Google Ads or LSA Leads Dropped? Run These 6 Checks First

An October drop in Google Ads or Local Services Ads (LSA) leads may be a routing or counting change, not fewer customers. LSA now charges for some business-hours calls nobody answered, and Google's How leads work page, read November 1, 2026, says those hours are your Business Profile hours. A steady count can hide fewer answered calls. Check the count before you pull budget from campaigns still sending calls.

Last verified: November 1, 2026.

Between August and late October 2026, Google changed, or was reported to have changed, several things that decide where calls ring and what the counter counts. The timeline below dates each one with the check that covers it.

Start with four numbers per market

This week, before anyone touches a bid, pull four numbers for each market: ad clicks, the calls Google Ads or LSA reported, total inbound calls on every line from your carrier or phone system, and booked jobs. The carrier total matters because a tracking-line report can't see calls that rang another number. Compare the same weeks of September and October in 2026 and 2025 to reduce seasonal differences, while noting that weather, demand, coverage and pricing can still differ. If carrier exports are slow, start with your five busiest markets.

If clicks held and ad-reported calls fell, something between the ad and your report changed, so run checks 1 to 5; if carrier totals held too, find the line the calls rang. If clicks fell, start with check 6, then take bids, budget and season to the agency. Calls that held while booked jobs fell point to answer rates and the scheduler, not Google. For LSA, which bills per lead, put answered calls beside the charged leads in the second slot; check 4 explains why.

Switched website vendors this fall? Confirm the new site's call tracking separately.

Check 1. Which number do your local ads ring?

Routing. Calls on your call-tracking line fall while total calls on every line hold.

An advertiser started posting on X on September 1 that his local ads showed his Business Profile number, not his call asset's. Google replied that if you use both location and call assets, ads featuring a location may send calls to that location's number (Search Engine Roundtable, September 25, 2026). He later said his accounts were fixed, and Google hasn't said whether anything changed.

The call still arrives, but your tracking line never sees it. Google Ads also tracks location-asset calls only when account-level call reporting is on.

To test it, check whether each campaign runs both asset types, then view the ad in the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool (Tools, then Troubleshooting), which Google says won't pile up impressions. Confirm call reporting is on while you're there. A live test call may be billed as a click on Search or a lead on LSA, so keep it to one per market and log the time.

Check 2. Did your LSA move to Performance Max?

Routing. An edit on the Business Profile can move where LSA calls ring within a day.

Google started moving LSA into Google Ads as pay-per-lead Performance Max campaigns in August 2026 (Google Ads Help). After the move, the page says, profile changes to your hours and phone number "will sync automatically within 24 hours." You can edit the number your call and message leads route to inside Google Ads, but the page doesn't say which number the ad itself shows.

List the branches that now show up in Google Ads as pay-per-lead Performance Max campaigns. For each, write down the profile number, the Google Ads routing number and your call-tracking number, make sure you chose all of them, and edit the routing number in Google Ads if it isn't yours. Our migration guide covers the rest of the move.

Check 3. Did Google change the number or hours on your profile?

Routing and billing. Total calls fall, or charged LSA leads rise while booked jobs don't.

Checks 1 and 2 turn the Business Profile into an ad setting, and Google can edit it without you. Its page on Google updates says Google may publish a suggested update automatically if other public information supports it, and you get 4 days to accept or reject one once notified. Review every location's updates before you change anything else, using this guide to suggested edits.

On September 10, Search Engine Roundtable reported scammers posting customer photos with phone numbers to "dozens, if not, hundreds" of profiles. Google removed them a day later, but scan each location's photos anyway for a number that isn't yours.

Keep phone numbers out of Google Posts, which Google may now remove for contact information it can't verify (Search Engine Roundtable, September 25, 2026), and use the Call button instead.

Set each profile's hours to when someone actually answers the phone; check 4 is why.

Don't fix routing by putting a campaign tracking number on the profile. Google's guidelines say the number "must be under the direct control of the business," and a campaign line there would count calls from every source. Keep one stable number you own per location and let call reporting's forwarding number do the counting; our call-tracking guide covers that setup.

Check 4. Recount LSA leads under the October 1 rule

Counting. Charged leads rise for the same calls.

Under the rule Google emailed advertisers about (Search Engine Roundtable, August 25, 2026), a business-hours call nobody answers becomes a charged lead once the caller stays on the line past 20 seconds. Even with no message left, a call to voicemail or an automated greeting in your profile hours "is treated as a connected call," the How leads work page adds. When your ad schedule differs from those hours, unanswered calls are charged only when both apply, and a phone menu restarts the clock at the caller's first button press.

Because the rule adds leads, a steady October count can hide falling answered calls, and a falling count probably understates the drop. Rebuild the report on three columns: charged leads, answered calls and booked jobs. The middle one shows whether anybody spoke to the people you paid for.

Our guide to missed-call charges shows how to audit each branch's hours and phone menu.

Check 5. Count bookings that never touch your website form

Counting. Website form conversions fall while bookings land in a system the report doesn't read.

Since August 25, LSA booking has switched on automatically for any branch whose linked Business Profile carries an active partner booking link, and Google's Ads Liaison said those bookings count as paid LSA leads (Search Engine Roundtable, August 26, 2026). Google's booking help page puts the off switch under Profile and Budget, then Settings.

Search and Performance Max ads can carry a Book button too, which Search Engine Roundtable reported on August 28. Google's Partner bookings page says a tap sends the customer to your booking partner's page, you pay only for that click, and the partner confirms each booking into a conversion action called "Appointments booked." That goal isn't applied to campaigns automatically, so form-conversion reports miss those bookings.

Organic answers point the same way: from October 9 to 31, 2026, 29.3% of US Google AI Mode answers in the Cheers Market Baseline, our own research panel, linked a booking or scheduling page, most often Housecall Pro's.

Scheduler bookings usually don't fire your website's form conversion unless the scheduler sends it back, so pull bookings by source from yours (ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro, Workiz or another) and add them to the lead count, minus the LSA bookings LSA already counts. Then find "Appointments booked" in Google Ads' conversion actions and decide which campaigns should count it.

Check 6. Mark the AI Mode ad dates on your chart

Placement. Clicks and costs can move either way.

Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns can already serve ads inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google's help page says their metrics "are included in aggregate," and you can't target or opt out of those placements separately from Search.

On October 16, Google confirmed to Search Engine Land it was testing AI Mode ads for people who connect their apps through Personal Intelligence (Search Engine Roundtable, October 19, 2026). On October 28, Google announced AI Mode ads in ten more markets, Canada among them, and ads on follow-up questions in the US.

Save the October search terms report as your before picture, mark both dates on the clicks chart and judge the campaign on booked jobs. A dip near either date tells you which week to ask the agency about, not what caused it. The AI Mode ads checklist shows whether your campaigns already serve there.

If clicks fell but calls held, callers may be finding you elsewhere

In the panel's 60 US metro areas, ChatGPT home-service answers with at least one phone number went from 12.6% (October 2 to 8, 2026) to 92.5% over the rest of the month. For US sites running a call-tracking script, 41.0% of the numbers ChatGPT printed weren't on the site in the pages we checked, against 12.1% for sites without one. Audit those numbers against your tracking inventory and test any line the team doesn't recognize.

Whoever dials one gets credited to that line's source, so a ChatGPT caller can show up as a Google Ads or Business Profile call. Judge October on calls on every line and booked jobs, not any one source report.

GA4 filed some AI visits under Direct in the same weeks. Sistrix found ChatGPT tagged only 1% to 24% of source links a day from October 9 to 15, and Gemini's links had carried no `utm_source=gemini` tag since about September 28 (Search Engine Roundtable, October 30, 2026). Neither gap touches Google Ads conversions, which run on their own click IDs and forwarding numbers.

If every check passes, the drop is probably real

If clicks, calls on every line and booked jobs all fell together and none of the six checks turned anything up, fewer customers called. Review campaign economics, bids, coverage and seasonal demand with the agency before deciding what to keep running.

When the issue concerns a badge or coverage promise, check what changed from Google Guaranteed and Screened to Verified before changing the campaign.

Method

The Cheers Market Baseline is our own research panel: every week it asks ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Gemini the same 32 home-service questions in 100 metro areas, 60 in the US and 40 in Canada. The numbers in this article come from ChatGPT and Google AI Mode answers in the 60 US metro areas in October 2026.

The phone shares count answers with at least one phone number in the text, so they measure printed numbers, not calls or distinct businesses. The October 2 to 8 share is 12.6% of 1,910 answers, about 1 in 8. The October 9 to 31 share is 92.5% (5,835 of 6,307), an average over those weeks, not a reading from one day. The booking share (1,847 of 6,307 AI Mode answers) counts answers that linked a booking or scheduling page, not bookings anyone made.

The phone check compared 900 numbers ChatGPT printed in 772 answers (US and Canada, October 2 to 31) with each business's own website, crawled November 1, 2026. The US call-tracking figures cover the 358 US numbers we could check: 32 of 78 on sites running a script and 34 of 280 on sites without one, with unresolved cases left out. "Not on the site" means the number wasn't on the business's own website in the pages we checked. Our check read each site's default number before any script could swap it, which can make mismatches on script sites look more common, and since we didn't dial any number, one missing from a site isn't necessarily a bad one.

The panel doesn't include Claude or AI Overviews, and no business is named. Search Engine Roundtable's Gemini report rests on one analyst's chart, and Sistrix found ChatGPT's tagging back to 99% to 100% from October 17. Google's help pages cited here are undated and can change; we read each one on November 1, 2026. When we read the How leads work page on September 29, it didn't mention the 20-second rule, and it still described a missed call with no voicemail as a valid lead when you call or message the customer back.

Sources

• How leads work, Google Local Services Ads Help, undated. Missed-call charges, Business Profile hours and connected calls.
• Google LSAs Showing Google Business Profile Number, Not Google Ads Number, Search Engine Roundtable, Sept. 25, 2026. The advertiser's report and Google's reply.
• About call reporting, Google Ads Help, undated. Account-level call reporting for location assets.
• About the Ad preview and diagnosis tool, Google Ads Help, undated. Viewing the ad without adding impressions.
• Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals, Google Ads Help, undated. The LSA move and the 24-hour profile sync.
• Understand Google updates on your Business Profile, Google Business Profile Help, undated. Suggested updates and the 4-day window.
• Google Maps Phone Number in Photo Scam, Search Engine Roundtable, Sept. 10, 2026. Phone numbers posted in customer photos.
• Google Posts Cracks Down On Unverified Contact Information, Search Engine Roundtable, Sept. 25, 2026. Post removals for unverified contact details.
• Guidelines for representing your business on Google, Google Business Profile Help, undated. The profile number rule.
• Google To Charge For Missed & Subsequent Calls On LSAs, Search Engine Roundtable, Aug. 25, 2026. The October 1 rule and the 20-second threshold.
• Google Massively Expands Booking Partners On Local Services Ads, Search Engine Roundtable, Aug. 26, 2026. Automatic LSA booking counted as paid leads.
• About booking leads in Local Services Ads, Google Local Services Ads Help, undated. Where to turn LSA booking off.
• Google Ads Book Buttons Expand To Search & Performance Max, Search Engine Roundtable, Aug. 28, 2026. Book buttons on Search and Performance Max ads.
• About Partner bookings, Google Ads Help, undated. The "Appointments booked" conversion action.
• About ads in AI-powered experiences in Google Search, Google Ads Help, undated. AI Overviews and AI Mode ad metrics and targeting.
• Google Ads Now In AI Mode With Personal Intelligence, Search Engine Roundtable, Oct. 19, 2026. Google's October 16 test confirmation.
• Ads in AI Mode expand to new markets, Google, Oct. 28, 2026. The ten new markets and follow-up question ads.
• What changed in ChatGPT in October: GPT-6, UTM tracking and sources, Sistrix, Oct. 30, 2026. ChatGPT's source-link tagging rates.
• Google Gemini Stopped Attaching UTM Parameters To Cited URLs, Search Engine Roundtable, Oct. 30, 2026. Gemini's missing source tag.

Sources read November 1, 2026.

Dylan Allen-Arnegård is the CEO & Co-Founder of Cheers, the done-for-you local visibility partner for established home-service companies and PE-backed portfolios.