Google Is Folding Local Services Ads Into Google Ads. Your Historical Data Does Not Come With It.
Starting August 2026, Google is migrating Local Services Ads into Google Ads as Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. The standalone LSA dashboard goes away, and historical performance reports do not transfer. Google gives each account 14 days of notice. Export your reporting before that window opens.
What Is Changing
Google confirmed in late July 2026 that Local Services Ads, the pay-per-lead product behind the Google Guaranteed and Google Screened badges, is moving out of its own dashboard and into Google Ads. Migrated accounts will run as Performance Max campaigns with a pay-per-lead goal.
Phase one starts in August 2026 with United States home and storefront service advertisers: plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving. Later in 2026, the migration expands to service-area businesses without a storefront and to accounts using custom bidding or booking configurations. Remaining categories and non-US accounts follow in 2027.
If your business is in that first group, this is a this-quarter problem, not a next-year problem.
What Stays the Same
More survives the move than the panic suggests.
You still pay per valid lead, meaning calls, messages, and bookings, not per click.
Ads still appear only on Google Search and Google Maps.
Campaigns stay keywordless and continue pulling from your Google Business Profile.
Your Google Guarantee and Google Screened badges carry over automatically.
Lead history transfers. Contact details, message threads, and call recordings move into a Lead Manager inside Google Ads.
You do not need to rebuild your program from scratch.
What Actually Changes
The dashboard disappears
After migration, the standalone Local Services Ads interface is gone. Lead response, reporting, and budget management all happen inside Google Ads.
Aggregate performance reporting evaporates
Lead records transfer. Campaign-level historical performance reports do not. Year-over-year comparisons, cost-per-lead trends, and the seasonal benchmarks you have built over several years are not coming with you.
Weekly budgets become daily budgets
Monthly spend should land in roughly the same place, but the pacing model changes, and that affects how you read a slow week before you react to it.
Manual bidding is gone
You could previously set a maximum cost per lead in the standalone dashboard. Inside the new campaign type, bidding is automated only. If your margins depend on a hard cost-per-lead ceiling, you now steer spend through budget and service category selection instead of a bid cap.
That last point is the one owners underestimate. Losing a manual lever is manageable when you have good data. It is a real problem when you lose your historical data at the same time.
The 14-Day Problem
Google says it will notify each account roughly 14 days before that account migrates. That notice is the entire practical window.
Two weeks sounds like plenty. It is not, if the notice lands during peak season, if your marketing coordinator is on vacation, or if nobody has opened the Local Services Ads dashboard in months because leads have been flowing fine. A lot of businesses will discover the data is gone in January, when they sit down to build next year’s budget.
What to Do This Week
1. Export everything now, before notice arrives
Do not wait for the email. Pull your full performance history out of the Local Services Ads dashboard: leads by month, cost per lead, job types, response times, and any category-level breakdowns you rely on. Save it somewhere your team will still be able to find it in two years.
2. Write down your baselines
A spreadsheet in a folder is not the same as knowing your numbers. Record your normal cost per lead by service line, your best and worst months, and your typical lead-to-job close rate. Those benchmarks are the only way you will be able to judge whether the new campaign type is actually performing.
3. Confirm who has Google Ads access
If your Local Services Ads account has been managed separately from your Google Ads account, someone on your team may not have login access to the account it is moving into. Sort out permissions before the migration, not during it.
4. Audit your Google Business Profile
Campaigns stay keywordless and pull from your profile, so services, service areas, hours, review volume, and photos now carry more weight, not less. This is the same discipline behind the marketing frameworks TMC Marketing uses with local service clients.
5. Set a review cadence
Automated bidding plus an unfamiliar interface means the first 60 days after migration need real attention. Put a recurring 30-minute review on the calendar and hold it.
Will Your Cost Per Lead Go Up?
Nobody knows yet, and any agency claiming certainty is guessing. What is knowable is the mechanism. Automated bidding optimizes toward the goal you set with the budget you give it. If your lead quality tracking is weak, the system will optimize toward leads that look valid to Google rather than jobs that are profitable to you.
That makes lead disposition tracking more valuable than it was a month ago. If you are not already marking which Google leads became booked jobs and which were tire kickers, start this week. It is the one input you still fully control.
The Strategic Read
Google is consolidating. Local Services Ads was one of the last places a local business could run a simple, transparent, pay-only-for-leads program without touching the wider Google Ads machine. That door is closing, and the replacement is more automated and less legible.
The businesses that come out ahead will be the ones that already know their own numbers well enough to tell when an algorithm is doing a good job. Everyone else will be flying on Google’s word alone. If you want ongoing senior oversight on this without hiring a full-time marketing leader, TMC Marketing’s CMO Solution and digital marketing packages are built for exactly that gap.
If you want a second set of eyes on your export, your baselines, or your post-migration setup, Schedule Discovery Call.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does the Local Services Ads migration affect my business?
Phase one begins in August 2026 for United States 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 using custom bidding or booking setups migrate later in 2026. Remaining categories and non-US accounts follow in 2027. Google notifies each account about 14 days before its own migration date.
Will I lose my Google Guaranteed badge in the migration?
No. Google Guarantee and Google Screened badges carry over automatically. Your lead history also transfers, including contact details, message threads, and call recordings, which move into a Lead Manager inside Google Ads. No action is required from you to keep the badge.
What data do I actually lose?
Aggregate campaign performance reporting. Individual lead records transfer, but historical campaign-level performance reports do not. That means year-over-year comparisons, cost-per-lead trends, and seasonal benchmarks disappear when the old dashboard is retired. Export everything you care about before your migration date.
Can I still set a maximum cost per lead?
No. Manual bidding is going away. The old Local Services Ads dashboard let you set a maximum cost per lead. Inside the new Performance Max pay-per-lead campaign type, bidding is automated. You control spend through your budget and your service categories instead of a bid cap, and weekly budgets convert to daily budgets.
Do I still only pay for leads instead of clicks?
Yes. The pay-per-lead model carries forward. You are charged for valid leads such as calls, messages, and bookings, not for clicks. Ads continue to appear only on Google Search and Google Maps, and campaigns remain keywordless, pulling from your Google Business Profile.