Google Is Retiring the LSA Dashboard in August 2026: What to Do Before Your Account Migrates

If you're running Google Local Services Ads for your HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or roofing business, something significant is changing in August 2026 — and most contractors haven't heard about it yet. Google is retiring the standalone LSA dashboard and migrating every pay-per-lead campaign into Google Ads as a Performance Max campaign type.

This isn't a minor UI update. It changes how you manage your campaigns, kills manual bidding, and wipes out your historical performance reports if you don't download them first. The ads keep running — but where you run them from and how they're optimized looks completely different starting in August. Here's what's happening, what actually changes, and what you should do before the migration hits your account.

What Google Is Actually Doing

Google announced the transition through its Google Ads Help center and confirmed by Search Engine Land: the standalone Local Services Ads dashboard is being retired. Every existing LSA pay-per-lead campaign migrates into Google Ads as a new campaign type called Performance Max with pay-per-lead goals.

The rollout is phased. The first wave, starting August 2026, covers home and storefront service businesses in the US — specifically plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving. A second phase in late 2026 covers service-area businesses without physical storefronts and accounts with custom bidding configurations. Non-US accounts and remaining categories move in 2027.

The migration is automatic. You don't have to manually move anything — Google handles it. But that doesn't mean you can ignore it, because what you lose in the process is real.

What Stays the Same

Before the panic sets in: the things that actually make LSAs work are preserved. According to 99Calls' analysis of the migration, your ads will continue to appear only on Google Search and Google Maps — the same placements as before. Despite the "Performance Max" campaign type name, these campaigns do NOT expand into YouTube, Gmail, Display, or any other Google network. Pay-per-lead billing stays in place. The keywordless targeting model, which draws on your Google Business Profile to match relevant searches, remains unchanged.

Your Google Verified badge, your review count, your existing lead quality signals — all of those carry over. The fundamental mechanics of why LSAs generate leads aren't changing.

What Actually Changes

Three significant things change, per reporting from PPC Land and Location3 Media:

1. Management moves to Google Ads. You'll no longer log into a separate LSA dashboard. Everything — budget, bidding targets, lead review, dispute management — moves into the Google Ads platform. If you've never used Google Ads before, you'll need to get familiar with it. If you already have a Google Ads account, your LSA campaigns will appear there.
2. Manual bidding is gone. In the current LSA dashboard, you can set different bid targets for different job types. After migration, Google combines everything into a single automated campaign-level target. If you run plumbing and HVAC leads in the same account, Google sets one target covering both. You can still provide a target CPA, but the manual control granularity disappears.
3. Historical reports do not transfer. This is the one that will sting. Every lead report, cost history, dispute record, and performance chart from your current LSA dashboard stays behind. Google has confirmed that historical performance data does NOT migrate to Google Ads. Once your account transitions, that data is gone from view. See the next section.

The dispute process also shifts — lead disputes that you'd previously handle in the LSA dashboard will now be managed inside Google Ads. The dispute criteria haven't changed; the location has.

The One Thing You Need to Do Right Now: Download Your Data

Before your account migrates, export everything. Log into your LSA dashboard and download:

• Your lead history going back as far as possible
• Monthly cost and CPL data by service category
• Disputed lead records
• Any performance benchmarks you've been tracking

Once the transition happens, you won't be able to retrieve this from the Google Ads platform. It's gone. If you want to compare your 2026 performance against 2025 or 2024, you need that historical data in a spreadsheet before the migration date, per Speedmobi's migration guide.

Google is not sending strong advance warnings about this. Most contractors we talk to don't know it's happening. If you have an agency managing your LSAs, make sure they've already done this. If you're managing your own account, do it this week.

What This Means for Your Bidding Strategy

The shift to automated bidding is the change that will matter most for your actual lead costs. Right now, if you want to bid more aggressively for HVAC replacement leads than for routine maintenance calls, you have that option. After migration, Google handles the optimization at the campaign level — its algorithm decides how to allocate budget across lead types based on its performance signals.

This can work in your favor if Google's algorithm has good data on your conversion patterns. It can work against you if the algorithm doesn't have enough signal yet, or if your lead types have very different value profiles that you'd previously managed manually.

The response time and review factors that drive LSA rank are unchanged. The fastest-responding, best-reviewed businesses still get more impressions. Our Google Ads AI agent manages campaign performance across both LSA and standard Google Search — including the transition period — so nothing falls through the cracks when your account migrates.

How This Fits With the Rest of Your Google Ads Setup

If you're only running LSAs today, this migration is your natural on-ramp into Google Ads. You'll have a Google Ads account, and from there you can layer in traditional Search campaigns for keywords and intents that LSAs don't cover — branded defense, competitor targeting, specific service keywords.

If you're already running both LSAs and Google Ads, the migration simplifies your view — everything in one platform. The risk is that your LSA campaigns, now inside Google Ads, will be visible to your billing and settings configurations in ways they weren't before. Review your Google Ads account structure before the migration date.

We covered what happened when Google replaced Dynamic Search Ads with AI Max in our post on Google AI Max replacing Dynamic Search Ads. The LSA migration is a parallel consolidation play — Google is pulling all local ad types into one platform and one management interface.

The Timeline at a Glance

• August 2026: Phase 1 — plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, moving (US)
• Late 2026: Phase 2 — service-area businesses without physical storefronts, accounts with custom bidding or booking configurations
• 2027: Phase 3 — non-US accounts and remaining business categories

If your business type is in Phase 1, you may have weeks, not months. Download your data now.

What to Do This Week

Three things: First, log into your LSA dashboard and export all historical performance data. Second, confirm you have an active Google Ads account or set one up — Google will need it to migrate your campaigns. Third, note your current monthly CPL and budget so you have a baseline to compare against after the automated bidding takes over.

If you want a professional set of eyes on your LSA setup before the August migration — and a strategy for what to run alongside it in Google Ads — book a free 24-hour audit. We'll tell you exactly what to document, what to expect, and how to come out of the migration without losing ground to competitors who aren't paying attention.

Sources

• Google Ads Help — Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals
• Search Engine Land — Local Services Ads come to Google Ads via Performance Max
• Search Engine Journal — Google Is Bringing Local Services Ads Into Google Ads
• 99Calls — Google Is Bringing Local Services Ads Into Google Ads: What Contractors Need to Know
• PPC Land — Google Folds Local Services Ads Into Google Ads, Cuts Historical Reports
• Location3 Media — Google Announces End of Local Services Ads Dashboard
• Speedmobi — Google Is Killing the LSA Dashboard: What Every Local Business Needs to Do Before August