Google Local Services Ads: a plain guide for Canadian service businesses

Search for "plumber near me" in Regina or Calgary and you'll often see a short row of businesses above the regular ads, each with a green checkmark, a star rating and a phone button. Those are Local Services Ads, usually shortened to LSAs. They look like ads, and they are, but you pay for them differently from normal Google Ads: per lead instead of per click.

For a plumber, electrician, roofer or cleaning company, that difference is the whole appeal. You aren't paying for someone who glanced at your ad and bounced. You pay when a person calls you, messages you or books through the ad.

How Local Services Ads work

You set up a profile with your business details, the services you offer and the areas you cover. Google checks your business (more on that below), and once you're approved your ad can appear when someone in your service area searches for one of your services. The customer sees your name, rating, years in business and hours, and can call or message you directly from the ad.

Ranking in that row isn't an auction on keywords. Google looks at how close you are to the customer, your review score and number of reviews, how quickly you answer calls and messages, your business hours, and your budget. A company that misses calls and replies to messages the next day will slide down, whatever it spends.

Google Screened or Google Guaranteed?

Which badge you get depends on your type of business.

Google Guaranteed is for home services: plumbing, HVAC, electrical, locksmiths, garage doors, cleaning, pest control and similar trades. To earn it, the business and its field workers go through background checks, and Google verifies licences and insurance where your province requires them. The guarantee means that if a customer who booked through the ad is unhappy with the work, Google may refund them up to a set limit.

Google Screened is for professional services like lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and financial planners. The checks cover licensing and background, and there's no money-back guarantee attached.

Which categories are open differs by city and changes over time, so check Google's Local Services eligibility page for your trade and location before you plan around it.

What do you pay for?

You pay for leads: a phone call, a message or a booking request that comes through the ad. Clicks and views are free. Google doesn't publish a price list, because cost per lead depends on your trade, your city, how many competitors are bidding and whether you let Google set bids for you. Emergency services in a big city cost more per lead than a niche service in a smaller one.

You set a budget, and Google spends it across the leads it sends you. A lead that has nothing to do with your business, such as a spam call, a job outside your service area or a service you don't offer, can be credited back. Google now checks many leads automatically, and you can also ask for a credit on the ones it misses. Keep notes on bad leads as they happen, because you'll need the details.

LSAs are moving into Google Ads

In 2026 Google started moving Local Services Ads out of their own dashboard and into Google Ads, as a type of Performance Max campaign with a pay-per-lead goal. The first group of US advertisers moved in August 2026, and reports say accounts outside the US, Canada included, are scheduled for 2027.

The parts that matter to most owners stay the same: you still pay per lead, and the ads still appear in the same places. A few things do change. Budgets switch from weekly to daily, business details such as your name, address and hours come straight from your Google Business Profile, and leads arrive in a lead manager inside Google Ads. Old reports from the LSA dashboard don't carry over, so export your lead history before your account moves.

Because your Business Profile feeds the ad directly after the move, a messy or outdated profile becomes an ad problem as well as a Maps problem. If yours needs work, our Google Business Profile checklist is a good place to start.

Getting set up

1. Check that your category is available in your city.
2. Have your business licence, insurance certificate and the names of anyone who goes to customers' homes ready for the background checks.
3. Make sure your Google Business Profile is verified and matches your legal business name, phone number and hours.
4. Pick your services and service area carefully. Every job type you tick can send you leads you'll pay for.
5. Set a modest budget for the first month so you can see what a lead costs in your market.

Verification can take anywhere from a few days to several weeks, depending mostly on how quickly the background checks come back.

How to get more out of them

Answer the phone. That sounds obvious, but response time feeds directly into where you rank, and a missed call is a lead you may still have to dispute. If you can't pick up during jobs, forward calls to someone who can, or reply to messages within the hour.

Ask for reviews after every job, through your Google Business Profile. Reviews collected that way count toward your LSA rating, and the rating is one of the first things a customer compares.

Mark leads as booked or not booked as you go. It keeps your own records honest and makes it easier to see which services bring paying work and which just ring the phone.

Turn off services that bring poor leads. If drain cleaning calls are mostly price shoppers and water heater installs turn into real jobs, adjust which services you advertise.

LSAs or regular Google Ads?

They do different jobs, and many trades run both. LSAs suit businesses that live on phone calls and want a predictable cost per lead with very little setup. Regular search ads give you more control: you choose the keywords, write the ads, send people to a specific landing page and can advertise services LSAs don't cover. The trade-off is that you pay for clicks whether or not the person calls.

If you're weighing up paid channels in general, our comparison of Google Ads and Meta ads covers where each one fits. And if you'd like someone to set up and watch the campaigns for you, that's part of our Google Ads management service.