LOCAL SERVICES ADS ARE MOVING INTO GOOGLE ADS. HERE IS WHAT CHANGES.

Google says Local Services Ads is transitioning to a self-service experience inside the Google Ads platform. Over the upcoming months, existing Local Services Ads campaigns will be automatically migrated to a specialized Performance Max campaign type optimized for pay-per-lead goals.¹

Google's help page does not give a single announcement date. It gives a phased timeline instead:¹

• August 2026: the first phase begins for 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-US accounts and all remaining business categories not migrated in 2026.

So a US roofer with a storefront may already be in the first wave, while a mobile detailer with no storefront is more likely to move late in 2026. Your own date comes by email, covered below.

• Weekly budgets become daily. Your historical average weekly budget is divided by 7 to set a daily average budget. Google says monthly spend is capped at that daily average multiplied by 30.4, and daily spend may fluctuate on busy days.¹
• Manual bidding goes. Setting a maximum cost per lead is no longer supported.¹
• One Target CPA per campaign. Industry-level Target CPA is deprecated. If you ran different targets for, say, plumbing and HVAC in one campaign, Google calculates a single campaign-level target. To keep separate targets, set up separate campaigns per category.¹
• Your Business Profile feeds the campaign. Business name, address and hours sync one way, daily, from your Google Business Profile to Google Ads. Significant changes to your name, storefront address or primary category trigger a verification review that Google says typically takes 24 to 48 hours, during which the campaign may pause.¹
• BBB callouts are gone. Google says to add at least 6 other structured callouts, such as business hours, specialties or accepted payment methods.¹
• Old reports don't move. Past impressions, weekly spend and ad-level reports won't migrate. Google says a download page will be available and suggests screenshots if you need reports now.¹

One practical upside Google names: in Google Ads you can edit the phone number that call and message leads are routed to in real time.¹

1. Save your history. Export or screenshot your spend, lead counts and cost per lead by month. It is the only baseline you will have to judge the new campaign.
2. Check who the administrator is. The 14-day notice goes to that person. If it is a former employee or an old agency, fix that first.
3. Clean up your Business Profile now. Since name, address and hours sync from it, and big changes trigger a review that may pause ads, make any planned name or address fixes before your migration, not during it. Our Business Profile guide covers what to check.
4. Decide on campaign structure. If you want different cost-per-lead targets per service, plan separate campaigns.
5. Pick 6 callouts to replace BBB callouts.
6. Keep disputing bad leads. Google says the new Leads page keeps charged status, lead type and the lead feedback form.¹ Our Local Services Ads guide explains lead credits.

If you already run Search campaigns, this puts all your Google spend in one account, which makes it easier to compare cost per lead across channels. If you want that set up and watched for you, that is part of our Google Ads management.