Google Is Migrating Local Services Ads to Performance Max: What Local Businesses Need to Know

If you run a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, or home-cleaning business and you have relied on Local Services Ads for years, the campaign type you know is being retired out from under you, one account at a time, starting this August. Google has begun automatically migrating Local Services Ads into a specialized Performance Max campaign type built specifically for pay-per-lead goals, according to Google's own Ads Help documentation, and for the categories caught in this first wave, the migration is not optional and not something you opt into on your own schedule. It arrives on a date Google sets, communicated by email roughly two weeks ahead of time.

TL;DR: Starting August 2026, Google is migrating Local Services Ads into Performance Max, first for a specific set of home and storefront service categories in the US, plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving, with broader advertiser groups following in late 2026 and non-US accounts in 2027. Pay-per-lead billing, exclusive placement on Search and Maps, and keywordless targeting all carry over unchanged. What does not carry over: manual bidding, vertical-level Target CPA, and BBB profile callouts are all being deprecated, while weekly budgets convert to a daily average and a new Leads page replaces the old inbox. This guide covers the full rollout timeline, exactly what changes under the hood, and the bigger shift most coverage of this migration is missing: once your account moves to Performance Max, you are responsible for real ad creative in a way the old, largely automatic Local Services Ads profile never required, which is where a tool like Miraflow's AI Image Generator and cinematic AI video generator actually becomes relevant to a local service business for the first time.

What's Actually Changing: Local Services Ads Becomes a Performance Max Campaign Type

For as long as Local Services Ads has existed, it has functioned as its own separate product inside Google's advertising ecosystem, with its own dashboard, its own lead inbox, and its own simplified setup built around a business profile, a service radius, and a handful of categories rather than the keyword and creative-asset structure every other Google Ads campaign type uses. That separation is what is actually ending. Google's own Help Center describes the change plainly: existing Local Services Ads campaigns will be automatically migrated to a specialized Performance Max campaign type optimized specifically for pay-per-lead goals, folding a product that used to live outside the main Google Ads platform directly into it.

This is a bigger structural change than a typical Performance Max update, because Local Services Ads was never really a Performance Max campaign wearing a different name, it was a genuinely separate system with its own automatic, largely hands-off ad generation built from your Google Business Profile. Moving it into the Performance Max framework means a local service business now sits inside the same asset-group, bidding-strategy, and reporting structure that every other Performance Max advertiser already uses, which is exactly why several of the changes covered below (real ad creative requirements, campaign-level bidding, a genuinely different reporting surface) represent a real shift in what running local services advertising on Google actually requires, not just a rebrand.

The Rollout Timeline: Three Phases Through 2027

Google has published a three-phase timeline for this migration, and knowing which phase your business category falls into is the single most useful thing to check before reading any further.

Phase One: August 2026, Home and Storefront Services in the US

The first wave targets a specific list of home and storefront service categories in the United States: plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving. If your business falls into one of these categories and operates in the US, you are in the group being migrated first, and Google has not published a single fixed date within August that applies to every account in this wave. Instead, each account learns its own specific migration date individually.

Phase Two: Late 2026, Service-Area Businesses and Custom Configurations

The second wave, expected later in 2026, expands the migration to service-area businesses that do not operate out of a physical storefront, along with accounts running custom bidding or booking configurations that the first wave's simpler setups did not need to account for. If your business operates across a service radius rather than from a single storefront location, or if you have a non-standard bidding or booking setup with your Local Services Ads account, this is the phase that applies to you rather than the August wave.

Phase Three: 2027, Non-US Accounts and Remaining Categories

The final phase, scheduled for 2027, covers every Local Services Ads account outside the US, along with any remaining business categories not already captured in the first two phases. If you advertise Local Services Ads outside the United States, you have meaningfully more runway before this migration reaches your account than a US-based plumbing or HVAC business does.

How You'll Know Your Migration Date Is Coming

Google's stated communication process for phase-one advertisers follows a specific sequence rather than a single blanket announcement. The account admin receives an email notification roughly 14 days before the account's specific migration date. That is followed by an in-dashboard warning banner inside Google Ads itself, and then a final reminder roughly 7 days after the initial notice, closer to the actual migration date. That gives an affected advertiser a real window, not a surprise overnight switch, but it also means the responsibility sits with you to actually notice and act on that email rather than assume Google will hold your hand through every step of the transition. A 14-day notice is enough time to prepare creative assets and review your bidding setup if you start the moment the email arrives. It is not enough time if that email sits unread in an inbox for a week and a half before anyone on your team sees it.

What Changes Under the Hood: Budgets, Bidding, and Reporting

Beyond the campaign-type change itself, several concrete mechanical differences carry real, immediate consequences for how your account actually runs day to day.

Budget Conversion: Weekly Becomes Daily Average

Local Services Ads has historically run on a weekly budget model. Under the migrated Performance Max structure, that weekly budget converts to a daily average, calculated by dividing your existing weekly figure by 7, with a monthly spending cap set at that daily average multiplied by 30.4 days, matching the standard Performance Max budget-pacing model used across the rest of Google Ads. If you have never had to think about daily pacing before because Local Services Ads handled the entire weekly allocation for you, this is a genuine mental model shift, worth reviewing manually right after your migration completes rather than assuming the converted number automatically reflects the pacing behavior you actually want.

Deprecated: Manual Bidding and Vertical-Level Target CPA

Two bidding mechanisms that Local Services Ads advertisers may have relied on are being removed entirely in the migrated structure. Manual bidding, specifically the maximum cost-per-lead control some advertisers used to cap what they were willing to pay for an individual lead, is no longer supported. Vertical-level Target CPA, which let an advertiser running multiple service categories set a different cost-per-acquisition target for each vertical individually, is also being eliminated, replaced by a single, unified campaign-level CPA that applies across the whole migrated campaign rather than category by category. For an advertiser running, say, both HVAC repair and duct cleaning under one account with meaningfully different lead values between the two, this is a real loss of granular control that is worth planning around, most likely by splitting genuinely different-value service lines into separate campaigns going forward if the unified CPA setting cannot represent the value difference accurately enough on its own. This lands on top of a separate bidding change Google made earlier in the year, covered in our breakdown of Google Ads ending Target Overperformance in August 2026, so any Local Services Ads advertiser who also runs standard Performance Max campaigns elsewhere in the same account is dealing with two separate bidding-control removals in the same year, not just this one.

New: Real-Time Phone Routing, the Leads Page, and More Campaign Control

The migration is not purely subtractive. A few genuinely new capabilities come with the Performance Max structure that the old Local Services Ads dashboard did not offer. Phone number routing, which numbers calls get directed to, can now be edited in real time directly inside Google Ads, rather than requiring a change through a separate profile-management flow. The old Local Services Ads inbox, where leads used to land, is being replaced by a dedicated Leads page inside the main Google Ads interface, consolidating lead management into the same place you already manage the rest of your advertising. And overall, migrated accounts gain access to a level of campaign customization that is no longer tightly bound to whatever your Google Business Profile happens to say, since Performance Max campaigns pull from a broader asset structure than the old profile-driven Local Services Ads format did.

What Stays Exactly the Same

It is worth being equally clear about what this migration does not touch, since a fair amount of anxious coverage of this change understandably focuses on what is going away rather than what is staying put. Pay-per-lead billing remains the core mechanic, you are still only charged for a valid lead, not for impressions or clicks the way a standard Performance Max campaign for, say, an ecommerce store typically works. Exclusive placement on Google Search and Google Maps carries over unchanged, migrated campaigns are not suddenly competing for space across the Display Network or YouTube the way a typical Performance Max campaign does. Keywordless targeting, based on your declared service categories and service area rather than a manually built keyword list, also stays exactly as it was. And the fundamental performance focus, connecting you with high-intent customers actively looking for the specific service you offer, right now, in your specific area, remains the product's core value proposition, unchanged by which campaign type technically runs it behind the scenes.

One additional deprecation worth flagging separately from the bidding changes above: BBB (Better Business Bureau) callouts are no longer supported as a profile element in the migrated structure. Google's guidance for advertisers who relied on a BBB callout for trust signaling is to add at least six other structured callouts in its place, covering things like years in business, licensing and insurance status, guarantee terms, or emergency availability, since a single missing trust signal is worth actively replacing rather than just letting your profile look thinner than it did before the migration.

The Bigger Shift Most Coverage of This Migration Is Missing

Almost every piece of coverage of this migration focuses on the mechanical changes: bidding, budgets, the new Leads page. The change that actually matters most for the day-to-day advertiser is quieter and shows up a few weeks after migration, once you notice your campaign's performance depends on ad assets in a way it never used to.

Local Services Ads, in its original form, never asked you to write ad copy or supply creative in the way a normal Google Ads campaign does. Your listing was built almost entirely from your Google Business Profile, your photos, your reviews, your service categories, assembled automatically into a standard-looking profile card. A plumber or an HVAC technician who had never written an ad headline in their life could run Local Services Ads successfully for years without ever touching a creative asset beyond the photos already sitting on their Google Business Profile.

Performance Max does not work that way. It is an asset-group-driven campaign type built around headlines, descriptions, images, and increasingly video, that Google's algorithm mixes and matches across whichever surface it decides is the best fit for a given search. A migrated Local Services Ads account that shows up inside the Performance Max framework with nothing but the same old Google Business Profile photos is handing the algorithm a much thinner set of raw material to work with than a Performance Max campaign built with genuine, purpose-made ad assets. This is precisely the gap covered in more depth in our breakdown of Performance Max's new steering, reporting, and negative keyword controls: a Performance Max campaign performs in rough proportion to the quality and range of the assets you actually feed it, and a migrated local services account starting from a bare Google Business Profile is not feeding it much.

This is where the practical shift lands for a local service business specifically. A well-lit, professional-looking image of your team, your service van, or a finished job, run through Miraflow's AI Image Generator, can turn a single real reference photo into a set of polished, on-brand variations sized correctly for however Performance Max chooses to display them, without a full paid photo shoot for a plumbing or lawn care business that never needed one before this migration. And since Performance Max increasingly rewards accounts that supply video alongside static images, a short, genuine clip of a technician arriving at a job or a finished project reveal, produced through Miraflow's cinematic AI video generator, is a meaningfully stronger creative input than a static photo alone, the same logic covered in our explainer on Google's default-on AI video resizing for Performance Max, which specifically discusses how thin an asset group with only one orientation of creative actually is once Performance Max starts trying to fill inventory gaps around it. If you need actual ad copy templates to pair with the visuals, our AI UGC ad prompts for product and lifestyle content is a reasonable starting point to adapt for a local service context even though it was written with ecommerce in mind, since the underlying creative structure, a clear hook, a real demonstration, a trust signal, transfers directly.

How to Prepare Before Your Migration Date Arrives

A short, concrete checklist for any Local Services Ads advertiser in the first migration wave, worth working through the moment you get the 14-day notice email rather than waiting for the final reminder.

1. Confirm which phase actually applies to you. Check your specific service category and business type against the phase-one list above. A storefront HVAC business and a service-area-only HVAC business are on two different timelines.
2. Audit your current bidding setup for anything that depends on manual bidding or vertical-level Target CPA. If you run multiple service categories with meaningfully different lead values, decide now whether that needs to become separate campaigns once the unified campaign-level CPA takes over.
3. Pull together real creative assets before the migration completes, not after. A handful of genuinely good images and at least one short video, prepared in advance, means your migrated campaign is not running on bare Google Business Profile photos during the exact window when Google's algorithm is first learning how to serve your new Performance Max structure.
4. Replace any BBB callout with at least six alternative structured callouts. Do this proactively rather than letting the migration silently drop a trust signal from your profile.
5. Review your phone routing settings once migration completes. Since this is now editable in real time directly inside Google Ads, confirm calls are still routing to the right destination immediately after the switch rather than assuming the old configuration carried over exactly as expected.
6. Bookmark the new Leads page and stop checking the old Local Services Ads inbox. A lead-management workflow habit built around the old inbox is worth deliberately retraining the moment the migration completes, so a lead does not sit unanswered because someone on your team is still checking the wrong place.

Common Mistakes Local Advertisers Are Making With This Migration

• Not reading the 14-day notice email at all. Since this is a mandatory migration rather than an opt-in change, missing the notice does not delay the migration, it just means less time to prepare creative and review bidding before it happens.
• Assuming the migration is purely cosmetic. As covered above, this is a genuine structural shift from an automatic, profile-driven ad format to an asset-group-driven Performance Max campaign, and treating it as a simple rebrand risks a real performance dip if no new creative gets added.
• Leaving vertical-level cost differences unaddressed. An advertiser running multiple service categories with real cost-per-lead differences between them who does nothing after losing vertical-level Target CPA is likely to see budget pool toward whichever category the unified CPA setting happens to favor.
• Forgetting to replace a BBB callout. A trust signal quietly disappearing from your profile with nothing put in its place is an easy, avoidable loss.
• Treating the new Leads page as optional to check. Since it fully replaces the old inbox rather than supplementing it, a team still checking the legacy interface out of habit risks missing real leads during the transition period.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this migration mandatory, or can I opt out? Based on Google's own Help Center documentation, this is an automatic migration for eligible accounts, not an opt-in or opt-out choice. The categories and timing described above determine when your account is migrated, not whether it is migrated at all.

When exactly will my account be migrated? Google has not published a single fixed date for all phase-one accounts. Each account receives its own specific migration date via an email notification roughly 14 days beforehand, followed by an in-dashboard banner and a final reminder about 7 days later.

Will I still only pay for valid leads after the migration? Yes. Pay-per-lead billing carries over unchanged in the migrated Performance Max structure, along with exclusive placement on Google Search and Google Maps and keywordless, category-and-area-based targeting.

What happens to my BBB callout on my profile? BBB callouts are no longer supported after migration. Google's guidance is to add at least six other structured callouts in its place to avoid losing a trust signal from your profile entirely.

Can I still set a different cost target for different service categories I offer? No. Vertical-level Target CPA is being eliminated in favor of a single, unified campaign-level CPA. If your service categories have meaningfully different lead values, splitting them into separate campaigns is the main available workaround.

Do I need to supply new ad creative before the migration happens? It is not a strict requirement to migrate, but a migrated account running on nothing but old Google Business Profile photos is likely to underperform compared to one with genuine, purpose-made images and video, since Performance Max is fundamentally an asset-driven campaign type rather than a profile-driven one.

What happens to leads that come in through the old Local Services Ads inbox after migration? The Leads page inside Google Ads replaces the old inbox entirely once migration completes, so lead management should move to that new location rather than continuing to check the legacy interface.

Conclusion

Google folding Local Services Ads into Performance Max is a genuine structural shift dressed up as a routine platform update, and the mechanical changes, budget conversion, deprecated bidding controls, a new Leads page, are the easy part to plan around once you know they are coming. The harder, quieter shift is that a campaign type built for decades of local service businesses who never had to think about ad creative now runs inside a framework that rewards exactly that. Check which phase applies to your business, read the notice email the day it arrives rather than the day before your migration, and treat the creative gap as the actual priority, not an afterthought. A few genuinely good photos and a short video, produced through Miraflow's AI Image Generator and cinematic AI video generator, is a small investment against the cost of a Performance Max campaign running on nothing but the same old profile photos it always had. For more on the broader wave of Google Ads automation changes this migration is part of, our guides to Google's AI Max Search auto-upgrade and Google Ads' real-time policy review changes are worth reading alongside this one, and the full library of marketing guides on the Miraflow AI blog covers the rest of what changed across Google Ads in 2026.