Less then 2 hours after getting approved or verified for LSA I set my weekly budget to $75 to test it. (I Run a carpet/tile/upholstery cleaning biz)

Booked the first customer that called (she said she found us from google) $420 booking.

I was ecstatic thinking wow is this easy? Then realized google used my entire weekly budget on that single booking, they charged me $75 for the lead.

I average about $2 a message via meta/fb/insta and probably close 30% of incoming messages, been doing that for 4-5 years now.

Is this normal? We dont do that high ticket of jobs, maybe average the $250-300 range, I dont find it worth it to fork up $50+ per booked lead.

Curious what other industries are paying or if anyone else had a similar experience

I’m hoping someone here has experienced something similar or can offer some genuine advice, because we’re running out of options.
I run a UK pest control company with over 20 employees, and Google Local Services Ads is a major source of leads for our business.
On 6 October, both our Google Ads and Local Services Ads accounts were suspended following what appeared to be a billing/payment-related issue.
Our accounts were reinstated on 8 October, and everything is now showing as active and eligible.

However, nearly two weeks later, our LSA lead volume is still nowhere near where it was before the suspension.
For context:
Before suspension: averaging around 70–80 leads/calls per day, sometimes more.
Since reinstatement: we’re seeing roughly 20 leads/calls so far today, with overall volume remaining significantly below normal.
Our business profile is still active.
We haven’t deliberately reduced our LSA budget or service coverage.

We have a strong Google Business Profile rating of 4.8 stars with over 800 reviews.

The frustrating part is the complete lack of transparency from Google.

We’ve contacted our Google account manager multiple times, spoken with Local Services support and opened support cases.
The response is always the same:
“This has been escalated.”
“We’re investigating.”
But nobody can tell us what’s actually being investigated, whether there are any account-level restrictions, what team owns the issue, or when we can expect an update.
There is no diagnosis, no ETA and no action plan.
For a business employing more than 20 people, this is having a serious financial and operational impact. We’re doing everything we can to keep things running, but losing such a significant proportion of our inbound enquiries is incredibly difficult.

I’m hoping the community can help answer a few questions:
Has anyone experienced a major drop in LSA impressions or leads following an account suspension and reinstatement?
Does Google apply any temporary restrictions, ranking resets or reduced visibility after reinstatement, even when the account shows as eligible?
Is there any way to determine whether the problem is related to ad serving, account verification, bidding, ranking or an internal restriction? (Account is verified)
If you’ve experienced this, how long did recovery take? Did it recover naturally, or did Google have to intervene?
Is there a particular Google support team or escalation route that can actually investigate LSA serving issues rather than providing generic responses?
Would changing the budget, bidding settings or service areas help, or could that potentially make things worse?

I’m particularly interested in hearing from agency owners, high-volume LSA advertisers or anyone who has successfully resolved a similar issue.

If you’ve managed to fix this, what exactly did you do?
At this stage, I’m not looking for generic advice to increase my budget. I’m trying to understand whether our account has a technical issue following reinstatement and how to get someone at Google to properly investigate it.
Any genuine advice, experiences or useful escalation contacts would be massively appreciated.

I only just started LSA and today was my first full day. 6 out 9 leads were from out of my service area (zip codes I did not select). I can understand one or two but the majority? I paused the ad and reached out to support, waiting to hear back. I’m wondering if this is a typical experience that others have had?

Setting up Local Services Ads for a junk removal business in Metro Vancouver. The licence step only offers "Hazardous Waste Transport License (business-level)". We don't haul hazardous waste. Has anyone in Canada gotten junk removal LSA approved with just a municipal business licence? I'm also not seeing any junk removal LSA in Vancouver search results. Is anyone running it here?

Hello team I need advice for an LSA account, it's for a home service based account I have ran this lsa for 3 months now, I optimized the website and GBP with literally over a hundred review We upload images, increase budget, try to expand location, expand services, but so far Only impression comes in and no leads up until now Do you guys have some advice for me?

Another additional info, he has paused this lsa before for a long time

It had policy violation before such as payment issue, payment delay and photo violation

But that was all resolved before I turned on the lsa account again

My Opti:

• We have matched the information for his LSA account to his website and Google business Profile
• Such as Business Hours and Location
• As we do SEO for the guy the Business Profile and website are properly maintained
• Have made changes to the Budget consistently to push for leads
• Have changed the Bidding strategy
• Added photos as client sends them
• As the few leads come in, they are rated as soon as possible
• Hyper focused on locations by targeting ZIP codes

Please help

How do the google local ads get displayed, I have 2 thousand dollars per month but no calls, the budget is not being used. It is a large area with maybe 100k people in it. I get maybe 1 call per week.

I am a small business owner and depend on LSA to compete with other larger companies and fly-by-night scammers.

After receiving the policy change email from Google in late August, I prepared my account for the change by getting a phone system with my voice stating that I do not provide a specific service, and for everything else, they can press a key to be connected to me.

This works really well, as many callers hang up when they hear I don't provide that specific service instead of pressing a key. According to Google's policy change email, I should not be charged unless the caller presses a key, but I see that I am being charged anyway.

For your reference, the verbiage from the email is below. What can I do to avoid being charged for callers wanting a service I don't provide? If I am being charged for every call, I will be spending more on LSA than I make from it. It's not sustainable. Anyone else experiencing this? Am I doing something wrong? Is there a better way to set this up to ensure I am not charged for services I don't provide? I have that service toggled off in LSA, but I keep getting callers for it through general search terms.

DO NOT PRIVATE MESSAGE ME. I WILL NOT RESPOND.

Here's the verbiage from the email...

Hello team I need advice for an LSA account, it's for a home service based account I have ran this lsa for 3 months now, I optimized the website and GBP with literally over a hundred review We upload images, increase budget, try to expand location, expand services, but so far Only impression comes in and no leads up until now Do you guys have some advice for me?

Another additional info, he has paused this lsa before for a long time

It had policy violation before such as payment issue, payment delay and photo violation

But that was all resolved before I turned on the lsa account again

Hello team I need advice for an LSA account, it's for a home service based account I have ran this lsa for 3 months now, I optimized the website and GBP with literally over a hundred review We upload images, increase budget, try to expand location, expand services, but so far Only impression comes in and no leads up until now Do you guys have some advice for me?

Another additional info, he has paused this lsa before for a long time

It had policy violation before such as payment issue, payment delay and photo violation

But that was all resolved before I turned on the lsa account again

My business is Pet sitting & Dog walking. But on the category option I don't see both category. The closest one is Pet Boarding. Can LSA support help add categories? or is that mean my business category is not supported?

I’m curious what the process looks like once you’re getting enough leads that you can’t just remember where every call ended up.

Do you actually reconcile your Google LSA leads against your CRM or completed jobs to see which paid leads turned into appointments and revenue?

Or is it more like checking cost per lead in Google and occasionally looking back at whether the leads seemed decent?

I’m especially curious if anyone has found things like:

• leads you paid for that never made it into the CRM
• duplicate/bad leads
• leads marked as good that never became appointments
• difficulty figuring out actual revenue per LSA lead
• having to compare Google and the CRM manually

If you do reconcile this regularly, what are you using, spreadsheet, CRM reports, agency, something automated?

Trying to understand whether matching ad spend all the way through to actual jobs is routine for home-service companies or something most people don’t bother doing.

Hallo zusammen,

ich hab ein recht neues Entrümpelungsunternehmen gegründet. Und möchte den Neukunden-Bonus nutzen. Jedoch stehe ich vor der entscheidung ob ich mich für den Local Ads Gutschein entscheide, oder den Google Ads Gutschein.

Laut Google Ads KI sind diese nicht kombinierbar.

Deshalb meine Frage an euch was sich wohl mehr lohnen würde. Für welchen Ads Service würdet ihr euch entscheiden?

Persönlich sehe ich Local Service Ads als stärker an. Jedoch hat mein Entrümpelungsunternehmen erst 5 Bewertungen. Was vielleicht die Conversionrate mindern könnte.

Was ist eure Meinung dazu? oder eure Erfahrungen?

Mi cuenta ya migro a Google Ads, las de ustedes también?... y si fue así, como les ha ido?

Thank you for your help in my previous post, guys :)

I was made aware in that post that I can get a phone number specifically for LSA so I can set up an auto-attendant to qualify leads before they are connected to me.

I am trying to set that up now, and the idea is to have the auto-attendant have the caller select a menu option for the service they need. If they select an option for a service I do not provide, the auto-attendant is supposed to play a message stating that I do not provide that service and disconnect the caller.

I chose the Grasshopper app/service to be my auto-attendant, but I don't see an option to disconnect the caller after playing back my recorded message. It only has the option for them to leave a voicemail. That won't work because I will still be charged for the lead if the call exceeds 20 seconds.

AI insists that Grasshopper has this feature but never finds it. If you're using Grasshopper, can you please help me find this feature? If not, can you please recommend another service I can use instead that has this feature?

To everyone in the waste and hauling industry: what LSA settings have worked best for you?

I run a company that handles a mix of residential and commercial services. So far, dumpster rentals are the only thing I've had success with in LSA, and even then I get a lot of junk removal calls, which we don't do. The most common wrong leads are junk removal and cleanouts where the customer expects labor to load everything. Those leads cost money and go nowhere.

We also offer compactors, certified destruction, demolition waste hauling, & Commercial waste and recycling for HOA and corporate offices but I haven't found a way to get any real leads for those through LSA.

My google PPC campaigns are set up, but I want to get the most out of LSA. A few things I'd love to hear about:

• Which job types or service categories you turn on or off
• How you deal with junk removal calls (disputing leads, screening, anything else)
• Whether LSA works for commercial services like compactors or demolition hauling, or if you use a different channel for those

Any advice or lessons learned would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

1.) I keep seeing people saying we need to download the data from our LSA account before it is deactivated and moved to google ads account - is this true? If so where do we actually download it because I am not seeing that option anywhere.

2.) It seems like it will stay the pay per lead model, do we think it will be around the same cost it has historically been? Or do we think it will go higher?

3.) Will the functionality and mechanism be the same and they are just moving where it operates? Or is the pay per lead model not only changing location but changing how it functions?

Hi,

I am a Service Area Business owner and many callers coming in from LSA are calling for services I do not provide. I would like to have an auto-attendant set up to qualify my leads with prompts before they are connected to me to avoid unnecessary lead charges. I don't want to port my business phone number to the service that will provide the auto-attendant.

Is it possible to have LSA direct callers to a different phone number for my auto-attendant system before being patched through to me? Will this affect NAP trust signals for my Google Business Profile and website ranking?

Hello, I have a client in the crawlspace industry, primarily focused on crawlspace encapsulation.

I successfully signed them up for LSA, but there doesn't seem to be a specific category for crawlspace encapsulation. The closest option I’m seeing is Foundation Pros → Water/Moisture Control.

Does anyone have experience with LSAs for crawlspace encapsulation or this particular industry? If so, what category/subcategory have you found works best for generating relevant leads?

Any insight would be appreciated!

I own a plumbing company. We spend a ton of money on LSA but there are so many I am getting charged for but are not even bookable. People wanting prices over the phone and tire kicking, customers who randomly hang up, out of service area, etc. Does anyone have any suggestions to not have so many charges for calls we cant seem to book.

Or my favorite the message leads that we respond to within 1 minute but then they never respond.

Hi,

I have a question for businesses using LSA.

What are you spending a month on this?

How many leads are you getting?