Google has confirmed that the standalone Local Services Ads dashboard is being retired. Starting in August 2026, LSA accounts will be migrated into Google Ads and rebuilt as Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. Home service categories go first, and the rollout continues through 2027.
If you run plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, pest control, or any other trade that has been buying leads through the LSA dashboard, this is the biggest structural change to that channel since it launched. The pricing model survives. The interface, the manual controls, and your historical reporting do not.
The single most time-sensitive item: your existing Local Services Ads performance reports do not transfer to Google Ads. You get 14 days of advance notice before your account migrates. Export your data before that date or it is gone.
What Google Actually Announced
Per Google's official migration documentation, Local Services Ads are transitioning to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals inside Google Ads. This is a platform consolidation, not a product cancellation. Local Services Ads as an ad format continue to run; what disappears is the separate dashboard you have been managing them in.
Google describes the rollout as phased specifically to avoid disrupting active advertising. Accounts are not all moved at once, and your leads keep flowing during the transition. But the phase you land in determines how much time you have to prepare, and the first phase captures the highest-spend home service verticals.
The Migration Timeline
| Phase | Who Moves | What It Covers |
|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | Select U.S. home and storefront service advertisers | Plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving |
| Late 2026 | Broader advertiser groups | Service-area businesses without a physical storefront, plus accounts using custom bidding or booking configurations |
| 2027 | Everyone else | Non-U.S. accounts and all remaining business categories not migrated during 2026 |
If you are a U.S. home service business in one of the first-phase verticals, plan on August. If you are a service-area business without a storefront, you are most likely in the late-2026 group, which buys you a few extra months but does not change the prep work.
What Is Not Changing
Before the panic sets in, it is worth being precise about what survives. The economics of the channel are intact:
- You still pay per lead. The pay-per-lead pricing model carries over, so you are not being moved onto a cost-per-click auction.
- Your placements are the same. Local Services Ads continue to appear in the same positions on Google Search and Google Maps.
- Targeting stays keywordless. Matching still runs off your service categories and service areas, not a keyword list you have to build and manage.
- Your Google Verified badge carries over. Eligible businesses in select verticals keep the badge, and Google has stated that insurance and license reverification are no longer required as part of the move.
The lead-gen model is not being replaced, it is being relocated. If your LSA account is profitable today, the migration itself does not change the unit economics. What changes is which levers you have and where you look at the numbers.
What Goes Away
- The Local Services Ads dashboard. After your migration date you can no longer access it, and attempting to log in redirects you to your campaign overview in Google Ads.
- Manual bidding. Setting a maximum cost-per-lead is no longer supported, and vertical-level target CPA is eliminated in favor of a single campaign-level CPA.
- Your historical performance reports. Previous campaign-level metrics, impressions, clicks, and weekly spend history do not migrate.
- Better Business Bureau callouts. BBB callouts are no longer supported and must be replaced with standard structured callouts.
The loss of manual bidding is the change most operators underestimate. If you have been holding a hard max CPL as your profitability guardrail, that guardrail becomes a target CPA that Google's automation optimizes toward rather than a ceiling it cannot cross. Rebuild your monitoring around blended cost per booked job, not per lead alone.
How Your Budget Converts
Local Services Ads have always run on weekly budgets. Google Ads runs on daily averages, so on transition day your budget is converted automatically. The math is simple, but the day-to-day behavior is not what most LSA advertisers are used to.
- Your historical average weekly budget is divided by 7 to set your new daily average budget.
- Monthly spend is capped at your daily average budget multiplied by 30.4, the average number of days in a month.
- Daily spend can fluctuate above your daily average on high-demand days. Monthly billing will not exceed the cap.
| Before (LSA) | After (Google Ads) | Monthly Ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| $1,400 / week | $200 / day average | $6,080 |
| $2,100 / week | $300 / day average | $9,120 |
| $3,500 / week | $500 / day average | $15,200 |
Expect uneven daily spend after the switch. A $200 daily average can spend $260 on a hot Monday and $150 on a slow Sunday. That is the system working as designed, not a budget error. Judge it on the monthly number.
Your Reporting History Does Not Come With You
This is the item with a hard deadline attached, and it is worth separating what transfers from what does not.
| Data | Transfers? | What To Do |
|---|---|---|
| Customer lead history | Yes, automatically | Accessible in the new Lead Manager interface after migration |
| Campaign performance reports | No | Export from the LSA dashboard before your migration date |
| Impressions, clicks, weekly spend history | No | Download and archive alongside your reports |
| Budget settings | Converted, not copied | Verify the weekly-to-daily conversion landed where you expect |
Google notifies the account administrator listed on your profile by email 14 days before your migration date, with a reminder 7 days later and a confirmation email once the move completes. That is your entire export window, and it only works if the administrator email on the account is one somebody actually monitors.
Your Google Business Profile Becomes the Control Panel
After migration, your business name, physical address, and standard hours sync automatically in one direction from your Google Business Profile into Google Ads. One direction means the profile is now the source of truth, and any inconsistency in it propagates straight into your paid campaigns.
- Changes to hours, phone number, and minor business name updates sync automatically within 24 hours.
- Significant changes to your business name, storefront address, or primary category require verification. Your campaign may temporarily pause while Google reviews, typically 24 to 48 hours.
- Service areas and ad schedules can still be customized independently of the profile.
- Call and message lead routing becomes self-service. You can edit the destination phone number in real time in Google Ads.
A campaign that pauses for 24 to 48 hours during peak season is a real revenue event. Make your Business Profile edits before your migration date, not after, so any verification review happens while you are still on the old system.
This tightening of the link between profile and paid campaign is the strategic headline. NAP consistency and profile hygiene stopped being purely organic concerns the moment your ad account started reading from the same record.
Do These 4 Things Now
Everything above reduces to four concrete tasks. Run them before your 14-day notice arrives, not after.
1. Download your LSA reports
- Export every performance report you would want for a year-over-year comparison: leads by category, cost per lead, weekly spend, and dispute history.
- Save them somewhere permanent, a shared drive, not a laptop desktop. Once the dashboard closes, there is no retrieval path.
- Snapshot your current weekly budget and any vertical-level target CPAs so you can sanity-check the conversion after migration.
2. Check who gets the emails
- Google sends the 14-day and 7-day notices to the account administrator listed on your profile.
- If that address is a former employee, an agency that no longer manages you, or an unmonitored inbox, you will miss your export window entirely.
- Update the administrator now and confirm the address receives mail.
3. Clean up your Business Profile
- Verify your business name, address, and hours are exactly right, because they will sync one-way into your ad account.
- Confirm your primary category is correct before migration, since changing it afterward can pause your campaign for 24 to 48 hours.
- Refresh your photo library. Performance Max campaigns accept up to 100 business photos, and asset quality now feeds ad performance directly. Your photo strategy is no longer just an organic lever.
4. Pick 6 new callouts
- BBB callouts are gone. Google requires you to select at least 6 other structured callouts from the assets tab of your campaign.
- Choose ones that carry real differentiation: emergency service, licensed and insured, financing available, warranty offered, same-day appointments, locally owned.
- Draft the list before migration so you can apply it the day your campaign lands rather than running with an empty asset slot.
“Migration day is not the deadline. The 14-day notice is the deadline, and it arrives whether or not you were watching the inbox it was sent to.”
What This Means for Your Local Search Strategy
Zoom out and the pattern is familiar. Google is removing manual levers and replacing them with automation that optimizes against signals you influence indirectly, through your Business Profile, your assets, your reviews, and your entity data. That is the same direction AI Overviews and AI-driven local search have been pushing organic results for two years.
The practical consequence for home service operators: the inputs that make your paid leads cheaper are now largely the same inputs that make you visible organically. A complete, consistent Business Profile. A steady flow of recent Google reviews. Accurate citations and clean NAP data across the directories Google cross-references. Strong trust signals in your service area.
There is also a hedging argument. When a channel you rely on gets restructured on Google's timeline rather than yours, concentration risk becomes visible fast. Businesses that rank in the Map Pack and get cited by AI assistants absorb changes like this one; businesses that only buy leads absorb them in the P&L.
Locafy builds the organic and AI-search side of that equation, entity optimization, structured data, Business Profile management, and citation consistency, so your visibility is not dependent on a single ad product's roadmap. See how it works or book a free strategy call.
Local Services Ads Migration FAQ
Are Local Services Ads being discontinued?
No. Local Services Ads continue to run in the same positions on Google Search and Google Maps with the same pay-per-lead pricing. What is being discontinued is the separate Local Services Ads dashboard. Management moves into Google Ads, where your LSA activity runs as a Performance Max campaign with a pay-per-lead goal.
When will my account migrate?
It depends on your vertical and country. The first phase begins in August 2026 for select U.S. home and storefront service advertisers including plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving. Service-area businesses without a storefront and accounts with custom bidding or booking configurations follow in late 2026. Non-U.S. accounts and all remaining categories transition in 2027. You receive an email 14 days before your specific date.
Will I lose my Google Guaranteed or Google Verified badge?
No. Eligible businesses in select verticals keep the badge through the migration, and Google has stated that insurance and license reverification are not required as part of the move.
What happens to my leads and lead history?
Your past customer lead history transfers automatically and stays accessible in the new Lead Manager interface inside Google Ads. Leads are the one category of data that carries over cleanly. Performance reports do not.
Can I still set a maximum cost per lead?
No. Manual bidding, including setting a maximum cost-per-lead, is deprecated. Vertical-level target CPA is also removed in favor of a single campaign-level CPA. If a hard CPL ceiling was your profitability control, rebuild that control around target CPA plus close monitoring of blended cost per booked job.
How do I export my Local Services Ads reports before migration?
Download them from your existing Local Services Ads dashboard before your migration date. Once the account migrates, the dashboard becomes inaccessible and previous campaign-level performance metrics are not available in Google Ads. Prioritize leads by category, cost per lead, weekly spend, and dispute history, the records you would need for a year-over-year comparison.
How long until performance stabilizes after migration?
Google advises allowing up to two weeks for the migration to fully complete and for campaign performance to ramp back to stable levels. Avoid making large budget or targeting changes during that window, since you will not be able to separate your own changes from the system settling.
What should I do if my business is in the 2027 phase?
The same preparation applies, just on a longer runway. Export reports on a regular cadence rather than in a panic, keep your administrator email current, and get your Business Profile clean well ahead of time. The extra months are best spent building organic and AI-search visibility so the migration is a channel change rather than a revenue event.
Written by
Jason JacksonChief Operating Officer, Locafy Limited
COO at Locafy (Nasdaq: LCFY). Builds and operates AEO systems for local businesses. Founded Growth Pro Agency before joining Locafy via acquisition.