If you run a home services, pet care, wellness, or education business and you've been getting leads through Local Services Ads, that whole system is moving under a new roof. Google is folding Local Services Ads into standard Google Ads through pay-per-lead Performance Max campaigns, and while you'll still only pay for valid leads, almost everything about how you manage the account is changing.
Where the Rollout Stands Right Now
The rollout began in early August 2026 with a small group of U.S. advertisers in home services, pet care, wellness, and education, and is expanding from there through 2027 for everyone else, including non-U.S. accounts and service area businesses without a physical storefront. Google says it will give affected advertisers 14-day and 7-day advance notice before their account actually migrates, so if yours hasn't moved yet, you'll see it coming.
What Actually Changes in Your Account
Budgets: weekly average budgets are being replaced with daily budgets.
Bidding: manual bidding goes away entirely, replaced by a single Target CPA that applies across every service category in a campaign. A business running both plumbing and HVAC out of one account will likely need separate campaigns once those services carry different acceptable costs per lead.
Reporting: historical performance reports won't carry over automatically, so pull your year-over-year data before your account transitions.
Profile sync: your business name, address, and hours now sync directly from your Google Business Profile into the ad account, cutting down on duplicate data entry, though a big change to that profile can trigger a 24 to 48 hour verification hold on your ads.
What to Do Before You Migrate
Download your Local Services Ads performance history now, before your account migrates. It won't transfer automatically.
If you offer multiple services with different lead costs (plumbing and HVAC, for example), plan on separate campaigns once Target CPA becomes campaign-wide instead of per-service.
Double-check that your Google Business Profile name, address, and hours are accurate, since that data now feeds directly into your ad account.
Line up alternative trust callouts now: Google is dropping support for BBB accreditation badges and recommends having at least six other callouts ready to go.
Give it two weeks after migration before judging performance. Bidding and budgets need time to stabilize under the new structure.
None of this changes whether Local Services Ads is worth running: it still puts you in front of people actively searching for help nearby. What's changing is the mechanics of managing it. Businesses that prep now, with clean profile data, exported reports, and a callout list ready, will have a far smoother transition than the ones who wait for the migration notice to show up in their inbox.
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