Google will retire the standalone Local Services Ads dashboard and move its campaigns into the main Google Ads platform, beginning in August 2026 with home and storefront service advertisers in the United States. The shift converts every existing Local Services Ads campaign into a specialized Performance Max campaign type built for pay-per-lead goals, ends manual bidding, and leaves past performance reports behind unless advertisers export them before their transition date.

The change was documented in a Google Ads Help Center article and confirmed publicly by Ginny Marvin, Ads Product Liaison at Google, in a LinkedIn post addressing what she described as anticipated advertiser questions. According to Google, the migration will run automatically over a period of months, with campaigns transferring account by account rather than all at once.

For the plumbers, electricians, roofers, and cleaners who have run Local Services Ads as a separate product, the practical effect is a consolidation. The place where ads are managed changes. Where those ads appear does not.

What stays the same

Google has structured the migration to preserve the core mechanics that define Local Services Ads. The pay-per-lead billing model remains intact: advertisers continue to pay only for valid leads such as phone calls and messages, not for ad clicks. That distinguishes the new campaigns from standard Performance Max, which charges on a cost-per-click basis whenever a user clicks an ad regardless of whether that person ever contacts the business.

Ad placement also holds steady. According to the Help Center documentation, campaigns with pay-per-lead goals will continue to serve exclusively on Google Search and Google Maps, in the same ad positions as before. This is the technical reason the migration routes through Performance Max at all. Marvin addressed the point directly in her LinkedIn post, writing that Performance Max "is the only campaign type that serves on both Search and Maps inventory, and LSAs will continue to only show on Search and Maps via this new goal type within PMax."

The targeting logic carries over as well. Campaigns remain keywordless, drawing on the service categories and service areas a business offers rather than manual keyword lists. Marvin noted that advertisers will "still bid on job types within your service areas (vs. keywords)" under the new structure. Past customer lead history transfers automatically, including contact details, message threads, and older call recordings, all of which remain accessible inside a new Lead Manager interface within Google Ads.

Verification status survives the move. Businesses that have already completed verification keep their Google Verified badge, and the badge transfers automatically. Insurance and license reverification are not required, though Google reserves the right to request additional business-level checks and would surface any such request as an in-account notification.

What changes

The most consequential shift for advertisers who actively manage their bids is the deprecation of manual bidding. In the new environment, setting a maximum cost-per-lead is no longer supported. Industry-level, or vertical-level, Target CPA also disappears. According to Google, advertisers who previously ran different Target CPA amounts for separate verticals under a single campaign will see a unified campaign-level Target CPA calculated and applied across all categories. A plumbing-and-HVAC operator who wants to keep distinct bidding rules for each trade would need to split them into separate campaigns after migration.

Budgets convert from weekly to daily. Google will take a historical average weekly budget and divide it by seven to set a daily average. The company states this does not change monthly spend, which remains capped at the daily average multiplied by 30.4, the average number of days in a month. Daily spend may fluctuate on high-demand days, but monthly billing will not exceed that ceiling.

Better Business Bureau callouts are being retired. BBB callouts are no longer supported, and Google directs affected businesses to their campaign assets tab to select at least six other structured callouts, such as business hours, specialties, or accepted payment methods, to fill the space on Search.

Business Profile integration tightens. Google Ads will pre-populate campaign setup using details from a linked Google Business Profile, and core details, including business name, physical address, and standard hours, sync in one direction from the profile into Google Ads. Advertisers cannot edit those core fields inside Google Ads; they must change them on the Google Business Profile, after which the update flows through. Phone numbers for call and message lead routing, by contrast, can be edited directly in Google Ads in real time. Marvin framed this as an operational upgrade, writing that "any updates you make in GBP will now get reflected in your campaigns in real-time."

That synchronization carries a caveat. According to the documentation, significant updates to a business name or physical address trigger a standard verification review to keep the account secure. This review typically takes 24 to 48 hours, and a campaign may pause temporarily while Google's operations team examines the change. Routine updates, such as adjustments to business hours or phone number, sync automatically within 24 hours without a review.

The report problem

The single most time-sensitive element of the migration concerns historical data, and Google has been unusually blunt about it. Previous campaign-level performance reports will not carry over to Google Ads. Past impressions, clicks, weekly spend, and ad-level performance breakdowns do not migrate. Once an account transitions, its original Local Services Ads dashboard becomes inaccessible; attempting to log in on or after the migration day redirects the user to the Google Ads campaign overview.

The remedy is manual and one-directional. Advertisers must download or export their performance data from the Local Services Ads dashboard before their migration date. Marvin was emphatic on this point in her LinkedIn post, writing that Google "strongly recommend all advertisers download their historical data ahead of their transition timing" and adding, "I'd start that process ASAP." She confirmed that historical performance reports and the LSA dashboard itself will be unavailable after transition.

There is a distinction worth drawing here. Lead history transfers; performance reporting does not. A business will retain the record of who contacted it and what was said, but not the aggregate metrics describing how campaigns performed over time. For advertisers who benchmark year-over-year seasonality or track cost-per-lead trends across quarters, that reporting gap is the operational risk the migration introduces.

Migration timeline

Google is rolling out the transition in phases rather than a single cutover, a structure the company says is designed to protect performance stability. The sequence begins in August 2026, when the first phase covers select home and storefront service advertisers in the United States. The named verticals include plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving.

Late 2026 brings the second phase, expanding to broader advertiser groups. That wave includes service-area businesses without physical storefronts and accounts that use custom bidding or booking configurations. The final phase, in 2027, sweeps in non-US accounts and all remaining business categories not migrated during 2026.

Individual advertisers receive advance notice. According to the documentation, the account administrator listed on a profile gets an email 14 days before the migration date, accompanied by warning banners inside the current dashboard, followed by a reminder email seven days later and a confirmation email once migration completes. Marvin reiterated that "no action will be needed by advertisers" beyond downloading historical reports, and that campaign setups will pre-populate from Google Business Profile details while existing targeting, budgets, and visual assets are preserved.

Google cautions that stabilization takes time. While many ads begin running immediately after transition, the company advises allowing up to two weeks for the process to fully complete and for campaign performance to return to stable levels.

How pay-per-lead differs from standard Performance Max

The new campaign type is a constrained variant of Performance Max, not the full product. According to Google, campaigns with pay-per-lead goals differ from standard Performance Max in several defined ways. Billing runs on qualified leads rather than clicks. Serving is restricted to Google Search and Google Maps, whereas standard Performance Max reaches across YouTube, Gmail, the Google Display Network, and other Google properties. The campaigns are fully keywordless, pulling from Google Business Profile data instead of keyword lists. Eligible businesses in select verticals can display the Google Verified badge after passing required business registration and representative checks.

The asset requirements reflect that narrower scope. Standard Performance Max campaigns generally require or support headlines, videos, and sitelinks. Those asset types do not apply to campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. Advertisers can upload up to 100 additional business photos and manage up to six business callouts per category, but the broader creative apparatus of standard Performance Max stays dormant. Onboarding is correspondingly simpler, with no manual account linking or complex bidding setup.

One limitation applies to new campaign creation. Advertisers cannot create new pay-per-lead campaigns directly within Google Ads at this stage. Google directs anyone needing to set up additional campaigns or local accounts to continue using g.co/localservices for now, stating that in-platform campaign creation will become available later.

Why this matters

The migration lands as one entry in a longer sequence of moves consolidating local advertising infrastructure under Google's central platforms. In August 2024, Google began merging the booking systems for Google Business Profiles and Local Services Ads, an early signal that the two product surfaces were converging. The following year, Google shifted Local Service Ads review management into Business Profiles, effective July 11, 2025, moving all review collection and monitoring off the standalone Local Services Ads infrastructure. The campaign migration now completes that trajectory, absorbing the ad-management layer itself.

The timing coincides with a broader intensification of Google's local advertising surface. Between November 2025 and January 2026, Google increased local pack ads from under 3% to roughly 22% of tracked mobile keywords, a 733% jump documented by local search consultant Joy Hawkins. As paid placements consume more of the local results, the tooling that governs those placements is being centralized in Google Ads, where it sits alongside the automation and reporting apparatus that already governs Search, Shopping, and Performance Max.

For agencies and in-house teams that manage local service accounts, the consolidation removes the friction of switching between two dashboards. It also removes the manual bidding controls some of those teams relied on. The reporting discontinuity is the sharpest near-term concern, because the window to preserve historical data closes account by account on a schedule Google sets, with 14 days of warning. The retail-media and local-advertising context Google has been building through 2026, from Business Profile performance metrics documentation to Analytics integration with Business Profiles, points toward a single measurement framework spanning physical-world interactions and paid placements. The Local Services Ads migration folds one more product into that frame.

Timeline

  • August 30, 2024 - Google begins merging booking systems for Google Business Profiles and Local Services Ads
  • July 11, 2025 - Google shifts Local Service Ads review management into Google Business Profiles
  • November 2025 to January 2026 - Google increases local pack ads from under 3% to roughly 22% of tracked mobile keywords
  • August 2026 - First phase of Local Services Ads migration begins for select US home and storefront service advertisers, including plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving
  • Late 2026 - Migration expands to service-area businesses without storefronts and accounts with custom bidding or booking configurations
  • 2027 - Non-US accounts and all remaining business categories transition to Google Ads

Summary

Who: Google, and the businesses running Local Services Ads, beginning with US home and storefront service advertisers in verticals such as plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, and pest control. The change was documented in a Google Ads Help Center article and confirmed by Ginny Marvin, Ads Product Liaison at Google.

What: Google is retiring the standalone Local Services Ads dashboard and migrating existing campaigns into a specialized Performance Max campaign type built for pay-per-lead goals within Google Ads. The pay-per-lead billing model, Search and Maps placement, and keywordless targeting are preserved, while manual bidding and vertical-level Target CPA are deprecated, weekly budgets convert to daily, Better Business Bureau callouts are removed, and historical performance reports do not carry over.

When: The phased rollout begins in August 2026 for select US home and storefront advertisers, expands to broader groups in late 2026, and reaches non-US accounts and remaining categories in 2027. Account administrators receive an email 14 days before their individual migration date.

Where: The migration applies within the Google Ads platform, replacing the separate Local Services Ads dashboard. Ads continue to serve on Google Search and Google Maps.

Why: Google states the transition gives local advertisers a single unified platform to manage all their Google advertising while retaining the Local Services Ads billing and targeting framework. The move continues a multi-year consolidation of local advertising infrastructure, following the 2024 booking-system merge and the 2025 review-management shift into Google Business Profiles.