Local Services Ads are moving into Google Ads

Local Services Ads have always sat outside Google Ads: a separate dashboard, a separate lead inbox, a separate way of thinking about budget. That is ending. Google is migrating LSA campaigns into Google Ads as a Performance Max campaign type built for pay-per-lead goals, in phases.

The phasing matters because it is already under way. August 2026 covers selected home and storefront service advertisers in the United States: plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control and moving. Late 2026 expands to service-area businesses without a storefront and to accounts with custom bidding or booking configurations. 2027 covers non-US accounts and everything remaining.

What does not change

The parts operators actually rely on stay. You still pay only for valid leads such as calls and messages, not for clicks. Ads still show only on Google Search and Google Maps, in the same positions. Targeting stays keywordless, driven by the service categories and areas you offer.

That is a genuinely conservative migration on the commercial mechanics. The disruption is in management and measurement.

Verification carries over too. If the business has already completed business verification, Google says its verified status and Google Verified badge transfer to Google Ads automatically, and insurance and license reverification are no longer required. Google adds that any further business-level check would be flagged in the Google Ads account.

The badge itself changed before this migration began. Starting in October 2025, Google replaced its separate Local Services badges with a single Google Verified badge and ended the money-back program attached to one of them: Google accepts reimbursement requests only for services booked through Local Services Ads before December 7, 2025. A business still displaying an old Local Services badge name on its site is using a label Google has retired.

What changes, in the order it will hurt

Your reports do not come with you. Google’s documentation is blunt about it: Local Services Ads performance reports will not transition to Google Ads, and the advice is to screenshot them before you migrate. If you have years of cost-per-lead history informing your budgets, the dashboard that holds it is about to close. Export it now rather than on migration day.

Manual bidding goes. Setting a maximum cost per lead is no longer supported.

Vertical-level target CPA goes. If you have been running different targets for different service categories inside one campaign, Google calculates one campaign-level target and applies it across all of them. For a business where a roofing lead and a lawn care lead are worth very different amounts, that single blended target will misallocate budget immediately. The fix is structural: separate campaigns per vertical, which is a decision to make before the migration rather than after.

Weekly budgets become daily. Google divides your historical average weekly budget by seven. Monthly spend is capped at the daily average multiplied by 30.4, so the total should hold, but daily spend can now swing on high-demand days in a way it did not before.

Better Business Bureau callouts are deprecated. Google’s guidance is to select at least six other structured callouts from the assets tab, such as hours, specialties or accepted payment methods. For trades where the BBB badge was doing real trust work, that is a message change, not an admin task.

What the migration does for you

Two things are genuinely better. You can edit the phone number that call and message leads route to in real time, from inside Google Ads. And your business name, address and hours sync one way from Google Business Profile, so the two stop drifting apart.

The sync has an edge. Significant changes to business name, storefront address or primary category trigger a verification review that typically takes 24 to 48 hours, during which the campaign may pause. Do not change any of them during a period you cannot afford to be dark.

Targeting settings operate independently of the profile after migration, so service areas and ad schedules can be tuned for advertising without touching your organic listing.

What to do now

Export or screenshot every Local Services Ads report you would miss. Google says a download page for historical reports is coming; until it appears, a copy you make yourself is the only one you can count on.

Decide your campaign structure before the flip. If you run more than one vertical under one budget, split them, or accept a blended target you did not choose.

Watch for the notification. The account administrator gets an email 14 days before the migration date, a reminder 7 days later, and a confirmation afterwards. After migration the old dashboard redirects and is gone.

Re-baseline afterwards on cost per qualified lead rather than cost per lead. Leads still get charged and credited for validity, but the reporting surface, the budget cadence and the bidding are all different enough that a straight before-and-after on cost per lead will mislead you for the first month.

Export your LSA reporting history this week, then split mixed-vertical campaigns before the migration forces one blended target CPA across all of them.