Your Google Local Services Ads Are Moving. Here's Your Prep List.

1 day ago

4 min read

If you run a home service business, there's a decent chance your phone rings because of Google Local Services Ads, the pay-per-lead ads at the very top of Google. Well, Local Services Ads are moving. Google is folding them into the main Google Ads platform as a new kind of Performance Max campaign, and the next group of businesses is expected to switch over in late 2026. That means some of you are about to get an email with about two weeks' notice.

This isn't a reason to panic. It is a reason to spend 30 minutes this week getting ready, because a few things you rely on today will quietly disappear.

What's actually changing

Google started moving accounts in August, beginning with select U.S. home and storefront service businesses. According to Google's migration help page, the next wave in late 2026 includes service-area businesses without a storefront (think plumbers, excavators, cleaners, anyone who goes to the customer) and accounts with custom bidding or booking setups. Everyone else, including non-U.S. accounts, follows in 2027. A fresh rundown from WolfPack Advising this week walks through the same timeline and flags that these dates are projected, not promised. (Google, WolfPack Advising)

Here's the good news first. Some of the basics stay put:

You still pay per valid lead (calls and messages), not per click.
Your ads still show on Google Search and Maps, in the same spots.
There are still no keywords to manage. Targeting is based on your service categories and service areas.
Your past leads, messages and call recordings come along for the ride.

And here's what changes:

You manage it in Google Ads now. Budgets, targeting and replying to leads all move out of the Local Services dashboard.
No more manual bidding. You can't set a hard maximum you'll pay per lead anymore. Instead you get one Target CPA (target cost per lead) for the whole campaign, calculated from your old settings. If you were bidding differently for, say, drain cleaning versus water heaters, that goes away unless you split them into separate campaigns before you migrate.
Your old reports don't move. Historical performance reports stay behind. Google says you can download them or take screenshots first.
Your budget math changes. A weekly budget becomes a daily average (weekly budget divided by 7). Monthly spend is capped at that daily average times 30.4, and any single day can run higher or lower.
Your Google Business Profile does more of the work. Your name, address and hours now come straight from your profile and can only be edited there. Big changes to your name or address can trigger a verification review that pauses your campaign for 24 to 48 hours.
The BBB badge is gone. Google is retiring the BBB callout and suggests adding at least 6 other callouts instead.
Your lead inbox has a new address. It's now the Leads page in Google Ads, under Goals, then Conversions.

Your Local Services Ads prep list for this week

1. Download your reports now. Pull every Local Services Ads report you can: leads by month, cost per lead, lead types. That history doesn't move with your account, and you need the before picture to know if things got better or worse. Screenshots count.

2. Write down your current setup. Budget, bid settings, service areas, business hours, ad schedule and job types. Five minutes in a notes app. After the move, you'll compare against this list line by line.

3. Clean up your Google Business Profile. Check your business name, phone number, hours, categories and services. Since your ads now pull from it, a wrong phone number on your profile is a wrong phone number on your ads. Make any big edits now, not the week of your migration, so a verification review doesn't pause your ads at a bad time.

4. Make sure you (the owner) have admin access to Google Ads. If a past agency, a nephew or a former office manager set up your account, find out who has the keys now.

5. Decide if you need separate campaigns. Google's guidance is that if you need different bids for different lines of work, you should set up separate campaigns in Local Services before you move. If all your jobs are worth about the same, one campaign is fine.

6. Connect leads to booked jobs. The new lead page tracks leads, not revenue. It can't tell you which calls turned into a $9,000 job and which turned into "just getting a quote." That's your CRM's job, whether that's Housecall Pro, HubSpot, GoHighLevel or a very loyal spreadsheet. If you don't mark which leads booked, you won't know if your cost per lead is a good deal or a slow leak.

After the switch: don't touch it for 2 weeks

Google recommends giving a migrated campaign up to 2 weeks to settle before you change things. That's hard when leads dip. Do it anyway, but watch closely.

Then go back to the list you wrote in step 2 and check every setting: budget, Target CPA, service areas, schedule and categories. Look at your lead flow and, more importantly, your booked jobs.

This matters because early reports are mixed. At least one advertiser on Google's own help forum says leads dropped sharply after migrating. One post isn't a trend, but it's a good reason to know your before numbers. (Google Ads Community)

And Google's lead page has a feedback form and lead status settings. Use them. Telling Google which leads are junk is part of keeping lead quality honest.

One more thing: watch for scams

Google says it will email account admins 14 days and 7 days before your migration. You don't need to pay anyone to "move" your account. If someone offers to handle your migration for a fee or asks for payment details, treat it as suspicious. When in doubt, log into Google Ads yourself.

The bottom line

Local Services Ads have been one of the simplest ways for service businesses to buy leads. The new version is a little more "trust the algorithm." That's fine, as long as you're measuring what matters. Not just leads. Booked jobs. Not just cost per lead. Cost per customer.

Spend 30 minutes this week on the prep list. Future you, staring at a confusing new dashboard, will be grateful.

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