Google Is Killing the Local Services Ads Dashboard, and Movers Are First in Line

Google is folding Local Services Ads into the regular Google Ads platform, and if you run LSAs for a moving company, this isn't a "someday" change, it's happening to your account starting this month. Google confirmed the rollout begins in August 2026 with a first wave of home and storefront service categories, and moving companies are named specifically in that first group, right alongside plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, and pest control. So if you've had that green "Google Guaranteed" badge and been getting leads through the LSA dashboard, expect a notice from Google soon, if you haven't already gotten one.

What's Actually Changing

Local Services Ads: the pay-per-lead ads that show up at the very top of Google search results with your business name, rating, and a phone number, before any regular ads or organic listings. Right now those live in their own separate dashboard, completely apart from regular Google Ads. Google is shutting that dashboard down and moving everything into the main Google Ads platform, where it'll run as a new type of campaign called "Performance Max for pay-per-lead goals."

That name sounds scarier than it is. Despite being called Performance Max, which normally means Google's ads run everywhere, YouTube, Display, Gmail, all of it, Google has said explicitly that your ads will keep showing up only on Search and Maps, exactly where LSAs show up today. You'll still pay per lead, not per click. There's no keyword bidding to manage. The core of the product isn't changing. What's changing is the address where you go to manage it, and a handful of things underneath that are easy to miss if you're not paying attention.

The Part That Actually Matters to You

Here's the piece that should get your attention: your historical performance reports do not transfer. Your lead history moves over, so you'll still see the calls and messages you've gotten in the past. But your spend data, your impression data, your performance trends over time, none of that is coming with you. Once your account migrates, the old LSA dashboard is gone, and so is your ability to pull those old reports. If you've ever needed to look back at what a slow season cost you, or compare this year to last year, download that data now, before your migration notice shows up.

On top of that, your budget structure is changing. LSAs currently run on an "Average Weekly Budget," but after the move you'll be on the standard daily budget model most Google Ads campaigns use. If you've got a weekly number in your head that you've been managing to, you'll need to translate that into a daily equivalent, because Google isn't going to do that math for you and hand it to you gently.

There's also a smaller change worth knowing: if you had a Better Business Bureau rating showing on your profile as one of your business bios, that's being phased out. Not a huge deal on its own, but it's one more small trust signal disappearing from a page that didn't have that many to begin with.

Timeline: When This Hits Your Account

Google isn't flipping a switch for everyone at once. The rollout goes in phases. The first wave, which includes moving companies, starts in August 2026. A broader group of U.S. advertisers follows later in the year. Everyone else, including businesses outside the U.S. and any categories not covered in the first two waves, gets migrated sometime in 2027.

You'll get a heads up before it happens to your account specifically: an email 14 days out, a second reminder 7 days after that, and a banner inside your current LSA dashboard warning you it's coming. Google says to expect up to two weeks after migration for performance to settle back to where it was before, so don't panic if your lead flow dips for a bit right after the switch.

What To Do Before Your Account Moves

If you're running LSAs right now, the move here isn't complicated, it's just easy to put off until the email lands and then it's too late to grab the old data. Export or screenshot your historical LSA reports now, especially anything you use for year-over-year comparisons or to make the case internally for what your ad spend is doing. Figure out your daily budget equivalent ahead of time instead of scrambling when the interface changes underneath you. And if you manage more than one location or brand, know that each account gets its own migration date and its own 14-day countdown, there's no single company-wide deadline to plan around.