If you run a trade or local service business and you’ve not looked at Local Service Ads yet, now’s the time. They sit right at the top of Google, above the normal paid ads, above the map pack, above everything. Just your business name, your reviews, a badge, and a button to call or message you. No website to click through first. No scrolling.
We keep getting asked about these, so here’s the honest rundown: what they are, what’s changing this year, and whether they’re worth your time.
So what actually are they?
Local Service Ads (LSAs) are Google’s pay-per-lead advertising format, built specifically for service businesses that either travel to the customer or work within a set local area. Think plumbers, electricians, roofers, cleaners, locksmiths, that sort of thing.
The big difference from a normal Google Ads campaign is the billing model. With standard PPC, you pay every time someone clicks, whether they get in touch or not. With LSAs, you only pay when someone actually contacts you, a phone call or a message through the ad. That’s a proper shift in risk. You’re not paying to be browsed, you’re paying for a genuine enquiry.
Get approved and you’ll also pick up the Google Guaranteed badge, which does more legwork for buyer confidence than most businesses give it credit for. Someone with a burst pipe at 9pm isn’t reading ten websites and comparing testimonials. They’re scanning for whoever looks credible, available, and easy to ring. If your listing’s thin or your reviews are patchy, you’ve lost that lead before price even comes into it.
What’s changing in 2026
Two things worth knowing before you get stuck in.
First, verification got stricter back in October 2025. UK businesses now need a VAT registration or Companies House number to get verified for LSAs, and utility bills won’t cut it any more. If your admin’s been left on the to-do list, sort it before you start, or you’ll hit a wall.
Second, and bigger: Google’s been rolling Local Service Ads into Google Ads itself, as a Performance Max campaign type, on a pay-per-lead basis. The standalone LSA dashboard is being phased out. Your leads and message history carry over, but historical reporting doesn’t, so if you’ve been running LSAs for a while, it’s worth exporting anything you’d want to keep before that changeover reaches you.
Are they actually worth it?
For the right business, yes. But ‘cost per lead looks decent’ isn’t the whole story, and it’s the mistake we see most often. Cost per lead only tells you what you paid to get someone on the phone. It says nothing about whether that call turned into a booked job, what that job was worth, or whether they came back.
The businesses getting real value from LSAs are the ones treating it properly: responding fast (Google quietly downranks you if you don’t), keeping the profile genuinely complete, and staying on top of reviews rather than hoping they sort themselves out. It’s not a set-and-forget channel. It rewards businesses that answer the phone.
Worth saying too, LSAs and standard search ads aren’t in competition with each other, they’re built for different jobs. LSAs are for the ‘I need someone now’ search. Standard ads and a solid website are for the ‘who’s actually good at this’ research phase, comparing options, checking reviews, working out who to trust with a bigger job. Run both, but don’t let them fight over the same search. That’s just paying twice to catch one customer.
