If you run Google Local Services Ads, the move into Performance Max is already underway, and one thing does not survive it cleanly. Your lead history - the customer contact details, the back-and-forth messages, the older call recordings - transfers into Google Ads automatically. Your performance reporting does not. Export the reports before your account migrates, not after, because your only honest before-and-after baseline lives in numbers that are about to disappear from the dashboard you have been reading them in.
The businesses this lands on hardest are the ones that live on the phone - the plumbers, HVAC techs, roofers, cleaners and pest-control crews who have spent two or three years letting the Local Services Ads dashboard tell them what a booked job costs. One week the report is there, the next week the whole surface has moved, and the number you used to defend your ad budget is a lot harder to reconstruct from memory. We build and run paid search for Jacksonville service businesses, so we have been watching this rollout closely - and the fix is boring, cheap and entirely about doing one export while you still can.
What is actually changing
Google is folding Local Services Ads into the main Google Ads platform. Instead of a separate Local Services Ads dashboard, you manage your budget, adjust targeting and reply to customer inquiries from inside Google Ads, as a Performance Max campaign with a pay-per-lead goal. The rollout began in August 2026 for a set of home and storefront service categories in the United States - plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control and moving. Service-area businesses and custom-bidding accounts are set to follow later in 2026, and non-US accounts and the remaining categories in 2027.
What stays the same is the part owners care about most: you still pay only for valid leads, such as phone calls and messages, rather than for ad clicks. The pay-per-lead economics that made Local Services Ads worth running do not change in the move. What changes is where you manage it, how you bid, and - the trap - what happens to your history.
Do this first: save your reporting before you migrate
Google has been explicit that your past performance reports do not carry into Google Ads and that you should save your performance data before migrating. The company has said historical reports will be downloadable from a redirection page, but do not stake your baseline on a feature that is described as coming soon. Export it yourself, now, while the Local Services Ads dashboard still shows it. At minimum, save:
- Lead volume and cost per lead over time - month by month, as far back as the dashboard lets you go. This is the number you will want the day someone asks whether the migration helped or hurt.
- Total spend by month, so you can line spend up against booked work later.
- Your charged-versus-credited lead history - which leads you were billed for and which you disputed.
- Dispute outcomes - how many lead credits you won and for what reasons, because that is your evidence pattern for future disputes.
- Any older call recordings you have not already saved elsewhere, as a backup even though Google says these transfer.
The distinction that trips people up: your leads move, your reporting about those leads does not. Contacts, message threads and call recordings follow you into Google Ads. The charts that prove what a lead has been costing you do not.
What changes about how you bid and budget
Three mechanical changes are worth knowing before your account flips, so nothing surprises you the first time you open the campaign:
- Bidding: manual bidding and industry-level Target CPA are being retired in favor of a single campaign-level Target CPA. If you have been thinking in per-industry cost targets, you will set one target for the campaign instead.
- Budgets: your weekly budget converts to a daily average - Google divides your historical average weekly budget by seven. The monthly total should land in the same place, but the number on the screen will look different, so do not panic when the weekly figure you memorized is gone.
- Callouts: Better Business Bureau callouts are no longer supported. If you leaned on the BBB callout, plan to add at least six other structured callouts so your ad does not look thinner than it did.
What to re-verify right after migration
Once the account has moved, walk this list before you trust the campaign to run itself. Migrations move settings, and a setting that quietly resets can cost you a week of bad leads before you notice:
- Budget pacing - confirm the new daily average matches the monthly spend you actually want.
- Lead disputes - make sure you can still flag and dispute an invalid lead, and that you know where the button moved to.
- Business hours - the hours that decide when your ads can generate calls.
- Service categories - that the jobs you want are still the jobs you are advertising for.
- Review sync - that your Google reviews are still attached and showing.
- Call recording - that it is still on, since it is both your dispute evidence and your coaching tape.
The one number to hold constant
When you compare the account before and after, resist the pull toward cost per lead. The number that actually runs your business is cost per booked job - what you pay in ad dollars for one customer who says yes. A migration can make cost per lead look better while cost per booked job gets worse, if the new setup sends you more leads that do not close. Hold cost per booked job constant as your yardstick, and the reporting you exported above is exactly what lets you calculate it honestly across the change.
Who this affects in Jacksonville, and who it does not
If you are a Jacksonville home or storefront service business in one of the first-wave categories, this is your notice - check your account now. If you are a service-area business, your turn is later in 2026, but the export advice is the same and there is no reason to wait for a deadline to do it. And if you are a marketing agency, this does not apply to you at all, for a plain reason: agencies are not eligible for Local Services Ads. That is not a technicality we are dressing up - we run Google Ads for service businesses across Jacksonville, and we cannot run Local Services Ads for our own agency because the category simply is not open to us. It is worth knowing, because if someone offers to run Local Services Ads under their agency account on your behalf, that is a sign to ask more questions.
Common questions
Will I lose my Local Services Ads lead history when my account moves to Performance Max?
No. Your customer lead history - contact details, message threads and older call recordings - transfers into Google Ads automatically. What does not carry over is your performance reporting, which is why the one thing to do before migrating is export that reporting yourself.
When does the Local Services Ads migration happen?
It began rolling out in August 2026 for select US home and storefront service categories, expands to service-area businesses and custom-bidding accounts later in 2026, and reaches non-US accounts and the remaining categories in 2027. Google migrates accounts on its own schedule, so treat the export as something to do now rather than something to wait on a date for.
Do I still only pay for leads after the move?
Yes. The pay-per-lead model stays in place - you pay for valid leads such as calls and messages, not for ad clicks. What changes is where you manage the campaign and how you set your bid and budget, not the core way you are charged.
Can a marketing agency run my Local Services Ads for me?
No. Local Services Ads are limited to eligible service categories, and marketing agencies are not among them. An agency can build and manage your regular Google Ads - Search and Performance Max - but Local Services Ads have to run under your own verified business. We run paid search for Jacksonville service businesses and we are not LSA-eligible ourselves, and neither is any other agency.