Google will start dismantling the standalone Local Services Ads dashboard in early August 2026, moving those campaigns into Google Ads under a new type called Performance Max for pay-per-lead goals. Search Engine Land reported the change July 20, based on Google’s own rollout documentation. A limited set of advertisers in home services, pet care, wellness, and education businesses go first, with the transition expanding in phases through 2027. The detail advertisers should act on immediately is that none of their existing Local Services Ads performance history transfers to the new setup.
The Performance Max name invites the wrong assumption. Google’s standard Performance Max campaigns pool one budget across Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps, trading channel-by-channel control for automated reach. This local variant keeps none of that trade-off. Ads still run on Search and Maps only. Campaigns stay keywordless, pulling entirely from an advertiser’s Google Business Profile, and Google continues billing per valid lead (a call, a message, a booking) rather than per click.
What actually changes is where the work happens. Leads, calls and campaign settings move into the same Google Ads account that already handles Search and Shopping, retiring the separate dashboard local businesses have managed independently. Google Business Profile edits, updated hours, new photos, a changed service area, will now sync to the campaign automatically instead of requiring a manual update on two platforms.
The cost of that convenience is data continuity. Local Services Ads reporting is frequently the evidence agencies use to justify budget to the plumbing, HVAC, legal, and home-care businesses that rely on it. Google says advertisers will get notice before their account is migrated, but the company has not specified how long that notice window lasts or how long the old dashboard’s data stays reachable once it arrives. Advertisers are being told to export everything before the transition rather than after.
Performance Max has an established pattern elsewhere in Google Ads: it pools inventory, blends placements together, and gives advertisers less visibility than the standalone campaign types it absorbs. Google says this local edition will hold its narrower line, Search and Maps only, keywordless, paid per lead, across the full rollout that runs into 2027. Whether that holds is the real question raised by the rebrand. A campaign format built around expanding reach across channels is an unusual vehicle for a promise to keep reach fixed.
Local service advertisers should treat the next two weeks as an export window, not a wait period. Pull your cost-per-lead and lead-source reporting out of the current Local Services Ads dashboard now, before an account in pet care, home services, wellness, or education lands in the August cohort. Once budgets and creative assets carry over automatically, the only thing not guaranteed to follow is the record of what already worked.
Reported by Anu Adegbola for Search Engine Land on July 20, 2026.
