Search for an emergency plumber, an AC repair or a roofer on Google in the US and the first thing you often see is a short list of businesses with a star rating, a badge and a call button. Those are Local Services Ads (LSA). For a contractor trying to stop depending on shared leads, they are usually the first paid channel worth getting right, because the call goes to your business, not to a marketplace that resells it.
How LSA differs from search ads and from shared leads
| Local Services Ads | Google Search Ads | Shared-lead sites | |
|---|---|---|---|
| You pay for | Each lead (call, message, booking) | Each click | Each lead |
| Who gets the contact | Your business | Your business | Often several contractors |
| Placement | Top of results for many local service searches | Above and below the organic results | Their app and site |
| Needs verification | Yes: business, licence and insurance checks, varying by trade and state | No | Varies |
| Builds your own brand | Yes: your reviews and name | Partly | Mostly theirs |
Getting verified
Before your ad can run, Google checks the business. Depending on your trade and location that typically includes business registration, a licence check where your state requires one, proof of insurance, and background checks on the owner and the technicians who go into homes. Passing earns the badge shown on the ad (Google Guaranteed for most home service trades). Expect it to take from days to a few weeks; incomplete documents are the usual cause of delay.
- Use the exact legal business name and address on your licence and insurance documents.
- List only the job types and service areas you really cover: leads outside them waste budget.
- Link your Google Business Profile, so its reviews count toward the ad.
What decides your ranking
LSA does not rank by who bids highest alone. Google says listings go through an auction that weighs your bid and your overall profile quality: rating, review count, average response time, images and completed verification checks. It also looks at the service requested, the time and location of the search, and how well your services and bio match it. In practice that makes two things matter most:
- Answering. Missed calls and slow replies to messages hurt your position. A missed-call text-back and after-hours answering are worth having before you spend more.
- Reviews. A steady flow of recent reviews on your Google profile. Ask every customer when the job closes, by text, while it is fresh.
What it costs
You set a weekly budget and Google charges per lead. The price per lead varies a lot by trade, job type and city, so the only number that matters is your own cost per booked job: LSA spend divided by the jobs it produced. Work it out the same way for every lead source with the shared-lead cost calculator, and compare like with like.
How bidding works
Google offers three bid modes: Maximize leads, where it sets the bid for you and recommends a budget of at least 10 leads a week; Target cost per lead, where it bids toward a figure you can set; and Max per lead, where you set the most you will pay. Your bid is a ceiling, and you may pay less. Google says results take about two weeks to settle while the system learns about your business, so judge a change after that, not after two days.
Bad leads and credits
Not every lead will be real or relevant: spam, wrong numbers, job types you do not offer, customers outside your area. Google credits some charged leads automatically when it later judges them low quality, but it no longer credits leads for a job type you do not offer or a location you do not serve. So the protection is upstream: keep job types and service areas to what you actually want, mark every lead in the dashboard as booked or not, and check Google’s current lead-credit policy, because it changes.
Local Services Ads for HVAC companies
Three things are specific to HVAC. Peak weeks are when responsiveness is hardest and matters most, so have overflow answering ready before the first heatwave or cold snap. Choose job types with care, because Google no longer credits leads for work you do not offer. And lower your budget or pause when you are booked out, rather than paying for calls you cannot serve. For the rest of the year, our HVAC marketing ideas cover what to do before each season, and the Angi leads review compares LSA with shared leads.
A short checklist
- Google Business Profile complete, verified and getting new reviews.
- LSA verification passed for every trade you want leads in.
- Job types and service areas trimmed to what you actually want.
- Calls answered fast, with text-back for the ones you miss.
- Every lead marked booked or not, every week.
- Cost per booked job tracked per source, monthly.
Google changes LSA features, categories and policies often. This guide covers how it works in general; check Google’s own help pages for the current rules in your trade and state.
