Local Services Ads are the boxes at the very top of a Google search for "AC repair near me," the ones with the Google Guaranteed check mark. Google charges per lead, meaning per phone call or message that comes through the listing. Ranking depends on things Google publishes openly: your bid, how fast you answer, your rating and review count, and how complete the profile is, photos included.
Since 2024 the LSA account has to be linked to your Google Business Profile, and the reviews on the listing are the Business Profile reviews. That change removed the separate LSA review pile some contractors had built, and it made the profile the single thing to keep healthy.
What follows is the Monday routine for every client account, in the order we run it.
Listen to every call from last week
Each lead in the LSA dashboard has a recording. Someone on our side listens to all of them and marks each one: booked, quoted, existing customer, wrong service, spam. This takes about an hour for a two-truck shop and most of a morning for a ten-truck one. Skipping it is the most expensive shortcut in the account, because the next two steps depend on it.
Dispute the junk
Google refunds leads that were not real jobs: solicitors, wrong trade, outside your service area, a customer who never connected. The dispute has to be filed inside the window Google allows, and it needs a reason that matches what is on the recording. Disputes filed in bulk without listening get denied, and an account that files a lot of denied disputes gets less benefit of the doubt later. The credits from disputes come off the next LSA bill, and a shop that never listens to the recordings never files them.
Mark the booked ones
Google asks you to mark leads as booked and to enter the job value. Contractors skip this because it feels like homework for Google. Google says the booked marks help it improve the quality of the leads it sends, and the job values are the only booked-revenue line the dashboard can show. Two minutes per lead.
Turn off job types you do not want
LSA lets you pick job types: AC repair, AC installation, furnace repair, duct cleaning, and so on. A shop that cannot take another install this month should turn install leads off. Otherwise it pays for calls it books six weeks out and then loses. Turn them back on when the calendar clears. We change this for most clients several times a season.
Move the weekly budget with the forecast
The budget is weekly and can be changed any time. When the 10-day forecast shows the first 95-degree stretch, repair leads get cheaper to convert and more expensive to buy, and a budget that was fine in May gets exhausted by Tuesday. We raise it the week before the heat arrives. In the shoulder months we cut it and move money to the customer list.
Check the response time
Google tracks how quickly the business answers LSA calls and messages, and it shows the listing less when the number gets bad. Pull the number every Monday. If it slipped, the fix is on the phone side: a missed-call text-back, overflow answering during peak, or a CSR who is not also dispatching.
The accounts that fall behind are the ones where nobody owns the Monday.