Why Local Services Ads are becoming an operations problem, not an ad problem
A lot of guys think Local Services Ads (LSA) exist to generate leads.
And that’s a really good guess because it used to be true.
When I first started running LSAs, they were basically a faucet. You turned them on and calls came in. Some were great. Some were garbage. Some you disputed. Some you ate and moved on.
If you missed a call here and there, it didn’t really matter. If your follow-up was sloppy, you still got lead volume. It didn’t seem like a life and death type of situation to get back to the lead asap.
But I hate to tell you, that world doesn’t exist anymore.
LSAs today are optimized for one thing now: Predictability.
Not volume.
Definitely not fairness.
And not cost per lead.
But predictability.
And before this starts sounding theoretical, let me make this clear:
I’ve watched this happen in real accounts, in real markets, with real trucks on the road.
Nothing “broke.”
Google didn’t flip a switch.
They simply changed what they reward.
Keep reading, I’ll explain ⤵
What Google Is Actually Trying to Figure Out
Behind the scenes, Google is asking a very simple question:
“When we send this business a real person, does the situation get resolved cleanly?”
That’s really it.
Not “Did they answer once?”
Not “Did they get a badge?”
Not “Did the lead look good on paper?”
They’re looking at outcomes.
✓ Did the call get answered?
✓ Did the customer get a straight answer?
✓ Did the job actually happen?
✓ Did it turn into a complaint, dispute, or mess?
For years, Google tolerated insane chaos very similar to HomeAdvisor and Angi. Missed calls. Slow callbacks. Price-shopping over the phone. “What do you have?” conversations.
Those companies still got leads.
That tolerance is now mostly gone.
Let me translate this without Google-speak.
If you’re newer, or you’re not a systems person, here’s what this actually means for you.
1. Answering the phone matters more than it used to
If Google sends you a call and you miss it, that’s no longer neutral.
I’ve seen accounts where nothing changed except answer rate — and lead flow quietly dried up weeks later. There was no warning or alert. Just less volume.
What to do:
Answer live when you can
Call back fast when you can’t
Don’t let calls roll to voicemail “because you’re on a job”
And I know that last one can be really hard, especially when you’re an owner-operator. But thankfully, with where tech is now, anyone can set up an AI voice assistant and never miss a call again.
I built ServiceHubb AI for my company, Grizzly Junk Pros, because during the busy season too many calls were coming in and my two admin teammates simply couldn’t keep up. Instead of hoping prospective customers left a voicemail (which most don’t) and hoping we could call them back fast enough before they just called the next company in the Google map pack, I built a custom CRM with AI functionality.
Now we never miss a call. A human-sounding AI voice agent answers the phone, can answer questions about the business, and take a message when needed, and auto sends my admin team an email notification (it also does automated follow up with prospects that don’t book and increases our clo$e-rate).
The AI is programmed to clearly let callers know it’s not a real person but can help them like one. That part matters, because customers get pissed if they feel like you’re trying to fool them — that’s a real thing, btw.
And at this point, Google assumes serious businesses figure this part out, with or without AI, and rewards the companies that do.
2. Slow follow-up feels worse than you think
Calling back “later today” is almost always too late.
In the real world dealing with a commoditized industry like hauling, customers don’t wait. They call the next company. And Google notices that pattern.
What to do:
Treat response speed like revenue, not busy work
If you can’t respond fast, narrow your hours or service area
It’s better to handle fewer leads cleanly than more leads poorly
I’ve watched operators chase volume because they’re obsessed with quick cash and slowly lose visibility because they couldn’t keep up, really hurting themselves long term.
3. Sloppy service categories hurt more than bad leads
If you tell Google you do everything, but you don’t want to do everything, that mismatch comes back on you, hard.
Customer calls for one thing. You explain you don’t really do that. They get annoyed. Google logs friction. Very bad.
What to do:
Remove services you don’t want
Tighten categories to match your reality
Stop letting Google “test” you with work you don’t want anyway
Predictable businesses say no before the call, not during it. Very important to understand this.
4. The badge isn’t about looking legit — it’s about eligibility
The Google Verified badge is less about trust and much more about access.
Licensing, insurance, background checks, response behavior — it all feeds into one decision:
“Can we safely send demand here?”
Miss something, and you don’t just look worse — you may just get less.
What to do:
Keep documents current
Don’t ignore verification emails
Don’t assume “we’ve always been fine”
I’ve seen strong businesses lose momentum over something stupid and preventable. It’s absolutely brutal. As Andy Grove from Intel put it back in his 1996 book Only the Paranoid Survive — success breeds complacency, and complacency kills. Only the paranoid survive.
5. Disputes won’t save you anymore
If your margins rely on disputing bad leads after the fact, you’re playing a losing game.
Google is deciding who gets the next lead before it ever happens — not fixing problems after the fact. It’s all AI-driven. AI looks for patterns, predicts outcomes, and constantly guesses the future based on past behavior.
What to do:
Focus on clean closes, not cleanup
Reduce confusion in your intake
Make the transaction boring and predictable
That’s what Google wants. And what Google wants, we want, unfortunately.
The Hard Truth Most Guys Don’t Want to Hear
Strangely enough, your LSA strategy isn’t really an ad strategy anymore.
It’s an operations strategy.
The guys winning LSAs right now aren’t necessarily the best marketers.
They’re the one’s that understand the game and are the easiest businesses for Google to trust at scale.
They answer.
They respond.
They close.
They deliver without friction.
Because that’s what Google wants. And why? Because Google has two clients — you and the searcher.
Google needs to give the searcher just as good of an experience as you do. If that experience drops, Google loses money. And they’re not going to let us screw that up for them.
If LSAs “used to work better,” that’s not nostalgia.
It’s a signal.
Google didn’t take something away.
They raised the bar.
Some operators won’t feel much change at all.
Others will keep tweaking bids and wondering why nothing comes back.
That gap is only going to widen.
— Justin ✌️ & Tony 🏁
P.S. The future winners in LSAs will be the most predictable operators. If your lead flow feels inconsistent lately, don’t start with bids. Start by asking how easy your business is to trust when nobody’s watching.
Have questions? Hit reply and let us know.
