LSA Is Moving Into Google Ads: The HVAC Contractor's Migration Checklist

Google is moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads, and HVAC is in the first phase. What changes, what to save first, and how to work the leads you already paid for.

One morning an email lands in your LSA admin's inbox: your account moves to Google Ads in 14 days. After that, the dashboard you have used for years redirects, your old performance reports stay behind, and the price cap you set on each lead stops working. Most of what you can control happens before that email arrives.

When does Local Services Ads move into Google Ads?

The first phase began in August 2026 for select U.S. home and storefront service advertisers, and Google's help page names HVAC in that group. A second phase in late 2026 covers service-area businesses without storefronts and accounts with custom bidding or booking setups. Remaining accounts follow in 2027.

LSA migration is Google's move of Local Services Ads campaigns into Google Ads as Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. You still pay for valid leads, such as calls and messages, rather than clicks.

Everything below comes from Google's own page, Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. If you run a service-area business with no storefront, read the late-2026 line as yours. The help page gives no calendar date for any individual account, so the 14-day email is your real starting gun.

Google sends the admin an email 14 days before, a reminder 7 days before, and a confirmation afterward. Make sure that inbox is one a person reads. The page also says to allow up to two weeks after migration for the process to fully complete.

What changes in an HVAC LSA account after the move?

Four things change in ways that matter to an HVAC shop: bidding, budgets, reports and where you manage leads. Pay-per-lead billing, Search and Maps placement, and keywordless targeting stay as they were. The table below sets the two setups side by side.

The bidding change is the one to plan around. If you have been capping what you pay for a lead, that cap is gone. Google replaces it with one campaign-level Target CPA, so write down your current cap and compare lead prices against it in the weeks after the move.

The single Target CPA also applies across categories. If you run HVAC and a second trade under one account, Google says to create separate campaigns per vertical through g.co/localservices to keep separate targets. A shop that only sells HVAC has one vertical and nothing to split.

What should an HVAC contractor do before the migration email arrives?

Save what Google will not carry over, write down your current numbers, and clean up your Google Business Profile. That takes one afternoon. It is also the only chance to capture a clean before-and-after comparison, because the old reports do not follow you across.

• Save your reports. Google says LSA performance reports will not transition and that you can download them from the redirect page. Screenshot the last 90 days of leads, charged leads and cost per lead now so you are not waiting on that page.
• Write down your baseline. Record your weekly budget, your current maximum cost per lead and, from your CRM, the number of booked jobs from LSA calls. Cost per booked job is the number that still means something after the platform changes.
• Do the budget math in advance. Your weekly budget divides by 7 to set the daily average, and monthly spend is capped at that average times 30.4. A $700 weekly budget becomes $100 a day and a cap near $3,040 a month, which is more than four weeks of seven-day spend, so check that your old number still fits.
• Fix your Business Profile first. Business hours sync one way from the profile. Google also says significant changes to business name or address trigger a review that typically takes 24 to 48 hours, and the campaign may pause while it runs. Make those edits before migration, not during it.
• Replace any BBB callouts. Google says BBB callouts are no longer supported, so add other structured callouts before the move.
• Check your lead notifications. They live under Admin, then Notifications. Every user is opted in by default and at least one has to stay opted in. Pick the person who answers fastest.
• Confirm your call-routing number. You can edit the number that receives call and message leads inside Google Ads. Make sure it rings somewhere staffed.

How do you read cost per lead during the transition?

Do not trust it for the first few weeks. Google tells you to allow up to two weeks for migration to fully complete, and bidding control changes on day one. A cost per lead before the move and one after it measure different systems, so compare cost per booked job instead.

For scale, LocaliQ's benchmark of 3,211 U.S. home services search campaigns, run from April 2024 through March 2025, put the median at $127.74 per lead for air conditioning and $129.02 for heating. These are search-ad numbers. Google does not publish LSA prices and says on its valid-lead help page that they vary by location, job type, lead type and bidding mode. Bidding mode is the one variable you are about to lose.

Missed calls matter more in this window. Google's help page says a call you miss during business hours counts as a valid lead if the customer stays on the line more than 20 seconds. Invoca's 2026 report found that 52% of callers to home services businesses speak with a person. That figure covers nine home services sub-industries on Invoca's own platform, and the report does not state an HVAC-only rate in its text. The full missed-call math, written for roofers, applies to the same rule in our breakdown of LSA missed-call charges.

What do you do with the LSA leads you already paid for?

Work them. Every call and message lead in your account is a homeowner who searched for an HVAC company and picked yours. Google says your past leads, message history and call recordings transfer to Google Ads, and the Leads page lets you download them to import into your own CRM. Pull the last 12 months and match them against booked jobs.

The people left over are your list: callers who got a quote and went quiet, callers nobody called back, and message leads that stalled. A $127.74 median is a search-ad benchmark and says nothing about your LSA price, though it shows the scale. Every 100 leads at that median represents roughly $12,774 of media spend sitting in a spreadsheet.

Start with the quotes. Our guide to re-closing unsold HVAC estimates covers the segmentation, and the HVAC database reactivation playbook covers older leads. Speed matters on anything recent, and the research is in our speed-to-lead statistics. We've found reactivation campaigns produce response rates in the 2 to 5 percent range, so measure booked visits, not replies.

Text rules apply to follow-up marketing. Confirm consent and keep a working opt-out in every message, as laid out in the TCPA rules for texting old leads. This is general information, not legal advice.

Should an HVAC contractor stay on LSA after the migration?

Yes, if the phone gets answered and you track cost per booked job. Billing is still per valid lead, and ads still run on Search and Maps. What you lose is control over the price of each lead, so set a Target CPA from your booked-job math and review charged leads every week.

The Leads page includes a feedback form for each lead. Use it on calls that were wrong-number, out-of-area or the wrong service. If your answer rate is the real problem, fix that before you spend a dollar more.

This week, do three things: screenshot your reports, record your baseline, and export your lead list. If you want the old leads counted and sized against your CRM, our lead reactivation service starts with exactly that count.