cnc machining | 1,000 | $3.00 | None recorded |
| precision machining services | 900 | $1.00 | None recorded |
| cnc turning services | 800 | $4.50 | None recorded |
| injection molding services | 800 | $4.50 | Yes, bottom |
| plastic injection molding companies | 600 | $0.70 | None recorded |
| medical injection molding | 500 | $3.50 | None recorded |
| low volume injection molding | 350 | $5.00 | None recorded |
| cnc machining quote | 300 | $8.00 | None recorded |
| medical device machining | 300 | $4.50 | None recorded |
| swiss machining services | 250 | $3.50 | None recorded |
| titanium cnc machining | 200 | $2.00 | None recorded |
| 5 axis cnc machining services | 150 | $3.00 | None recorded |
| itar machine shop | 150 | $2.00 | None recorded |
| cnc machining ohio | 150 | $2.50 | None recorded |
| as9100 machine shop | 40 | $6.00 | Yes, bottom |
Ahrefs recorded ads on three of the 20 pages, all at the bottom. Each row is one crawl from one place on one day, so the column undercounts. We could not load live results pages or Keyword Planner, so the CPCs are Ahrefs estimates too.
A click on “cnc machining services”, the broadest search here, runs about $0.60, while “as9100 machine shop” runs about $6.00, ten times as much, for a search typed 40 times a month. Broad terms are cheap because many people typing them will never buy from a shop like yours. “Machine shop near me” is 15,000 of the 28,390 monthly searches in the set, much of it people looking for a welder or a lathe repair. One AS9100 buyer with a print package is worth more than a thousand hobbyists.
Fourteen of the 20 results pages carried a map pack in Ahrefs’ crawl, including “aerospace machining”, so your Google Business Profile belongs in the paid search plan. Our guide to what OEM buyers search for in a machine shop covers the profile and the local pages.
On “injection molding services”, Ahrefs estimates that 26% of searches end in a click on a paid result only, against 9% for “cnc machining services” and 2% for “machine shop near me”. Protolabs buys that molding search, and the shops showing ads were molders and fabricators, never machining shops.
Which job shop searches should you bid on?
In Ahrefs’ Oct. 3 crawl of “as9100 machine shop”, no platform’s service page made the organic top 10. Two shops’ AS9100 pages held the first two spots and two more shops ranked lower; the rest were articles, a LinkedIn post and directories. Build the first campaign around searches like that, in phrase and exact match. Broad match wanders straight back into the head terms.
- Certification and program: “as9100 machine shop”, “itar machine shop”, “aerospace machining”, “medical device machining”. Small volume, high intent; your certificates do the selling.
- Process and material: “titanium cnc machining”, “swiss machining services”, “5 axis cnc machining services”, “cnc turning services”. One ad per process, sent to that process’s page with the machine envelope on it.
- Place: “cnc machining ohio” and its neighbors, plus “machine shop near me” restricted by location targeting to the radius you can actually serve.
- Your own name. Cheap, and it protects searches from trade shows and referrals.
Leave the platform names to the platforms. Someone typing “xometry” wants an instant-quote website, and Protolabs already pays about $7.64 a click, by Ahrefs’ estimate, to reach that person. Start the negative keyword list on day one with the platform names (xometry, protolabs and the rest) plus online, instant, cheap, free, jobs, careers, salary, training, school, hobby, used, for sale, software, and “3d printing” if you do not offer it.
Two searches deserve caution. The person typing “cnc machining quote” ($8.00) may expect an instant price; test it only if you can answer the same day. “Low volume injection molding” ($5.00) is where the platforms sell quick-turn tooling, and a production molder should probably let it go.
| Ad group | Keywords | Landing page |
|---|---|---|
| Certification and program | as9100 machine shop; itar machine shop; aerospace machining; medical device machining | Certifications page with an RFQ form |
| Process and material | titanium cnc machining; swiss machining services; 5 axis cnc machining services; cnc turning services | One process page each, with the machine envelope |
| Place | cnc machining ohio and its neighbors; machine shop near me, with location targeting to the radius you serve | Location page |
| Your own name | Your shop name | Homepage |
Phrase and exact match only. Shared negative list from day one: platform names such as xometry and protolabs, plus online, instant, cheap, free, jobs, careers, salary, training, school, hobby, used, for sale, software, and 3d printing if you do not offer it. Source: Our analysis of Ahrefs Keywords Explorer and Site Explorer data, US, pulled Oct. 26, 2026.
What should the ad’s landing page have?
Send the click to a page that takes the files and the facts; a homepage makes the buyer hunt for both. JD Machine’s quote page is a fair model, with a stated 24-hour response and an upload field for STEP, IGES, PDF or ZIP files. Add the certifications and the equipment that fit the search, and ask what an estimator needs: quantity, annual volume, material specification, export control. Our RFQ-to-quote playbook walks through a full intake form and how fast to answer it.
How do you know which clicks became work?
Optimize for form fills and Google will find you more people who fill in forms, plenty of whom never send a print.
Google’s offline conversion import fixes that. Every ad click carries a Google Click ID. Capture it in a hidden field on the RFQ form, store it with the RFQ in your CRM or quote log, and upload the outcome later: RFQ qualified, quote sent, PO received, each with a value. Google will not import offline conversions uploaded more than 90 days after the last click, or 63 days for enhanced conversions for leads, the method it recommends for advertisers starting fresh. Since June 15, 2026 these uploads go through Google’s Data Manager API, so check which method your CRM connector uses.
Build-to-print cycles often run past 63 days, so make “quote sent” the main conversion and import “PO received” whenever it lands inside the window.
Hold off on automated bidding until the data exists. Google recommends judging Target CPA over the last 30 days with at least 30 conversions, and most shops will not see 30 quotes a month from search in the first quarter. Bid manually, or use Maximize clicks with a bid cap, until they do.
Can Google Ads for manufacturers pay back at a 60-person shop?
Work it backward. Your break-even cost per click is gross profit on a new job, times your quote win rate, times the share of clicks that become a qualified RFQ.
An example with made-up inputs: a new job carries $4,000 in gross profit, you win 41% of quotes, and 3% of clicks become a real RFQ. That is $4,000 times 0.41 times 0.03, or about $49 a click, far above every CPC in our table. The 41% is the win rate Modern Machine Shop’s 2026 Top Shops benchmark reported for shops that take longer than a day to quote. Faster shops reported 51%, which raises the value of every click.
About $49
Break-even cost per click
$4,000 gross profit per new job × 41% quote win rate × 3% of clicks that become a qualified RFQ. Every CPC in our 20-search table is $8.00 or less.
Hypothetical inputs. The 41% win rate is Modern Machine Shop's 2026 Top Shops figure for shops that take longer than a day to quote. Source: Our arithmetic; Modern Machine Shop, 2026 Top Shops, Oct. 5, 2026.
In your industry
Metals and machining. None of the machining shops in our check showed search ads, so certification and process searches are thinly contested. Lead with the AS9100, ITAR or ISO 13485 status the search asked about, and name the envelope (“five-axis parts up to a 10-inch cube”). Ahrefs recorded no ads on “aerospace machining” or “medical device machining” in its last crawl, so test both, and expect Xometry on the second: an ad link to its medical page in Ahrefs’ paid pages data carries “medical device machining” as its keyword.
Plastics and rubber. Molding is the busier paid market: three of the nine molders we checked showed ads, paid-only clicks run highest on “injection molding services”, and Protolabs buys that search. Separate prototype and production intent. Send “medical injection molding” to a page with your cleanroom class, press range and validation work, and keep quick-turn searches out unless you sell quick-turn. Our guide to what buyers search before they pick a molder has the wider keyword set.
What to do Monday
- Pull last year’s won jobs and list the process, material and certification on each. Those combinations are your keyword list.
- Search your top ten from your own shop’s location on a weekday morning and note who advertises. Your own search can pick up the local ads that our data could not see.
- Run the list through Google’s free Keyword Planner (it needs a Google Ads account and a campaign) for local bid ranges, and add the negatives above, platform names included.
- Add a hidden Google Click ID field to your RFQ form and a column for it in the quote log.
- Build one landing page per ad group with an upload field, a stated response time and the equipment that fits.
- Launch with a monthly budget you can hold for 90 days, and judge it on quotes sent.
Sources
- Ahrefs Batch Analysis, US, paid and organic estimates for 32 sites (pulled Oct. 26, 2026)
- Ahrefs Site Explorer, US, Oct. 26, 2026: paid pages for protolabs.com and xometry.com filtered by keyword (rival platform names; process and service terms), and organic keywords with paid traffic for protolabs.com
- Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, US, 20 job shop searches (pulled Oct. 26, 2026; SERP crawls dated Sept. 15 to Oct. 25, 2026), and SERP overviews for "injection molding services" (crawl Oct. 25), "sheet metal fabrication services" (Oct. 22) and "as9100 machine shop" (Oct. 3)
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google Ads Help: About offline conversion imports
- Google Ads Help: Guidelines for importing offline conversions
- Google Ads Help: About Target CPA bidding
- Modern Machine Shop: 2026 Top Shops, full roster of honorees and top performers (Oct. 5, 2026)
- JD Machine: Get a Quote
- Xometry homepage
- Protolabs homepage
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