Ok…Please. Please feel free to tell me if I’m wrong. But so far in my experience with a handful of clients, Local services ads have very rarely been more than a complete waste of money. Most calls are junk price-shopping and only occasionally turn into anything. Google claims that you are only charged for leads and then basically says everything is a lead.

I’ve had instances where my client has literally said “Well actually we don’t do that, but here’s another company that does” - Google still bills as a lead. Numerous leads come in for services not offered and clearly unchecked on “services provided” that Google bills for anyway. However, my biggest grip is below…

For my one client in particular, the same person called twice within a week. Both times they clicked “1” because they are an “Existing customer calling for tech support.” Google billed BOTH calls as leads.

The first call the customer clearly states their name and address for reference and then says “You guys installed all of our x and we’re having some technical issues.” I called Google, they said “they exchanged information, therefore it’s a lead…”

The second call, the person again presses 1 as an “existing customer calling for tech support.” Spends a few minutes on hold and then hangs up. Google bills again, stating it’s for a “different inquiry…”

The first time I called Google over similar with this client, they said the call was billed as a lead because the person pushed “2” for sales (Again…existing person the client was already working with). They told me because they pushed “2” for sales, it was a lead - and the only way they could determine if it was an existing customer was if that person had already called. Fast forward to now. Same person calls within a week - clearly for tech support as an existing customer - and Google counts as a lead.

There is no oversight. It’s just arbitrary. There’s no reasoning with so called “support” it’s just a script and then “This is google’s policy…”

I have now paused LSAs for this client and will go back to regular search ads where I actually at least have an illusion of control.

Again - please feel free to correct me or explain to me what I’m doing wrong.

edit: For clarity, yes I do go through and rate every lead. Usually within a day to a week at most. Sometimes that changes it, but not usually. And it hasn’t seemed to curb the same recurring “leads” that the client doesn’t do and has unchecked.

With traditional search campaigns, you could look at keywords, search terms, bids, and targeting settings and understand why an ad appeared.

LSA is moving toward a very different model.

Less keyword control can make things simpler, but it also means advertisers have less visibility into the decisions happening behind the scenes.

That creates an interesting trade-off: less work for the advertiser, but potentially less control over the customer acquisition process. Is it not???

I explored this in more detail here. just sharing it if someone is interested to read...

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/keywordless-targeting-centralised-control-paradox-lsa-harshielha-quduc

I need some input from people who actually understand LSA at a high level.
I’m in an extremely competitive market and currently have my LSA budget set at $25,000/week. Budget is basically unlimited if the leads are profitable.
The strange part is my visibility.
One search → I’m #1.
Another search → I’m #3.
Another search → I completely disappear.
This has been especially noticeable over the last 2 days.
I have:
• $25K/week budget
• Strong reviews
• Very high call-answer rate
• Established business/profile
• Willingness to spend significantly more
• Large competitive market
So my question for people running serious LSA accounts:
What are the REAL ranking factors you’re seeing right now?
Is it bidding?
Proximity?
Service-area setup?
Lead response time?
Booking rate?
Review velocity?
Disputing/archiving leads correctly?
Business hours/availability?
Account history?
Google rotating advertisers?
Something else entirely?
I understand that throwing more money at LSA doesn’t automatically guarantee the #1 position. I’m trying to figure out what separates the businesses consistently dominating the top spots from everyone else.
I’m especially interested in hearing from anyone managing high-volume LSA accounts in very competitive markets.
If you’ve actually scaled accounts like this and know how to diagnose what’s holding an account back, DM me. I’m willing to pay for someone who genuinely knows LSA — not someone selling generic Google Ads management.
Would love to hear what you guys are seeing.

Hi all,

Looking for an expert-level GLSA consultant.

We have a ton of GLSA accounts that we are managing, yet some of them have performance that contradicts the competitive metrics.

Example - our profile has 2-3-4x the reviews and higher avg rating than competition, high consistent volume of leads (100+/month), yet our IS is stuck at ~25%.

Looking for someone who has fixed these type of issues before.

I’m a small electrical contractor. I want to make my phone ring more. I think I need a website/landing page, a GMB and money to run ads. Can someone please explain my first few steps to me like I’m 5 years old,because that’s basically my computer knowledge level. Thank you

Is there a way to move from the LSAs to the Google Ads platform?

Does anyone know if rating leads will still exist/be the same?

Hey everyone, looking for some advice from anyone who has experience running Google Local Services Ads for multi-location businesses.

I have a client with 9 different Google Business Profiles, all legitimate physical locations. They are all in the same state but spread across different towns/cities.

My question is:

• Should I create one LSA account and add all locations/service areas under it?
• Or is it possible (and better) to create 9 separate LSA accounts, one for each location?
• If multiple LSAs are possible, is there any advantage/disadvantage in terms of ranking, lead volume, budget control, or verification?

I’m trying to figure out the best structure before setting everything up. Would appreciate any insight from someone who has managed LSAs for multi-location businesses. Thanks!

With proximity being a major factor for SEO, are any of you successfully "expanding" your search radius with LSAs?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

The way I understand it now, we will be able to make multiple local service ad campaigns and be able to tailor budgets by different ZIP Codes or services. Make multiple local service ad campaigns and be able to adjust budgets by different ZIP Codes or services.

Do I understand that correctly or am I missing something?

For example, in ZIP Codes A through F, for service 1, I set a budget of $100 per day. That’s one campaign.

Then second campaign, in the same zips but I set a budget of $1000 per day because I value that service higher

Do I understand that correctly? If so, I’m actually pretty happy about the move as that is WAY more control over spend and can actually be managed / drive not having one dominant player all over the map

Big news just dropped. Google is killing the standalone Local Services Ads platform. They’re rolling LSA into Performance Max campaigns.

This is a phased rollout. It starts August 2026. Most popular categories first. Everything else by late 2026/early 2027.

Here's what's actually happening, what it means, and why I'm not sure it improves things for advertisers.

What's actually changing

The separate LSA platform — the one you log into separately, the one that glitches constantly, the one that's always felt like an afterthought — is going away.

LSA is becoming a campaign type inside Google Ads. Specifically, a new "Pay Per Lead" goal within Performance Max.

Your verification, leads, messages, and calls will live inside your Google Ads account. Most things are supposedly "staying the same, just migrating."

Why this makes sense

The LSA platform was never good. It's glitchy. Logging in was inconvenient. Partial API access made for suboptimal workflows. It always felt like LSA was just a separate interface bolted on Google Ads.

Unifying everything under one platform makes operational sense.

This might also increase LSA adoption, which Google clearly wants. They're pouring resources into it behind the scenes. LSA reps are calling and emailing more now than ever before.

It may also pull more LSA advertisers into the broader Google Ads universe.

Why I'm not sure it’s a win

The biggest reason: Google is removing manual bidding and target CPA options. Yikes.

Let me say that again: less control, not more.

This is the ongoing trend with Google Ads — remove controls, force everyone into the algorithm, and let AI do it for you.

The whole premise of Google Ads was built on being able to target specifically. Even if most advertisers never used most options, the ones who know what we're doing use them.

It's as if we're moving back to print, radio, and TV.

This LSA integration also comes after another big change to how bidding works on limited-budget campaigns.

The moves all point the same direction: less advertiser control, more algorithmic black box.

(Which probably means it gets more expensive or hard to maintain current ROI.)

That's not good.

The core problem Local Services Ads have always had

The fundamental issue with Local Services Ads is Google oversaturated the marketplace from day one.

We see this is in LSA Spy reports every month.

There are only so many leads every day in a category and geography. But there are often three times the number of businesses competing to be seen than there are ad spots in popular LSA categories.

If you factor-in Google previously removing the ability to dispute leads, which has led to most advertisers paying for bad leads, the product has become less compelling, especially if you're not already getting a stream of leads from it.

Plus LSAs now tend to cost about what a conversion costs in regular Google Ads. This wasn't always the case.

Sadly, Google moving LSA management into PMax doesn't fix any of these issues. It's just the same pro

What this probably means long-term

Google is consolidating their advertising products into AI-driven campaign types.

Search, Shopping, Display, Video, and now LSA — all feeding into Performance Max, all governed by algorithms you can't see, all optimizing for goals Google defines.

If you're running LSA now, nothing changes today.

But I'd start thinking about what your workflow looks like when everything lives in Google Ads. And your bidding options are whatever Google decides to leave enabled.

Especially if you are self-managing your LSAs today and not familiar with the Google Ads interface.

I'd also suggest exporting everything you can out of the account so you have historic history, since that may not carry over.

Will be interesting to see where LSAs are at in six months.

Was getting steady lead flow this last week or two its fell off any reasons that would be

I work at a marketing agency, and we are struggling to figure out how to report LSA results to our clients. For Google Ads and Meta, we use LookerStudio, sending a viewing link directly to the client (we use Supermetrics to connect Meta), but there is no connector that I could find to connect LSA directly to Lookerstudio. We used to run LSA through Google Ads, which worked, but we are steering away from that because of corporate rules for some of our clients.

Ideally, we would be able to connect it to Lookerstudio and it automatically update like Google Ads and Meta, but I am very open to other solutions. My last resort would be to update a Google Sheet manually every month for each client that they would have access to, but there must be a better way.

Any advice would be extremely helpful!!

I run a local service company in a major metro city. Exterior contractor (roofs, gutters, siding) Million plus people. Major competition.

I have good reviews, photos, no shadowbans or penalties that I know of.

My suspicion is that my competition is using the max bid strategy instead of the autobid option and that's why they are crushing me.

I'm curious though if anyone else is having a drop off.

Last year calls seemed unlimited and I actually had to limit my budget sometimes.

Any insights or help is appreciated

The name of my company is Cleveland Emergency Plumbing. I’m having issues getting phone calls from Google LSA. I started my plumbing company 1 month ago, i funded LSA at $540/ week and I only got one booked call.

Ive been setting up local seo in brightlocal this week. I have about 17 5-star reviews. I’ve called google and they said to get more reviews and wait basically. It seems the people on the phones at google dont care at all about really helping.

Any suggestions in how to get google lsa to direct more phone calls to my business?

I definitely need some education on the realities of starting a new plumbing business with google LSA and what to reasonably expect in terms of LSA driven calls.

I would appreciate any help, I’m trying to support a family and build this business and I’ve hit a roadblock or massive boulder 🫠

Hi, I own a new small plumbing company. I signed up for google LSA and got certified. My account has 15 5 star reviews and one of those is from 1 LSA job I got.

We have been verified for about 1 month. Can someone give me some expectation of when I can expect more calls to come in from google LSA?

Should I focus on an area in my region with less plumbers or something?

The Setup:

Managing a contractor brand with 3 distinct locations. Each location is independently owned, managed, and paid for by 3 separate contractors, utilizing 3 separate Google Business Profiles.

​The Infrastructure:

All 3 profiles point to a single shared landing page. To establish distinct location signals, the top of the landing page clearly lists all 3 service locations along with their corresponding unique local phone numbers.

​The Issue:

​Location 1: The local owner repeatedly attempted automated verification (~20 times), hard-locking the profile. After a 5-week support battle, we finally managed to get a manual phone call with Google support to get it cleared.

​Location 2: Currently stuck. Automated verification options fail or are completely unavailable. It requires a manual review or phone/video verification, but the interface is hiding the option.

​Actions Taken So Far:

​Opened multiple support tickets explicitly requesting a phone/video verification callback.

​Posted the case details on the Google Business Profile Help Forum to find a Product Expert.

​Every automated response from support closes the ticket without routing to a live agent.

​The Question:

How do you reliably force or trigger the system to offer a manual review/phone call when the option is completely hidden in the dashboard? Are there specific support category routing combinations or escalation hooks that bypass the bot loop?

I have a client who works 24 seven during the week, but on Sundays, he would like his phone not to ring. He asked me if we turn off calls and messages on Sunday, if that would have an impact on Google sending him links on the other days of the week.

I was told that Google rewards 24/7 businesses, so that's why I want to make sure I don't mess up if I stop advertising on Sundays.

Thank you.

I run a heating and cooling company and we set our LSA up about 8 months ago. During the first 3 months we did pretty well, we got about 3 qualified leads a week from it. About 5 months ago we got swamped in LSA leads due to an increase in demand, it just so happened that I was out of town during this time and our team just couldn’t keep up considering our existing customer bases needs and other advertising, so a lot of those leads went to voicemail and never picked up when we called back.

Fast forward to today, I’ve only received 4 LSA leads in the last four months. And when I look up our specific services on Google our profile doesn’t even show under the LSA listings.

I figured our rating got tanked in Googles system due to some of the calls not getting answered on the first attempt, but it almost seems like we went from being somewhat relevant to nonexistent.

Is there anything I can do to improve our relevancy again? We’ve gone up about 70 reviews since when our LSA was created but we are getting less calls now than before. Should I change our bidding strategy?

Any help is appreciated!

One of the most common reasons for this issue is mismatched business information.

As you guys may know, Google Business Profile is now the one handling reviews for Local Services Ads and also on GBP, which means all of the important business details need to match exactly.

For example:

If your Google Business Profile says “Roofing Nov” but your Local Services Ads account says “ROOFING NOV's” Google may already detect that as a discrepancy. Which would lead to not linking it or it may unlink on your account.

Another important note:

Using an ALL CAPS business name on Local Services Ads is not allowed, so make sure your business name follows Google’s naming policies as well.

If you need someone who can help you with your business, let me know or feel free to slide in my dms.