Manual 4 · The Lead Machines · 4.4
Local Services Ads: pay only when the phone rings
A Local Services Ad is the row of contractors on a Google search — a name, a star rating, a call button. Google's own wording is an "opportunity to appear prominently," not a promised slot above the regular ads. You pay Google only when a real person calls or messages you. Not when they click. Not when the ad just sits there.
That one fact is why a numbers-first owner gives LSA a longer look than Yelp.
But "pay only for real leads" is not the same as risk-free. This page shows you both halves: the good part above, and the two the pitch leaves out — what the badge stopped meaning, and where the refunds stop. Read to the end before you switch it on.
Most of this is reading, plus one pass scoring your own numbers at the end — a phone and your typical job price do that part. One step is not that. Pricing your leads means getting into Google's sign-up screens, which is a login and a few pages of forms. Do the math yourself and hand the screen work to whoever runs your office, and have them bring back one number: the per-lead price for your trade in your town.
The badge is not what it used to be
You have probably heard of the "Google Guarantee" — a green badge that promised to refund the customer if the work went bad. Here is the current, checkable fact: that money-back guarantee has been discontinued.
Google replaced the old badges with a single one, the Google Verified badge. It means one thing: Google checked that your business is real and screened. That is worth having. It is just doing lighter work than the pitch implies — it tells a customer you exist and passed a check, not that anyone's money is protected.
So if a rep is still selling you the old "Google Guarantee" and its money-back promise, he is quoting a badge that no longer exists. That is your first tell on this channel.
Here is the old belief next to what is true now:
| What owners still think | What's actually true |
|---|---|
| The "Google Guarantee" badge means the customer gets their money back. | That money-back guarantee is discontinued. The badge now is "Google Verified" — it means Google checked and screened your business, nothing more. |
| Pay-per-lead means every lead is real, so there's no risk. | You still pay for price-shoppers and some junk. There is a way to dispute the junk — with hard walls around it (below). |
The background check reaches your guys, not just your company name
To wear the badge, you get screened — and the screening is not just the LLC on paper. Every owner has to pass a criminal background check, and so does every employee, contractor, or temp who does the actual work at the customer's home.
Read that two ways, both honest. It is friction — real work to get every man cleared before you can run. And it is a real signal — the badge on your listing reaches the guy who shows up, not just the name on the invoice. For a shop that runs clean, that is a fence competitors have to clear too.
Now the part to know before you budget around this channel. Google's own rule for a failed screening is blunt: a business that fails the background check process isn't eligible for the program it applied to. It is not "that man doesn't go in houses." It is the shop. Google also says the business or its workers can contact the background check partners to identify errors, and that reapplying comes after another 30 days. So ask yourself the quiet question about every man who enters a customer's home before you count on this money. If a check comes back failed, your move is the error check with the partner first, then the 30-day wait, and the budget goes to a channel that doesn't screen — 4.5 or 4.7.
How a lead actually bills you
The billing is the part that sets LSA apart, so slow down here.
You are charged for each valid lead — a call or a message that comes in through your ad. Not per click. Not per view.
You already know this shape. Getting paid when the job is done beats getting paid to show up and quote. A regular Google ad charges you the moment someone clicks — you paid to stand in the parking lot, whether or not they ever spoke to you. That is chapter 4.5, Google Ads for a one-truck shop. An LSA charges when someone actually reaches out. It is the difference between paying to be looked at and paying to be phoned.
That is genuinely better. It is not the same as free of risk, because a person who calls to price-shop and never books still counts as a lead you paid for. Which brings us to the part the pitch skips.
The credit path — and the walls around it
Here is the honest middle. There is a way to not pay for junk, and it has real limits.
What works in your favor: a lead Google judges invalid or low quality isn't charged at all. Charged leads get looked at again over time and can be credited automatically if the models decide they were low quality. And if you get a bad one, you flag it in the Feedback Survey attached to that lead.
Now the walls — the "what you can't get back" side of the math:
| The credit | The wall |
|---|---|
| Junk leads can be credited. | Google no longer credits "job type not serviced" or "geo not serviced" leads — the wrong-work and wrong-town ones you'd most want back. |
| Credits can post automatically. | No lead credits at all for health care work, tax specialists, or advertisers in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa). |
| Approved credits land on your balance. | In most cases within 30 days — not instantly, and not to your card. |
So the true read is: you can claw back some junk, but not the wrong-trade, wrong-town leads that sting most, and not on demand. Bank that before you spend, not after.
Now run the one math on it
Every machine in this manual gets judged the same way — the true cost of a real, closed job, not the price of a lead. That formula, and how to run it on any channel, is chapter 4.1, the one math. Here is how it lands on LSA specifically.
Run it on made-up numbers first, then run it on yours.
Say a lead costs $100 — a round number to move the math, not a price anyone publishes. Ten leads in a month is $1,000. Two were wrong-trade or wrong-town, the ones Google no longer credits, so you eat them. Close three of the ten and a closed job cost you about $333 in leads.
Now the part that decides everything: what's a job worth? Put your own numbers in — say a roof replacement of $____ against a repair of $____. On the big-ticket job, a $333 lead cost is noise. On the small repair, that same lead cost can eat the whole job. The worked version of that math lives in chapter 4.7.
We are not going to hand you somebody else's return number. The big ones that get quoted at you came out of some other shop's close rate, job prices, and market, and none of those are yours. Whether a shop your size can carry a per-lead channel at all is chapter 4.7.
The number that matters is your own per-lead price, for your trade, in your town.
Do the math. That is the whole game — not "is it worth it," but "what does a closed job cost me here, and can my job carry it."
What the machine controls, and what it doesn't
No channel we cover guarantees a closed job. Anyone who tells you LSA does is lying to you, and that one claim should void everything else they say.
Here is the clean split. LSA controls that you only pay when a real call or message comes in, and it gives you a dispute path with the walls above. It does not control whether that caller hires you. A price-shopper still bills you. Your close rate is on your phone and your quote.
That means half of whether LSA pays comes down to answering — the leak you can't see is a call that rang out. That's chapter 4.8, and the tool that texts a missed caller back is chapter 4.9. Turn on a per-lead machine while your phone goes unanswered and you are paying to miss people faster.
Score your own LSA
Do this with your own numbers. Every step ends with something you can write down.
- Open the LSA sign-up preview and look for your per-lead price for your trade and town. Result: write your number — "About $____ a lead." If no price comes up, write "no price shown" and stop there.
- Check that you and every man who does the work can clear a criminal background check. Result: yes or no, written.
- Run the pencil test below. Result: a cost-per-closed-job number and a verdict, in ink.
- Write what you can't get credited: wrong-trade leads, wrong-town leads, and — if you do health care, tax, or work in Europe/Middle East/Africa — any lead credit at all. Result: the list, written.
- Name who owns the account and the phone number: you, not a vendor. If a marketer "sets it up on their account," you don't own the leads (4.9). Result: a name, written.
Step 1 can dead-end, and none of it is you doing it wrong. Google says Local Services Ads are available only for certain service categories, and it runs some of those categories in named states or cities only — so your trade or your town may simply not be on the list. The third wall is the account: sign-up runs on a Google account, and a past marketer may still be holding yours. If the list is the wall, write "not offered here" on the scorecard and stop — that is a real answer, and the money goes to 4.5 or 4.7 instead. If the account is the wall, getting back in is its own job first: hand it to whoever manages your passwords and start on the locked-out walk.
Say this
My typical job is worth about $ job price. My LSA lead price is about $ per lead. It takes me about how many leads leads to close one, so a closed job costs me about $ leads × per-lead in leads. Against that job, that cost is noise / a real bite / more than the job.
Print this: the LSA scorecard on one page
The map of every paid lead source, and the one math that judges them all, is the Lead Machines hub. If a vendor wants you to sign for LSA setup, price the whole quote first with what web work actually costs.