Google is moving every Local Services Ads account into Google Ads as a Performance Max campaign with pay-per-lead goals, in phases from August 2026 through 2027, and the one thing that doesn't move with you is your performance reports.
Facts on this page were checked against Google's pages on 2026-09-30. Google's own pages still say parts of this are coming "soon", so we'll update this article as they change.
Two terms first. Local Services Ads (LSA) is the pay-per-lead product where you're charged for valid calls, messages and bookings. A Performance Max campaign with pay-per-lead goals is what your LSA account becomes. It's a different campaign type from the standard Performance Max that runs across YouTube, Gmail and Display.
When does your account move?
Google is migrating in three phases, using its own wording:
| When | Who |
|---|---|
| August 2026 | Select home and storefront service advertisers in the United States, including plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control and moving |
| Late 2026 | Broader groups, including service-area businesses without physical storefronts and accounts with custom bidding or booking configurations |
| 2027 | Non-U.S. accounts and all remaining business categories not migrated in 2026 |
If you run a plumbing, HVAC or other home services business, you're likely in the first wave. If your category isn't on that August list, Google hasn't told you which phase you're in. Law firms and real estate agents, for example, fall under "remaining categories", which could land in 2026 or 2027. The signal that matters is the email: Google says the account administrator listed on your profile gets an advance notice 14 days before your migration date, a reminder 7 days later, and a third email when the migration completes. A banner appears in your dashboard too.
Check who that administrator is today. If the address belongs to a former employee or an agency that no longer works for you, you won't see the notice.
What changes and what doesn't?
Your lead history and Verified badge move. Your reports and the dashboard don't.
| Moves with you | Doesn't | |
|---|---|---|
| Leads | Customer contact details, message history, older call recordings, now on a Leads page in Google Ads | |
| Reports | Past impressions, clicks, weekly spend and ad-level performance reports | |
| Dashboard | The standalone Local Services Ads dashboard. After migration, logging in redirects you to your campaign overview in Google Ads | |
| Verification | Completed business verification and the Google Verified badge | Insurance and license reverification, which Google says is no longer required |
| Settings | Locations, service types, categories, budget limits, ad schedule and business photos transfer automatically | |
| Callouts | Better Business Bureau callouts, which are no longer supported |
Google's Help page says: "Your Local Services Ads performance reports will not transition to Google Ads." It adds that a download page will be available "soon" and that if you need reports now, you should take screenshots. The reports page we read documents a date-range selector and no download button. [IMAGE: two-column diagram of what moves and what stays behind]
What happens to your budget and bidding?
Your weekly budget is divided by 7 to set a daily average budget, and your monthly spend is capped at that daily budget multiplied by 30.4. Google says daily spend can fluctuate on busy days, but monthly billing won't pass the cap. Write down your weekly figure now, and see our cost guide for how to work out what a lead is worth to you. The arithmetic after migration is yours to check.
Bidding changes more. Manual bidding, such as a maximum cost per lead, is no longer supported, and Google Ads doesn't support vertical-level target CPA (target cost per action, the average you're willing to pay per lead). If you ran different targets for different verticals inside one campaign, Google says it calculates one campaign-level target and applies it to every category.
Google's answer for keeping separate targets is separate campaigns, one per vertical. Here's the catch: the same page says you can't create new campaigns with pay-per-lead goals directly within Google Ads "at this time", and points to g.co/localservices for additional campaigns. Check that route before you plan a split. Our bidding guide covers the split test in full.
When does a split make sense? Here's a rule of thumb, ours and not Google's. Take your highest cost per charged lead by category, subtract the lowest, and divide by the lowest. If the result is above 30% and each category you're comparing has at least 10 charged leads, the averages are probably hiding two different businesses. Below 10 leads in a category, the numbers are too thin to trust either way.
What stays the same?
Your ads keep running in the same positions on Google Search and Google Maps. You're charged only for valid leads. The campaign stays keywordless: targeting comes from your service categories, your service areas and your Business Profile. If you're deciding whether to keep the channel at all, try our five-check test. Google also says to allow up to two weeks after migration for performance to ramp back to stable levels, so a dip in week one isn't proof of anything.
Are Local Services Ads going away?
No. The product moves into Google Ads. The pay-per-lead model, the Search and Maps placement and the Verified badge all carry over. What disappears is the place you used to manage it and the reports you used to read there.
What should you do before and after?
Here's the checklist we'd work from, yours to copy. The numbered steps follow the order that matters: the first four can only happen before your migration date, and step 1 has its own guide and table.
BEFORE YOUR MIGRATION DATE
1. Save every report you'll want later: trailing 30 and 90 days,
year to date, and each full year the account has run.
Screenshot each view. Save the numbers too.
2. Record charged leads and spend by category for the trailing 90 days.
Cost per charged lead = spend / charged leads.
3. Write down your weekly budget, your categories, your service
areas and your ad schedule.
4. Confirm the account administrator's email address works.
5. Decide whether the 30% split rule above applies to you.
6. Replace your BBB callout. Google's pages disagree on the count
("at least 6" on one, "up to 6 per category" on others), so
don't plan around a number.
7. Fix your Google Business Profile: categories, service areas,
hours, phone. Google Ads pre-fills your campaign from it.
AFTER MIGRATION
8. Check every setting on your first login. Google recommends it.
9. Find your leads: Goals > Conversions > Leads.
10. Keep your saved reports. Google Ads starts your history at zero,
so they're the baseline for judging the new campaign.
Step 10 is the one people skip. Without a baseline, you can't tell whether a change in leads came from the migration, the market or your own edits. Recording a baseline before changing anything is also how we start a Google Ads account audit, and if the move makes you wonder whether paid leads still pay for your business, the nine checks apply here too.
What did we check and fail to confirm?
Several claims circulating about this migration don't appear on the Google pages we read. We're listing them so you can weigh them yourself:
- That Google lets spending run up to double your daily budget on a given day. Google says only that daily spend may fluctuate under the monthly cap.
- Specific categories and countries for the 2027 phase, such as locksmiths, garage doors, legal, the UK or Canada. Google says "non-U.S. accounts" and "all remaining business categories."
- That dispute histories transfer. Google's list is contact details, message history and call recordings.
- That Google Ads Editor or the Google Ads API can build these campaigns.
- Any claim that your cost per lead will rise or fall. Google's page states neither.
If you've seen one of these on a Google page, tell us and we'll correct this article.
Who can skip most of this?
If your account has already migrated, the dashboard is gone and so is the chance to save reports from it. Skip to the settings check and the Leads page, and keep whatever Google's download page gives you when it arrives. Google lists a support line for migrating advertisers, +1-844-205-0011, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM EST (details and source). If your login now lands in Google Ads, see where everything went and the first-login checklist.
One more admission. We haven't migrated a client yet, so everything above comes from Google's documentation and none of it from watching an account move. We'll add what we see when we see it.
Your Business Profile feeds the campaign Google builds, so cleaning it up is the part of this you can do today that helps either way (our Business Profile prep list is the place to start). We run that work as part of local SEO, and our GBP audit kit is free to try first.