Google Local Services Ads for tradespeople: pay per lead, not per click
With Google Local Services Ads, you appear as a tradesperson right at the top of Google, above every other advert, with a green Google Guaranteed badge. You do not pay per click but per genuine lead: a phone call or message from someone who wants to hire you. For handymen and painters, a lead costs an average of €10 to €40. Google does not publish a lead price per trade; that is the range we see in our own accounts NL, and what you actually pay depends on the type of job and your area, as Google itself describes.
google policy · local services ads
Two trades cannot take part here: plumbers and locksmiths.
Local Services Ads exist in the Netherlands, but Google does not allow adverts for plumbing services or locksmith services here. That also applies within the local services block, because that is exactly what this restriction is about. If you are a plumber or a locksmith, the rest of this page is still worth reading to understand how it works, but you cannot start using it.
For locksmiths, the same ban applies in Spain, Germany, Sweden and Belgium. For plumbers, the Netherlands is the only country on the list, so this is not a European rule but a Dutch exception.
Source: Google Ads Help, Other restricted businesses: local services. Checked on 24 August 2026.
What are Google Local Services Ads?
Google Local Services Ads (LSA) appear right at the top of Google's search results. Above the paid adverts and above the organic results, in other words at position zero. The advert shows your business name, a phone number customers can call you on directly, your average Google rating, the number of years you have been active, and the green Google Guaranteed badge.
If someone searches for handyman business Tilburg, that person sees your advert at the top, calls you directly, and you only pay if that call actually happens. That is the core difference with other advert formats: you pay per genuine lead, meaning a phone call or a message, not per click. The model has been available to Dutch tradespeople since 2024 and is aimed at trades such as handymen, painters, gardeners and electricians. That makes LSA more relevant than it used to be, because in the regular Ads account Call-Only Ads disappear in February 2027. Anyone getting their phone leads from there will have to set something else up regardless.
Source for that date: Google Ads Help, Action required: switching from call ads to call assets
Two dates are given there: February 2026 for creating new call-only ads, February 2027 for impressions of existing ones. Last checked on 25 August 2026: the announcement is still there and the dates have not shifted.
The difference with regular Google Ads
LSA looks like regular Google Ads, but differs on five points:
Payment
with regular Google Ads you pay per click, with LSA per genuine lead (a call or a message).Position
regular adverts sit above the organic results but below LSA. LSA sits right at the top.Verification badge
only LSA shows the Google Guaranteed badge.Website
for regular Ads you need a website with a landing page, for LSA you do not.Disputing incorrect leads
only possible with LSA. Google refunds invalid leads.You do not have to choose: the two systems combine well. LSA catches the direct callers, regular Google Ads reaches the people who compare first. If you want to know which mix works best for your business, our PPC specialist is happy to look at it with you.
The Google Guaranteed badge
The green badge means Google has checked your business documents and insurance. To get the badge, you provide:
- An extract from the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KVK)
- Proof of your professional liability insurance
- Identity verification through Google
- Compliance with Google's industry guidelines
That green badge is worth its weight in gold for tradespeople
Customers in the Netherlands are critical of online adverts, and a check by Google removes doubt. Your Google ratings are also shown directly in the advert. The more good reviews you have, the more visible you become.
What does a lead cost?
The price per lead differs by sector. In the Netherlands, the amounts are roughly as follows:
Handyman business
€12 to €30Painter
€10 to €25Gardener
€15 to €35Plumber
not possible, Google does not allow this trade in the NetherlandsElectrician
€18 to €40You set your own weekly budget. Once that budget runs out, your adverts disappear until the new week starts. That keeps costs fully under your control. If you receive an invalid lead, for example someone outside your work area, a wrongly connected caller or spam, you can dispute it and get the amount back.
How to sign up
You sign up through ads.google.com/local-services-ads. The process has seven steps:
- Click Get started
- Select your sector
- Fill in your business details: name, address, work area and opening hours
- Upload your documents: a KVK extract and proof of insurance
- Complete the identity verification
- Set your weekly budget
- Wait for approval, on average 1 to 3 weeks
Google LSA also works without a website
You only need a Google Business Profile. Do make sure that profile is in good shape: a complete and active business profile also helps you rank higher on Google Maps as a small business, and that strengthens your visibility from two sides.
Is Google LSA right for you?
LSA works best for:
- Tradespeople who are hired directly by phone
- Services within a clearly defined work area
- Businesses that already have Google ratings
- Professionals who handle phone calls quickly and professionally
LSA is less suited to businesses with complex quotes that customers compare extensively first, or to businesses where the phone is not the main contact channel.
The advice from practice: combine
Use LSA for the direct leads, regular Google Ads for people who are still browsing, and a strong website for trust. Also keep an eye on developments at Google, because the local advertising landscape changes quickly. Read, for example, how Google Maps adverts are changing with Demand Gen in 2026.
When does a contact count as a lead, and when do you not pay
This is the heart of the model, and also the part where most of the misunderstandings sit. With regular adverts, you know exactly when the meter runs: someone clicks, you pay. With Local Services Ads, the meter only runs once there is contact, and then it suddenly matters what Google means by contact.
The three forms of contact
There are three, and no more. Someone calls you through the number in the advert. Someone sends you a message through the enquiry form attached to your profile. Or someone books directly, if you have switched on that feature. All three land in the same lead overview in your account, with the time attached, and for a phone call usually a recording or a summary of the conversation. That overview is your only source of truth: whatever is not in there has not been billed.
Not every phone call is a lead
A wrongly connected four-second call should not be in there, and usually it is not. However, Google does not publish a fixed call length above which a phone call in the Netherlands counts as a lead, and we are not going to name a figure here that we cannot point to. What you can do is lay your own phone list next to that lead overview for the first two weeks. Within a few days you will see exactly where the line sits for you, and that is more accurate than any rule of thumb.
What this means for your planning
Because you pay per conversation and not per click, the risk shifts. With regular adverts, the risk is that you buy traffic that does nothing. Here, the risk is that you buy conversations that do not fit you: a job outside your area, a service you do not offer, a private individual when you only work for businesses. You limit that risk not with your budget but with your settings: your work area, the services you tick and the hours you are reachable. Any one of those three set too wide buys conversations you will later have to dispute.
Disputing a lead, and how to do it properly
The right to dispute a lead is the part that makes this model workable, and at the same time the part that most often goes unused. Tradespeople who do pay attention to it consistently pay less than tradespeople who let everything stand because they do not make time for it.
What you can dispute
- A caller outside your set work area.
- An enquiry for a service you do not offer.
- Spam, a salesperson, a wrongly connected call.
- The same person getting in touch twice within a short time about the same job.
What you cannot dispute
A lead that was entirely legitimate but did not turn into a job. Then you do not have an invalid lead but a quote you did not win, and that risk is part of the trade. Anyone who still tries to dispute it not only wastes their own time but also builds up a record of rejected requests. So save your disputes for the cases where you have a reason you can write down in one sentence.
The practical route
You dispute a lead in the lead overview itself, next to the lead in question, with a short factual reason. Every lead shows the deadline for doing that; that deadline is the reason checking weekly works better than checking monthly. Turn it into a fixed ten minutes, for example on a Friday morning when you are reviewing your week anyway. Write the reason in a businesslike way, without explaining how annoying it was: what Google assesses is whether the lead fell within your settings, not how the conversation went.
And while you are at it, look at the pattern too. If you dispute the same kind of lead every week, the fix is not disputing but adjusting your settings. If enquiries keep coming in for a service you no longer offer, take that service off your profile. If people just over the edge of your area keep calling, shrink your radius. Disputes are a correction tool, not a working method.
Your availability is the real product here
With a regular advert, you can make up for a mediocre phone service with a good landing page. Here you cannot, because there is no page. The advert is a name, a score and a button, and behind that button is you. That makes being reachable not a precondition but the product itself.
Whoever does not pick up pays twice
A missed call costs you the job, and it also costs you your position, because Google itself names response speed and the ways customers can reach you as factors that count towards ranking within this system. So a tradesperson standing on scaffolding who leaves their phone in the van sees not only fewer customers but, over time, fewer impressions too. The effect reinforces itself, and that is the main reason this channel does not work for everyone.
Three practical things you do about it
Choose your hours honestly
You decide yourself when your advert runs. If you cannot pick up between eight and five because you are working, switch it on for the hours you can: early morning, late afternoon, during a break. Four good hours beat ten hours where half the calls walk away.Always call back, the same day
A lead you have paid for and do not call back is the most expensive form of doing nothing there is. Put missed calls from this channel at the top of your list, not the bottom.Switch on the enquiry form
Someone who cannot get you on the line but can still send a message is a lead you would otherwise have lost. It also keeps working outside your hours.If you notice you are not keeping this up structurally, that is valuable information, not failure. Switch the channel off and put your money into routes where the customer can afford to wait: a good Business Profile, better visibility through SEO and a website for tradespeople where someone can calmly request a quote in the evening.
What Local Services Ads do not do
Every advert format has a downside, and this system's is that you get to decide almost nothing yourself. For some businesses that is exactly the appeal, and for others the reason to start somewhere else. Be honest about that upfront, including with yourself.
You do not write your own advert copy
There is no headline for you to come up with and no sentence explaining why you are different. What is shown is your name, your score, your number of reviews and the buttons. Anyone who relies on their story has little room here.You do not choose keywords
Google matches you to searches based on the services and the area in your profile. So you cannot steer towards the one job you would rather do and avoid another, except by switching whole services on or off.You do not build a brand with it
There is no logo, no house style and no image of your work. Anyone who wants to build recognition does that elsewhere.It does not replace your visibility
Switch the budget off and your visibility is gone that same day. What stays is what you have built up organically. That is exactly why this should be an addition, not a foundation.It is not available for every trade
See the policy block at the top of this page, and note that lists like this can change. Check the source before relying on our summary.The flip side of all those restrictions is the reason it works for many tradespeople anyway: there is little you can get wrong. No advert copy that falls flat, no landing page that loads too slowly, no keyword list leaking money. You set your profile up properly, you pick up the phone, and the rest is admin.
Are you a plumber or a locksmith? This is your route
It is already stated at the top of this page: Google does not allow plumbing services and locksmith services in the Netherlands within local services ads. That is frustrating, because those two trades in particular live on urgency and the phone, and that is exactly what this channel is good at. Still, there is no way around it, and rewording your service to sneak in anyway is not a clever move but a risk to your entire account.
What does work is catching the urgent demand in the places where you are allowed to appear, and there are such places.
Your Business Profile matters most in an emergency
Someone with a leak or a jammed door grabs their phone, searches, and calls the first number that looks trustworthy. That almost always happens on the map, not on a website. Accurate opening hours, a phone number you can call straight away, recent reviews and photos of real work do more here than anywhere else. Start with your Business Profile and keep it up to date.
Regular search ads are allowed
The restriction applies to the local services block, not to the whole advertising system. A regular search campaign on emergency terms in your own area remains possible. There you pay per click instead of per lead, so the sums are different and your landing page suddenly matters a great deal. For locksmiths we have worked out that route separately on Google Ads for locksmiths NL.
And the map itself
The map is also becoming paid ground in the near future, and that is separate from the restriction above. What is changing there and what you can already sort out now is covered in adverts on Google Maps. If you would rather first see where you stand now, the local visibility checker NL reviews your current visibility without you having to install anything.
How to measure whether it pays off
The attractive thing about paying per lead is that your measurement seems already done: after all, you see exactly what every lead costs. That is half the truth. Cost per lead says nothing until you know how many leads turn into a job and what that job brings in.
The figure you need
Work with cost per job won, not cost per lead. A worked example with made-up figures, purely to show the sum: if you pay twenty euros per lead and one in four becomes a job, a customer costs you eighty euros. Fill in your own figures, because those two numbers differ by trade and by area. Whether that is good or bad depends entirely on what a job brings in for you on average and how often that customer comes back. For a painter who then does the outside work every year, that line sits somewhere quite different than for someone hanging a single door.
What you need to keep track of
Three columns are enough: date, where the lead came from, and whether it became a job and for what amount. That can go in a notebook, in your diary or in the spreadsheet program you already use. After two months you have a figure you can build a decision on. Without that record-keeping you are steering on the only figure the system gives you, and that figure is about the front end, not about your revenue.
Compare it with what you already have
Put that cost per job won next to your other sources: what does a customer cost who comes in through your Business Profile, what does one from your regular adverts cost, what does one through word of mouth cost. Then the question suddenly becomes answerable. The free channel often turns out to be the cheapest and, at the same time, the slowest to grow, and that is exactly why a mix usually beats a single choice. What the regular advertising side costs you, we have worked out separately on what Google Ads costs NL.
Frequently asked questions about Google LSA
Do I need a website?
No. You only need a Google Business Profile. A website does help if visitors want to look further after seeing your advert.
How long does verification take?
On average 1 to 3 weeks. Google checks your documents, insurance and identity. Up-to-date documents speed up the process.
What if someone calls but does not become a customer?
You pay for the lead, even if it does not turn into a job. You do not pay for callers outside your work area, wrongly connected calls or spam. You can dispute those leads.
Can I use LSA and regular Google Ads at the same time?
Yes, they complement each other. LSA attracts the direct callers, regular Ads reaches the people who compare.
How do I improve my position within LSA?
Google names your bid for this, how likely it is that your advert produces a lead (your response speed, the relevance to the search and the ways customers can reach you), the quality of your profile (your rating, the number of reviews, your average response time, good photos and the verification steps you have completed) and the health of the LSA offering as a whole. Collecting more recent five-star reviews is the most direct lever you have yourself. You can find more practical explanations like this in our knowledge base.
Not sure whether this fits your trade?
The honest summary of this page is that Local Services Ads is a gift for one trade and money down the drain for another, and that the difference mostly comes down to two things: is your trade allowed to take part, and do you pick up the phone when it rings. Together, you can answer those two questions in five minutes, and then you know enough to start or to leave it.
If you want to take those five minutes, tell us your trade, your work area and the hours you are reachable, and we will tell you whether this channel makes sense in your case and which route we would take instead. Even if that answer is no. You can do that through the contact page, where you can pick a slot in the calendar yourself or simply call. A first conversation carries no price and no obligation. If you would rather work it out yourself first, the rest is in the knowledge base.