Google Local Services Ads for Contractors

Search for a roofer, a plumber, or an electrician in most U.S. metros and the first thing on the screen is a row of three businesses with a blue check, a star rating, and a phone button. Those are local services ads, Google's pay-per-lead program for the trades. They sit above the search ads, above the map pack, above every website that spent a year earning its ranking. Contractors either run them and complain about the lead quality, or do not run them and wonder why the company across town is always first.

I set these up for the shops I work with and I dispute leads for them. This is the program as it works today: how you get billed, what the badge means now that the old guarantee is gone, what moves your position in that row, how to get a bad lead credited, and where LSA belongs next to the website, the Google Business Profile, and search ads. It is a good channel. It is also a rented one.

What local services ads are, and where they show

Local Services Ads (LSA) is a separate Google product from Google Ads. You do not write ad copy or pick keywords. You build a profile, prove your license and insurance, pass a background check, set a budget, and Google shows your business at the top of searches for the job types and service areas you selected. When a homeowner taps your listing they see a preview of your profile and then call, message, or request a booking. You pay when that contact happens, not when they click, per Google's own description. The homeowner picks you on a rating, a review count, and a badge, with no website involved, and the number they call is a Google forwarding number, which is how Google knows a lead happened.

How the pay-per-lead model actually bills you

Google's lead rules count a valid lead when a customer texts or emails you through the ad, when you answer a call and talk to them, when they leave a voicemail, when you return a missed call, or when they send a booking request. You are charged for each valid lead. Leads Google judges invalid at first contact are not charged, and message leads are typically priced lower than phone leads for the same job.

The price is set by an auction. When similar businesses in your area compete for the same lead, their bids decide what it is worth, per Google's bidding page. There are three ways to bid:

Budgets run on a weekly average with a monthly cap. Google may spend more than the weekly figure in a busy week and less in a slow one, but it will never pass the monthly max, and once you hit it the ad stops showing for the rest of the month, per the budget page. Billing is automatic: you are charged whenever the balance hits a payment threshold or 30 days after the last payment, whichever comes first, and the threshold rises in steps as you spend, per the payments page. LSA pulls from the card as it goes. Google also says results take about two weeks to settle, so do not judge it on week one.

Google Guaranteed is gone. The badge is now Google Verified

For years the draw of the program was the green Google Guaranteed check and the money-back promise behind it. That is over. Google's Google Guarantee page says the company is discontinuing the money-back guarantee, and that consumers could only file reimbursement requests for services booked through Local Services Ads before December 7, 2025. The old Google Guaranteed and Google Screened badges have been replaced by a single blue Google Verified badge, which means the advertiser completed Google's screening. Google says the specific verifications will be called out on the profile so a homeowner can see what was checked.

The check mark still does the work on a homeowner in a hurry. What changed is what you can say about it. If your trucks, your website, or your yard signs still say "Google Guaranteed," fix them; it is a claim about a program that no longer pays out. Google's getting-started page also describes pre-badge ads, which can receive leads after the preliminary checks pass but show below the verified providers.

What the background check involves

Google's screening and verification page lays out the checks. Which ones apply depends on your category and state, but for the trades expect all of them.

• Business registration. In the U.S. Google verifies the business is registered, using a D-U-N-S number among other documents. If your entity name, profile name, and license name do not match, this is where it stalls.
• License check. Google verifies applicable state and local licenses for the business and its owners or managers, and per its qualification page confirms that workers are licensed where the trade requires it.
• Insurance. A certificate of insurance with a minimum that varies by category and location. Have your agent send a proper certificate; a photo of the declarations page gets rejected.
• Background checks. Identity and criminal history checks on the owner, and in select U.S. categories on the employees who go into homes, plus a civil litigation check covering judgments and liens from federal and state courts. Third-party partners run these, not Google staff.
• Google Business Profile. You must own or manage the profile that matches the business, and its reviews are the ones that show on the ad.
• Renewals. License and insurance documents expire, and when they do the badge comes off until new ones are on file. Put the renewal dates on the office calendar the day you are approved.

The process takes weeks, not days, and every shop I have walked through it lost time on a name mismatch, an insurance certificate in the wrong form, or a field employee who could not be reached for the background check. Start it in the slow season, not the week after the storm.

What moves your rank inside Google Local Services Ads

The row of three is an auction, but the bid is only one input. Google's ad rankings page lists the factors, and most of them are things the office controls, not the budget.

1. 1.Your bid and bid mode. The bid is the most you will pay for a lead; you may pay less. Google says shops on Maximize Leads with equal quality and budget typically get more leads than shops on manual bids.
2. 2.Responsiveness. Google says missed calls may negatively affect your responsiveness, and average response time is part of profile quality. The forwarding number means Google knows exactly how many calls rang out. This is the factor most shops lose on, and it is the problem the speed-to-lead guide covers: the lead is decided in the first minutes.
3. 3.Rating and review count. Google's reviews page for LSA says star rating and number of reviews affect how you are ranked, and that providers with higher ratings and more reviews typically book more jobs. The reviews come from your Google Business Profile, so the review system you run for the map pack is the same one that ranks you here. Google's performance page recommends at least five reviews and says some categories need five to show at all.
4. 4.Relevance. The job types you selected and your business bio, matched against what the homeowner searched, when, and where.
5. 5.Contact channels. Enabling message and booking leads gives customers more ways to reach you, and Google counts that in your favor.
6. 6.Profile completeness. Photos, completed verification checks, and job types all count. Google's advice: select every job type you actually do and set the service area to the whole county rather than a list of ZIP codes.

Business hours are not on Google's list, but they gate the ad: if it runs while nobody is answering, every rang-out call drags your responsiveness down and you pay for the voicemails. Set the ad hours to the hours a human answers, and turn message leads on for the rest.

Local services ads cost: what a lead runs by trade

Every article on this topic prints a table of dollar figures by trade. I am not going to, because Google does not publish one and I have not found a per-trade source I could verify. Google's pages say lead prices vary by location, job type, lead type, and bid mode, and that the auction among nearby businesses sets the price. What Google does provide is a budget calculator on the LSA homepage that estimates a budget for your trade and area. Run it for your ZIP code; it beats any national table. What moves the price is not in dispute:

The number that matters is not cost per lead anyway. It is cost per booked job: leads charged, divided into jobs you closed from them. An expensive lead is cheap if one in three books a replacement; a cheap lead that never books is the most expensive marketing you own. Mark every LSA lead as booked or not in the dashboard and read that number monthly.

Disputing a bad lead

You will get charged for leads that were never going to be jobs. Google's automated lead credits page describes how that is handled now: leads are assessed at first contact and the invalid ones are not charged, and charged leads are reassessed by Google's models over time and may be credited automatically if later judged low quality. Credits typically land on the account balance within 30 days, and the original charge still shows on the invoice.

Know the limits before you file anything. Google's lead page says leads are not credited when the customer only wanted advice, canceled a booking, was researching prices, or did not respond when you called back, and the automated-credits page says Google no longer supports credits for "job type not serviced" or "geo not serviced" leads. Those were the two most common dispute reasons. The fix is upstream: select only job types you perform and areas you cover, because you will pay for the ones that fall outside.

• Use the feedback survey on every bad lead. Google says the lead feedback survey is how you report poor-quality leads. It feeds the model that decides automatic credits, so the habit pays off over months.
• Log the reason the day it happens. Whoever answers notes "spam," "wrong trade," or "price shopper" on the lead in the dashboard right then. Reconstructing it at month end does not work.
• Read the credits line monthly. If the gap between leads you flagged and leads credited stays wide for two months, your job types or service area are set wrong, and disputing does not fix a setup problem.

Local services ads for contractors: where LSA fits next to the site, the profile, and search ads

LSA is one row on the search page. The homeowner who did not tap it scrolls to the search ads, then the map pack, then the websites. Each is a separate channel with a separate job:

The order I set them up in is the reverse of the order they appear on the page. The profile and reviews come first, because LSA ranks on those reviews and the map pack ranks on that profile. The website comes second, because the homeowner who taps a search ad or finds you on the map lands on it, and it is where the planned, high-value jobs get decided. LSA comes third, once someone answers the phone during the hours it runs. Search ads last, on the service pages that already convert. The roofing leads guide walks the same order for roofers, and it holds for plumbing, HVAC, and electrical.

LSA fits best for urgent work: the leak, the no-heat call, the tripped panel, the storm inspection. That homeowner wants the top result, a check mark, and a phone button, and does not read a website. It fits worst for the planned job, where the homeowner compares three companies over two weeks and a profile preview cannot carry the sale.

The leads are rented

Every dollar you put into LSA buys a lead and nothing else. Pause the budget and the row of three fills with someone else the same afternoon. That is not a flaw; it is the deal. The problem is when LSA becomes the whole lead supply, a slow month cuts the budget, and the phone goes quiet because nothing underneath it was ever built.

What LSA leaves behind is the review count, because you asked every LSA customer for one, and the habit of answering fast, because the program punished you when you did not. Both make the profile and the website work better. Run it on top of things you own and it earns its place. Run it as the foundation and you are renting the foundation.

If the profile is thin or the website cannot hold the homeowner that LSA and search ads send it, that is the piece to fix before the budget goes up. The free 31-point audit checks the profile, the reviews, the site, and the phone path together and tells you which three things to fix first. Builds are fixed-scope and fixed-price, quoted in writing before anything starts: a five-page Starter Site, a full Website Build, or Website + Lead Engine with the Google Business Profile built out and call and form tracking in your name. Live in one to two weeks, and you own the domain, the site, and every lead.