Local Services Ads for contractors: what happened to the Google Guaranteed badge

September 22, 2026 · Joshua Hill

Local Services Ads are the pay per lead ads at the top of Google for trades, and the Google Guaranteed badge that used to sit on them was replaced in late 2025 by a single Google Verified badge with no money back guarantee attached. To get it, you pass Google's screening for your trade and area, then pay for each lead the ad sends you, and your ranking inside the ads depends mostly on distance, reviews, and how fast you answer.

What the badge used to mean, and what it means now

For years the green check came in a few versions. Home service trades usually got Google Guaranteed, which came with a money back promise to the customer if the work was not done right. Some professional categories got Google Screened, and a license check had its own label. In October 2025 Google folded those into one Google Verified badge, and it ended the money back guarantee for services booked after December 7, 2025.

So if a salesperson or an older blog post tells you the badge means Google will stand behind your work, that is out of date. The badge now says you passed Google's screening for your trade and area when you applied. That is still worth something to a homeowner deciding who to let into the house, but it is a credential and no longer carries a warranty.

How you get verified

You sign up for Local Services Ads, pick your trade and service area, and go through screening. What gets checked depends on the category and the location. For most contractors it can include some mix of business registration, license, insurance, and a background check on the owner and sometimes on the people who go into customers' homes. Existing advertisers who had already passed screening under the old badges were moved over to Google Verified without doing anything.

Budget time for this. Screening runs through a third party, and it can stall on a mismatch as small as the business name on your insurance certificate not matching the name on your license. Get those documents lined up before you apply.

What you actually pay for

Local Services Ads charge per lead, not per click. A lead is a call that connects, a message, a voicemail, or a booking request that comes through the ad. You set a weekly budget, and the price per lead depends on your trade, your area, and the type of job, so any number you hear from someone in another market tells you very little about yours. Look at the estimate Google shows for your own category and zip codes.

Google filters some junk before it charges you, and it now reviews charged leads after the fact and issues credits automatically when its models decide a lead was low quality. It no longer credits leads just because the job type or location was outside what you serve, which means your service list and service area settings have to be right. If you list a job you do not want, you pay for the calls asking for it.

What decides who shows up first

The badge gets you into the ad box. It does not decide the order inside it. Google says ranking weighs things like how close you are to the customer, your review count and rating, how responsive you are to calls and messages, your business hours, and any serious or repeated complaints. Your budget matters too, but it is not the whole story.

Responsiveness is the one most contractors lose on, and it is the one you control. Every missed call from the ad is a lead you may still be charged for and a hit to the signal Google uses to rank you. If the phone rings while you are on a ladder, something has to catch it. That is the same problem we wrote about in missed call text back, and with pay per lead it gets more expensive to ignore. Reviews feed the ranking as well, so the habit of asking for reviews pays twice here.

What we do in our own companies

We run painting and flooring companies in Bellingham along with the licensed Washington general contractor they operate under. Before we put money into any paid lead source, we make sure the phone side is ready for it: every call answered or texted back quickly, every lead logged in one place with where it came from, and a follow up sequence that starts the same day. Without that, you cannot tell whether Local Services Ads worked or whether you just paid for calls that went to voicemail.

We also judge the channel by booked jobs, not by leads. A lead that costs more but turns into a signed proposal beats three cheap ones that never call back. Tracking that takes a lead source on every job from the first call to the final invoice, which is part of what we set up for other contractors.

If calls from paid ads are going to voicemail, fix that before raising the budget. Catching and answering those leads is what lead response covers.