Be top of the list and pick up the phone

In October 2025 Google retired the green Google Guaranteed badge along with Google Screened and License Verified by Google, replacing all three with a single blue Google Verified badge. The money-back guarantee that accompanied Google Guaranteed was discontinued at the same time. The verification itself didn’t go away — background checks, licence review and insurance confirmation are still required before Local Services Ads will run.

LSAs sit above the normal search results and above the map pack, and you pay per lead rather than per click. That moves some waste risk to Google: a lead outside your service area, a spam call, or an enquiry for work you don’t do can be disputed in the dashboard, and approved disputes aren’t charged. Contractors do report disputes taking three to four weeks to resolve, so budget for the lag rather than the outcome.

Reported home service averages in 2026 sit roughly between $25 and $80 per lead depending on trade, with a blended figure around $53. Electricians tend to sit at the lower end, roofers at the higher. Treat any published number as a starting expectation rather than a quote — pricing moves with local competition and with your own review profile.

Yes. Since late 2024 a linked and verified Google Business Profile is mandatory, and if it’s unverified or suspended your ads won’t run at all. Your GBP reviews also feed directly into where you rank within LSAs — which means review generation isn’t a separate project from advertising, it’s part of it.

Job values are high and the intent is immediate. WordStream’s 2026 benchmarks put home and home improvement at $8.33 per click — second highest of any category — against $5.42 across all industries. Someone searching for an emergency plumber isn’t browsing, so every contractor in the area bids for that click.

Immediately — and this is the single biggest recoverable loss in the trade. Emergency demand doesn’t wait; someone with water coming through a ceiling calls the next number rather than leaving a voicemail. The classic research is the 2007 MIT Sloan and InsideSales.com Lead Response Management study, which found contacting a web lead within five minutes made you far more likely to reach and qualify them than waiting thirty. For emergency trades the useful window is shorter still.

They generate volume and they’re expensive in a way that’s easy to miss, because the same lead is usually sold to several contractors at once. That turns the job into a race rather than a sale and pushes margin down. They can work as a supplement while you build your own channels — but a business whose entire pipeline comes from an aggregator doesn’t own its customer base and can’t control its own pricing.

More than your nearest competitors, refreshed continuously, because recency counts. Volume and rating drive both map pack position and LSA ranking, so it’s the rare marketing activity that improves two channels at once. Note that asking only satisfied customers is prohibited under the FTC consumer reviews rule that took effect in October 2024 — the request has to go to everyone.

Yes, but after local visibility and intake are working. The order that pays best is usually Google Business Profile, then LSAs, then paid search, then organic content for the searches earlier in the decision — repair versus replace, cost guides, seasonal maintenance. Building blog content while calls go unanswered is a common and expensive inversion.