For Local Services Ads users

LSA missed call charges: how to stop paying for calls you miss

Paul Parnell. I run the ads and follow-up for home service companies.

The rule, in plain words

Google bills a missed Local Services Ads call as a lead when all three of these are true:

1. The call comes in during the business hours on your profile.
2. Nobody answers.
3. The caller stays on the line for more than 20 seconds.

If you use a phone menu, the 20 seconds start after the caller presses a key. Calls outside your business hours are not billed under this rule. Google announced it in an email to advertisers on August 24, 2026. I covered it in the newsletter the day it started.

You cannot dispute LSA leads anymore

Google took away the dispute button and replaced it with automatic credits. Here is how that works now:

• Google reviews leads for 30 days. If it finds a lead was invalid, a duplicate, or poor quality, it credits your account on its own.
• Check the Charge Status column on your Leads page. Each lead shows Charged, Not charged, In review, or Credited.
• Rate bad leads anyway. Use the feedback survey on the lead. Google says it may credit some leads you report.
• Wrong job or wrong area is on you now. Google no longer credits "job type not serviced" or "geo not serviced" leads. Turn off job types you do not do and trim your service area to where you work.

The 20-minute audit

1. Open Local Services Ads and go to your leads. If your account was moved into Google Ads (Google started moving Local Services Ads into Performance Max pay-per-lead in August 2026), use the Leads page in Google Ads instead.
2. Pull the last 30 days of phone leads and find the missed ones.
3. Count only the missed calls that came in during your business hours.
4. Multiply that count by what you pay per lead.

That number is what missed calls cost you each month if nothing changes. The missed call cost calculator does the math for you.

Three fixes

1. Make your hours honest

Set your hours to match when a real person picks up. If nobody answers at 7am, do not list 7am.

2. Answer inside 20 seconds

Forward the line so a second phone rings: the office, a partner, anyone. A missed call now costs the same as an answered one, so answer it.

3. Text every missed call right away

When you cannot answer, a text goes out in seconds. The caller gets a reply instead of voicemail, before they call the next company. Here is the text I use:

Then a real person calls them back. Text first to find the live leads, then a human call. That took the booking rate to 50%. Get all 3 missed-call texts.