Local Services Ads sit above the normal search results for many home service searches, and they work differently enough from Google Ads that experience with one does not transfer to the other. You pay per lead rather than per click, and you have to be screened before you can appear at all.
For the trades they cover, they are frequently the highest-intent traffic available.
The screening comes first
Before running, you provide licence and insurance details and pass background checks. It takes time, it is the main reason businesses give up before starting, and it is also the barrier that keeps the results less crowded than ordinary search. The badge that comes with it is displayed to customers and carries real weight.
Start the process well before you need the leads, because it is not something that can be rushed at the point you have a quiet week.
Paying per lead changes the maths
- You are charged when someone calls or messages, rather than when they click.
- A lead is charged whether or not it becomes a job, which puts the emphasis on call handling.
- Genuinely invalid leads can be disputed and credited.
- Your budget is expressed in leads per week rather than in daily click spend.
Because you pay per lead, answering the phone becomes the highest-leverage thing in the account. Missing calls here is directly expensive in a way that missing them in ordinary search is not.
The businesses that do well on Local Services Ads are the ones that answer within a few rings. The ranking rewards responsiveness, and so does the customer.
Nadia Ahmed, Local Marketing Manager, Presseo
What influences your position
- Review score and volume on your profile.
- Responsiveness, including how quickly you answer and how often you miss calls.
- Proximity to the searcher, as with the map results.
- Whether your listed services and hours match what was searched.
Budget influences how often you appear rather than where you sit, which is different from the ordinary ad auction and catches people out.
Disputing leads properly
You can dispute leads that were not genuine: wrong service, outside your area, spam, or a customer who called by mistake. Do it promptly and describe the reason plainly. Businesses that never dispute quietly absorb a meaningful cost, and businesses that dispute everything find the process stops going their way.
Set your service area and hours honestly
Listing services you do not really want, or an area you cannot reach quickly, produces leads you pay for and cannot convert. This is the fastest way to conclude the channel does not work, and it is entirely self-inflicted.
Running it alongside search ads
The two can appear for the same query, which is not necessarily waste, since the top of the page shows both and the customer picks. Watch the combined cost per booked job rather than judging either in isolation, and if budget is tight the per-lead channel is usually the one to fund first for home services.
Where it does not apply
Local Services Ads cover a defined set of trades and regions, and if yours is not included the answer is ordinary search with a properly built landing page. Our web design index lists the trade pages that support either channel.
Reviews carry more weight here than anywhere else
Because the format shows a rating prominently and the customer is choosing between a small number of options, review score and volume influence the outcome more directly than in ordinary search. A profile with a strong recent record will take work from a competitor with a better price and a thinner set of reviews, and the gap widens the more expensive the job.
Reviews collected through the channel itself carry particular weight, so asking customers who came through it to leave feedback there compounds. This is one of the few places where a deliberate, consistent asking habit produces a visible ranking effect within a couple of months.
What to do about the leads you cannot take
Declining jobs repeatedly, or not answering, affects how often you are shown. Where you are consistently receiving work you do not want, the fix is in your listed services and service area rather than in declining more politely. Adjusting those tells the system what to send you, and it removes the cost of leads you were never going to accept.
Where you are simply too busy, pausing is better than letting calls go unanswered. The channel measures responsiveness, and a period of missed calls costs more than a period of being switched off.
Want both channels working together?
We will set up Local Services Ads alongside search, so the two complement each other rather than competing for the same enquiry.
