Local Services Ads charge you per lead, not per click, which moves most of the cost control from the ad account to your office. Google decides what a valid lead is: an answered call, a missed call during business hours where the caller stays on more than 20 seconds, a message, a voicemail or a booking request.1 What happens after that, whether the lead is answered, booked into a real slot and turned into a paid invoice, is up to you. Two shops paying the same price per lead can pay very different amounts per job.
This hub covers the office side of Local Services Ads: the settings that are really operations decisions, what to do when a lead lands, and how to measure the channel from your own job records.
Google's report ends where your job records start
The Local Services Ads dashboard tells you how many leads you got and what they cost. It can't tell you which leads became jobs, which jobs got finished, or what they were worth. That chain lives in your field service software.
| Stage | Where it's recorded | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|
| Ad shown | Bid, budget, ranking factors | |
| Valid lead (call, message, voicemail, booking) | Google's lead rules; your hours and job types | |
| Lead answered | Your phone system and lead inbox | The office |
| Job booked into a real arrival window | Your schedule | The office and dispatch |
| Job completed | Your job record | Technicians |
| Invoice paid | Your invoices | Office and technicians |
The top two rows are the ad. The bottom four are operations. When owners say "LSA doesn't work for us," the leak is usually in the bottom four, and the LSA guide for HVAC companies walks through fixing them call by call.
For the ad side (how charging, ranking, the Google Verified badge and the move into Google Ads work), our Field Notes post on how Local Services Ads pay-per-lead works covers the mechanics. If you're still seeing "Google Guaranteed" on your trucks or website, read what replaced Google Guaranteed and Google Screened.
Three settings that are really office decisions
Job types and service areas. In Local Services Ads, open the menu, choose Profile & Budget, and edit the Job types and Service areas cards.2 Google no longer gives credits for "job type not serviced" or "geo not serviced" leads,3 so turning on a job type you don't want, or a county you won't drive to, means paying for those leads. Turn on only what your technicians can do this month.
Business hours. A missed call during your listed business hours is a chargeable lead if the caller stays on the line more than 20 seconds, and voicemail counts as a connected call.1 List the hours someone actually answers.
Response time. Google's ranking looks at how likely your ad is to produce a lead, which it says is driven partly by how quickly you reply to customers.4 For message leads, Google measures response time during your business hours over the last 90 days, weighted toward recent leads.5 Fast replies help you get shown, and help you book.
How to measure it from your jobs
Every LSA lead should carry the LSA campaign onto the job it books, so revenue rolls up by channel. Then four numbers tell you whether the channel pays.
Metric
LSA booking rate
The share of LSA leads that became a booked job. The office's number; it moves with answer speed and how well CSRs handle the call.
LSA leads that became booked jobs ÷ LSA leads received
Where the numbers come from: Lead inbox and phone line tagged to the LSA campaign; jobs carrying the LSA campaign
Metric
Cost per completed LSA job
What you really paid Google for each finished job. Compare it with gross margin per job, by job type.
LSA spend for the month ÷ completed jobs from LSA leads
Where the numbers come from: Spend from the Local Services Ads billing summary; completed jobs from your job list filtered by campaign
Metric
Revenue per LSA lead
What an average lead is worth to you once you count the ones that never book. Useful when deciding whether a job type is worth its lead price.
paid invoice revenue from LSA jobs ÷ LSA leads received
Where the numbers come from: Invoices on jobs carrying the LSA campaign; lead count from your lead inbox
Metric
Median time to first response
How long LSA leads wait for a person or a text. The number Google also cares about.
median of (first reply sent − lead received), LSA leads only
Where the numbers come from: Timestamps on each lead in your lead inbox
Is the channel paying?
Run it by job type, not just in total. A no-heat repair, a drain cleaning and a replacement estimate carry different lead prices, booking rates and tickets. The total can look fine while one job type quietly loses money. The speed to lead guide covers how to measure and shorten response time, and our glossary entry on Google Local Services Ads has the short definition.
Free download · ExcelField Service KPI ScorecardTrack the 12 numbers that run a service business, week by week, with formulas already built in.Getting LSA leads into your job records
Three things make the measurement above possible. Each lead needs one record, de-duplicated, so a homeowner who calls from the ad and then fills out your web form counts once. Each phone lead needs to be tied to the ad, which means the number on your LSA profile rings a line you can tag with the LSA campaign. And each booked job needs to keep that campaign through to the invoice. In TradesWork, the lead inbox takes Local Services leads from forwarded lead emails, and calls on a campaign-tagged line count against that campaign.
Footnotes
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How leads work, Local Services Help, Google, accessed October 15, 2026. ↩ ↩2
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Edit your industries, service areas, and job types, Local Services Help, Google, accessed October 15, 2026. ↩
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About automated Local Services Ads lead credits, Local Services Help, Google, accessed October 15, 2026. ↩
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About ad rankings, Local Services Help, Google, accessed October 15, 2026. ↩
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Manage leads and jobs, Local Services Help, Google, accessed October 15, 2026. ↩
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Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals, Google Ads Help, accessed October 15, 2026. ↩