Local Services Ads Are Moving to Google Ads: A Checklist for Home Pros

Google is moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads, and the first accounts switch over this month. If your plumbing, HVAC, roofing or electrical company gets leads from Local Services Ads, here is what changes, when it happens and what to save before your account moves.

What is changing with Local Services Ads?

According to Google’s Ads help documentation, Local Services Ads are becoming pay-per-lead Performance Max campaigns inside Google Ads. Instead of running as a separate product, your Local Services Ads will be managed as a campaign in a Google Ads account.

The billing model does not change. You still pay per valid lead, not per click. Your lead history transfers, and the Google Verified badge carries over without another round of insurance and license reverification.

Most of what does change is about control and reporting. You are better off understanding those changes before the switch than discovering them in your first month of leads.

When will my account move?

Google is rolling this out in three phases. Trade coverage from Search Engine Journal and PPC Land matches the timeline in the help page.

Google says advertisers get an email 14 days before their migration and a reminder 7 days before. If that email has not arrived yet, you have at least two weeks of notice still coming. Use that time to get organized, because some things will not be there after the switch.

One practical point: make sure the inbox tied to your ads account is one somebody actually reads. A migration notice sitting unread in a former employee’s inbox is an easy way to get caught off guard.

What changes inside the campaign?

The budget math

Your weekly budget turns into a daily average. As a simple example, a $700 weekly budget becomes a $100 daily average. Run your own number now so the first invoice after the move holds no surprises.

The bidding shift

If you bid manually today, that option goes away. If you set different cost-per-lead targets for different services, those collapse into one target for the whole campaign. That matters if, say, your drain-cleaning leads are worth far less to you than your water-heater or re-pipe leads.

Before the switch, write down what each type of lead actually costs you and what it is worth in booked revenue. That record is how you will pick a sensible single target and tell whether the new setup is working.

A Local Services Ads checklist before you migrate

1. Download your reports. Export every historical performance report you rely on and store it outside the ads account.
2. Record your current settings. Screenshot or export budgets, bids, target CPAs, service types, service areas and business hours.
3. Know your cost per booked job. Cost per lead is only half the picture. Match leads to jobs and revenue in your CRM or even a spreadsheet.
4. Check who gets Google’s emails. Confirm the 14-day and 7-day notices will land with someone who acts on them.
5. Replace the BBB callout. If you leaned on a BBB callout as a trust signal, put that proof on your website and service pages instead.
6. Tighten your tracking. Make sure calls and form leads from every channel are tracked so you can compare before and after. Our analytics and tracking setup covers this.
7. Plan a watch window. Block time in the first two weeks after migration to review lead volume, cost and quality.

Is Google still where local customers start?

Yes, by a wide margin. In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,227 US consumers, 52% started their last local search on Google Search and 9% on Google Maps. 71% used Google at some point in that search, and 73% started on a phone.

AI tools are part of the picture, but a smaller one. In the same survey, 23% used AI tools during their last local search and 8% started with AI. Of that AI-first group, 43% checked Google too, and only 2% relied on AI alone.

Google is also putting ads into its AI answers. SE Ranking checked 50,032 commercial keywords in AI Mode and found ads on 14,733 of them (29.45%). Ad presence climbed with cost per click, reaching 53.56% for keywords that cost $10 or more.

Google is not shy about the scale of AI Mode either. On the Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call, Sundar Pichai said AI Mode has more than 1 billion monthly active users, and Search and other revenue rose 17% year over year.

“sending billions of clicks to websites each week”

Sundar Pichai, Alphabet

The takeaway for a home service business: paid leads are one channel inside a much bigger Google footprint. Your Business Profile, reviews and organic rankings still reach the people who skip the ads, which is why we pair paid work with local SEO and Google Business Profile management.

What should you watch in the first 30 days?

Once your account moves, compare the new campaign against the reports you saved. Focus on a few numbers rather than every metric Google Ads shows you.

• Lead volume per week compared with the same weeks in your saved reports
• Cost per lead compared with the single target CPA you chose
• Booked jobs and revenue per lead, by service type
• Spend per day, now that budgets run as daily averages
• How fast your team answers and returns lead calls

If cost per booked job drifts up, adjust your target CPA and budget in small steps and give each change time to settle. Big swings make it hard to tell what worked.

If you would rather have someone else check your account before the migration email lands, talk to our team.

Frequently asked questions