Guide
Starting August 2026, Google is folding Local Services Ads into the main Google Ads platform as a Performance Max campaign. Here's what actually changes, what carries over, and what to do before your account gets moved.
If you run paid leads through Local Services Ads — the "pay per lead" listings with the Google Verified badge that show up above the map pack — you're getting migrated whether you opt in or not. Google is retiring the standalone LSA dashboard and rebuilding those campaigns inside regular Google Ads as a specialized Performance Max campaign type built around pay-per-lead goals.
The core mechanics you rely on stay the same: you still pay for qualified leads rather than clicks, your ads still show in Google Search and Google Maps, and your badge and review history move with you. What goes away is the separate app or dashboard you've been checking — everything gets managed from inside Google Ads instead.
The first phase started in August 2026 for a specific list of home and storefront service categories in the US: plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving. If that's you, don't wait to check — log into your Local Services Ads account now and look for a migration notice. Later in 2026 the rollout expands to service-area businesses without a storefront and accounts with custom bidding or booking setups.
Two things on this list are genuinely unrecoverable if you skip them. Everything else is just good housekeeping.
Google carries over your service categories, targeted locations, budget limits, ad schedule, business category, and photos. Your verification badge and past leads also move with the account — you don't have to re-verify or start your review history from zero.
One separate change to know about: Google already retired the old green "Google Guaranteed" badge and the $2,000 money-back guarantee in October 2025, replacing them with a single blue Google Verified badge. If your listing looks different than it did last year, that's why — it's unrelated to the Performance Max move.
Google's own guidance is to expect a settling period — performance can be choppy for up to two weeks after your account lands in the new system while the algorithm re-learns your account. Don't panic and cut your budget the first week you see a dip. Do check in daily for the first few days to make sure leads are still coming in and nothing looks broken, then compare weekly numbers against the baseline you wrote down.
If you're not running your own ads, it's tempting to assume this is entirely your marketing person's problem. It isn't — you're the one who knows what a real lead is worth to your business, and that number should drive any budget decisions made during the transition. Before the move, it's worth running your numbers through a job profitability calculator so you know your real margin per job type, not just your revenue. That's the number that should set your max cost-per-lead, not a default Google suggests.
It's also a good moment to look at how many of those paid leads you're actually converting. A lead you pay for and then never call back, or call back too slowly, is money gone. Run your numbers through a missed call revenue calculator to see what slow follow-up on paid leads is actually costing you — for a lot of small trade businesses it's a bigger leak than the ad spend itself.
Between exporting reports, deciding on campaign structure, and monitoring the transition, this is exactly the kind of admin task that quietly eats an owner-operator's week — on top of missed calls, follow-ups, and quoting you're already juggling. If you'd rather have someone else keep an eye on the migration and your lead follow-up process, that's the kind of ongoing admin work we take off your plate — see what we handle for small trade businesses. If you just want a simple system to track lead cost and job value yourself, the Operations Kit ($19) has ready-to-use tracking templates built for exactly this.
No. It isn't going away, it's moving. Google is folding Local Services Ads into the main Google Ads platform as a specialized Performance Max campaign type. You still pay per lead, your ads still show in Google Search and Maps, and the badge on your listing carries over. What's disappearing is the separate LSA dashboard you're used to logging into.
No. Your verification badge and your existing review history move with you automatically. Note that the old green Google Guaranteed badge and the $2,000 money-back guarantee were already retired in October 2025, replaced by a single blue Google Verified badge — so if your badge looks different than you remember, that's a separate change, not something to worry about.
It does not carry over automatically. Once the old LSA dashboard closes, historical reports on things like cost per lead and lead volume by service are gone. Export or screenshot your reports before your account's migration date if you want a record to compare against after the move.