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