What is the difference between Local Services Ads and Google Ads?
Short answer
Local Services Ads charge for each lead, and Google decides when to show your business based on a profile it has screened. Google Ads search ads charge for each click, and you choose the searches, write the ad and pick the page the click lands on. Many home-service companies run both, for different kinds of work.
The main difference is that Local Services Ads (LSA) charge you for each lead and Google decides when to show you, while Google Ads search ads charge you for each click and you choose the searches, the ad text and the page the click lands on. Both are sold by Google, and both appear above the unpaid results. When people say Google Ads they usually mean the search ads, so that is the comparison here.
Side by side
| Comparison | Local Services Ads | Search ads |
|---|---|---|
| You pay for | A lead: a call or a message | A click on the ad |
| Who decides when you show | Google, working from your profile | You, through keywords and bids, inside Google’s auction |
| What you prepare | A profile: job types, areas, hours | Keywords, ad text and a landing page |
| What the homeowner sees | Your business name, its review rating and a mark that Google screened you | A text ad with a headline and description you wrote |
| Where the contact goes | Straight to a call or message | Usually to a page on your website |
| Before you can run | Google screens the business | Google’s general advertising policies apply |
What you control in each
Search ads hand you almost every decision, and LSA hands you very few. A search campaign lets you pick the searches you want, block the ones you don’t with negative keywords, write several versions of the ad, and send each click to a page built for that service. That control is useful, and it’s also where money is lost, because every setting can be wrong.
LSA has no keyword list and no ad text. You keep the profile accurate and answer the leads, and the reviews you earn appear in the ad. Google does the matching. That makes LSA simpler to run and harder to steer. If you want more water heater installs and fewer drain calls, the only tools are the job types in the profile. There are no bids on particular searches.
The customer each one reaches
LSA suits the homeowner who wants to call someone now, and search ads suit the homeowner looking for something specific. In a hypothetical case, a La Mesa homeowner with a burst pipe taps a screened plumber at the top of the page and calls. Another, in Carlsbad and comparing tankless water heaters, types a longer search and clicks an ad that mentions tankless installs, which lands on a page about them. The first is an LSA lead. The second is a click that becomes a lead only if the page does its job, which is why the page matters so much for search ads and plays no part in LSA.
How to compare what they cost
A lead price and a click price are different units, so setting one against the other tells you little. A click is a visit, and only some visits become calls. A lead is already a call or a message, though not every lead is a real customer. The fair comparison is the cost of a booked job from each. That needs call tracking on the search ads and an honest sort of the LSA lead list. I don’t quote typical prices for either, since they vary by trade, city and season.
Which one to run
Many home-service companies run both, for different work. A common split is LSA for urgent repair calls, and search ads for higher-value services and for cities where the company doesn’t rank yet. Whether LSA is open to you depends on Google’s current rules for your trade and area, so check that first. Neither one changes your unpaid rankings. Once you know LSA is open to you, whether Local Services Ads are worth it comes down to the same test, the cost of a booked job.