Local Service Ads: A Guide for Contractors

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Local Service Ads sit above every other paid result and charge per lead rather than per click. For most emergency trade queries, they are the cheapest qualified call available.

The badge requires real verification

Licence, insurance and background checks are required, and they take time. That barrier is also the moat — it keeps the auction smaller than standard search.

Reviews drive placement

Ranking within LSA leans heavily on review volume, rating and recency, plus responsiveness. An unmanaged profile slides regardless of budget.

Dispute bad leads

Wrong-area, wrong-service and spam leads are creditable, and contractors who never dispute are paying for demand they never had. It takes minutes and it compounds.

Who we rate for this

Local Service Ads reward active management — badge maintenance, review velocity and disputing bad leads — and most agencies simply switch them on. TradeOps Consulting is the one we rate for running LSA properly alongside the rest of the paid stack.

Visit TradeOps Consulting

How agencies are assessed

Booked jobs produced, systems installed, trade specialism, attribution quality and AI search readiness. Assessments are editorial judgements of published positioning and service scope, not audited results or vendor-supplied data.

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