Behind the Bark
Google is shutting down Local Services Ads as a standalone platform. Every LSA account is being folded into Google Ads as a Performance Max campaign built around pay-per-lead goals.
Google says the ads themselves keep working like before: you pay per lead, same spots on Search and Maps. Maybe so. But how your account gets managed is changing top to bottom, and the switch happens on Google's schedule, not yours.
The rollout runs in waves from August 2026 through 2027. Tree care isn't named in the first wave, so you likely have a few months. Your official warning? An email to your account administrator 14 days before your migration date, with a 7-day reminder behind it.
If LSA is one of your best lead sources, that email is the starting gun. Miss it, and the migration happens to you instead of for you. Do you know, right now, which inbox that email will land in?
Limb of the Week
Here's what Google's own support page says can bite an unprepped account:
Your historical performance reports don't carry over. On migration day the old dashboard locks, and if nobody downloaded that data first, your cost-per-lead history is gone.
Manual bidding is being retired. If your account runs on a hand-set max cost-per-lead, that control disappears, and separate bids for separate service categories collapse into one campaign-level target.
Your weekly budget becomes a daily budget: Google divides your old weekly average by 7, then lets daily spend swing on busy days as long as the month stays capped.
Your Google Business Profile starts syncing one-way into your ads. A significant business-name change at the wrong moment triggers a review that can pause your campaign for 24 to 48 hours.
Google itself says to expect up to two weeks for performance to ramp back to stable after the switch.
Now stack those. Two soft weeks on your best lead source, in season, with your bidding swapped to a model nobody tuned, and the only warning sitting in an agency inbox you never see. When did you last log into your own LSA dashboard? Not your ads person. You.
This isn't a fire drill. But it's the kind of thing you want handled before your date lands, not after.
Sawdust
Two bits of good news buried in the fine print:
Your past leads, message history, and call recordings do carry over.
Your Google Verified badge and completed verifications transfer automatically. No redoing license and insurance checks.
Kickback
Google calls this a smooth transition with no disruption to your advertising. The same page says your reports won't move, your dashboard goes dark, your bidding model gets swapped, and performance takes up to two weeks to settle. That's a lot of fine print for no disruption.
Smooth for Google and smooth for you are two different jobs. Only one of them is yours.
You don't need to do much about this today. Download your current LSA reports while you still can, and make sure you know which inbox that 14-day email will hit. But somebody needs to be watching your account when your wave hits, and it should be somebody whose paycheck depends on your phone ringing.
If your ads person hasn't told you about this and isn't prepping your account, or you just want a second pair of eyes on your setup to make sure it goes smoothly, reply here. I’ll tell you straight what's ready and what isn't.
Wild week of weather out there. Record heat across Oklahoma and the Midwest and severe storms out east. However it's landing in your market, keep your crew safe in the heat and your trucks ready if the storm work starts rolling in.
See you next week!
- Jacob Hastings
The Backcut
