Google Local Services Ads Management: Pay Per Lead, Above Every Other Ad

You pay per lead rather than per click, and the price of a lead varies by trade, by market and by how many verified competitors you have locally. Rather than quoting an average that would not apply to you, we estimate from your own job values: if a booked job is worth $600 in gross profit and one in three leads books, a $90 lead is comfortable and a $250 lead is not. You set a weekly budget, and Google charges against it as leads come in.

Confirm your category and country are eligible, submit current licence and insurance documentation matching your business name, complete the background checks Google runs through a third-party provider, and build out your profile and campaign while verification is processing. Most delays come from documentation that does not match the business name or background checks that were started and never finished. We run the process and correct rejections rather than resubmitting the same paperwork.

Local Services Ads appear above the standard text ads, charge per lead, require verification and have no keywords or landing pages. Google Ads sit below them, charge per click, need no verification and give you precise control over keywords, copy and targeting. Most local service businesses run both, with LSAs taking the high-intent local demand and Search covering everything the eligible categories do not.

Effectively, yes — "Google Business Profile ads" is how many people describe Local Services Ads, and "Google My Business ads" is the same thing under the name used before the 2022 rename. Strictly, your Google Business Profile is the free listing, and Local Services Ads are the paid placement that draws on it. If someone has quoted you for "Business Profile ads", ask which they mean: profile optimisation is an SEO service, and Local Services Ads are advertising.

Google Screened is the verification programme for professional services such as legal and financial firms, covering licence checks for the firm and its professionals plus background screening. Google Guaranteed covers home services and adds a money-back guarantee for work booked through the ad, up to a coverage limit. Both produce a badge in the listing; only Google Guaranteed carries the guarantee.

Yes, and it is one of the most under-used features of the product. Wrong numbers, spam, leads outside your service area and enquiries for job types you do not serve can all be disputed, provided it is done within the window with the right reason attached. We review every lead weekly and file disputes as a routine, then adjust the settings causing the pattern.

It is not a straightforward auction. Your review score and review count, how quickly you respond to leads, your proximity to the searcher, your business hours and your budget all contribute. That means ranking improves through operational habits as much as advertising settings, which is why review generation and response time are part of how we manage the channel.

The programme covers a defined list of home and professional service categories that varies by country, including plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, locksmith, cleaning and pest control on the home services side, and legal, financial and real estate under Google Screened. Tell us your trade and market and we will confirm eligibility, usually within a day.

Not in the way you do for standard Google Ads, because the listing is the destination and customers contact you from it directly. A website still helps, since customers often check one before calling, but the absence of a good site is not a reason to delay getting verified.

Google is migrating Local Services Ads into the main Google Ads interface as a pay-per-lead campaign type, with budgets, settings and assets transferring automatically. Historical reporting does not transfer, so export it beforehand. The ads, the placements and the per-lead billing stay as they are.