Google is moving standalone Local Services Ads into Google Ads as Performance Max campaigns with a pay-per-lead goal. You still pay only for valid leads and still show in the same places on Search and Maps. Your lead history carries over automatically, but your performance reports don't. Foundation contractors weren't in the August 2026 wave. Most are service-area businesses, which move in late 2026, and everyone else follows in 2027.
What Google is changing
The separate Local Services dashboard goes away. Your ads move into a Google Ads account as a Performance Max campaign with a pay-per-lead goal (Google). The mechanics homeowners see stay the same: the ads still show only on Google Search and Google Maps, in the same positions, with no keywords, and you're still billed per valid lead such as a call or a message.
The timeline
| Phase | When | Who |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | August 2026 | Select advertisers in plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control and moving |
| 2 | Late 2026 | Service-area businesses without a storefront, which covers most foundation contractors, plus accounts using custom bidding or booking |
| 3 | 2027 | All remaining categories and accounts outside the US |
Google hasn't published a date for foundation repair specifically. Account admins get an email 14 days before their migration, then a final reminder 7 days later.
What carries over, and what doesn't
| Carries over | Changes or disappears |
|---|---|
| Your customer lead history | The standalone Local Services dashboard |
| Pay-per-lead billing | Manual bidding: no longer supported |
| Ad placement on Search and Maps | Per-job-type target cost per lead becomes one campaign-level Target CPA |
| Keywordless matching | Weekly budgets become an average daily budget (weekly ÷ 7) |
| Your verification and badge | Performance reports (impressions, clicks, weekly spend, ad-level reports) don't migrate |
Checklist: do this before your notice arrives
- Check who's an admin on both the Local Services account and the Google Ads account. The notice only goes to admins, and a notice sitting in an ex-employee's inbox is the most common way this goes wrong.
- Download your performance reports. Impressions, clicks, weekly spend and ad-level reports don't move across. Save them now, while you can still compare before and after.
- Write down your current bids and budgets for each job type. You'll need them to set a sensible campaign-level Target CPA instead of guessing.
- Screenshot your job types and service areas. It takes ten minutes, and it's the fastest way to check nothing was dropped after the switch.
- Make sure the Google Ads account is in your name, not an agency's, so the campaign you've paid to build stays yours.
- Fix missed calls first. Google ranks Local Services partly on responsiveness and says missed calls hurt (Google). That doesn't change after the move.
What this means for foundation contractors
Foundation contractors weren't in the first wave, so there's time to prepare before your notice arrives. After the move, your campaign sits in the same Google Ads account as your Search ads. That makes it easier to see total cost per booked inspection in one place, as long as calls are tracked as conversions on both.